Feature Story
Office 2007
Best Features for Accountants
Thomas G. Stephens Jr., CPA, CITP
Released in January 2007, Office 2007 no longer can be considered
a “new” application. Yet many accountants are just discovering some of
the new features of Office 2007 that make it a productive and
welcome upgrade. From a substantial overhaul to the user interface to
enhanced capacities to tools designed to improve document formatting,
the feature set in Office 2007 offers many opportunities for accountants
to increase productivity with this stable and secure desktop suite. The
following “best features for accountants” have been compiled from two
years of experience using Office 2007, first as a beta-tester and then in “live” production.
Office-wide Changes
There are several changes in the Office 2007 suite that apply to most,
if not all, of the core applications of Excel, Word, Outlook,
PowerPoint and Access. The most obvious is that of the new user
interface. A new Ribbon along with Tab groupings has replaced the
traditional drop-down menu structure previously found in Office
applications. The Ribbon and related Tabs make it easier to find
commands and functions in the various Office applications as these
commands and functions are organized much more logically than in
the previous menu structures.
In addition, the Quick Access Toolbar is easily customized, allowing
users one-click access to the commands and functions they use most
often, along with those not found on the Ribbon. Contextual Tabs and
the Mini-Toolbar also are new in Office 2007. These tools appear
when needed to provide functionality that is related to the object(s)
currently selected.
The Office Button, located in the upper, left-hand corner of the Office
window provides access to many of the commands and functions that
were located on the File menu in previous versions of Office such as
print commands, save commands and file creation and open
commands.
In addition, the Office Button contains a significant amount of new
functionality, including the ability to inspect documents for hidden
metadata, mark documents as final, and save documents as PDF or XPS
files through a free download available from the Microsoft Web site.
With this add-in installed, users no longer need to own Adobe Acrobat
or any other PDF engine to create PDF files; the add-in works with
Office 2007 only and can be downloaded at www.microsoft.com/downloads.
Also located under the Office Button are the options for each of the
applications, including access to the new Trust Center from which
security settings for a given application can be managed.
Another new feature that applies across multiple Office 2007
applications is that of Themes. Found in Excel, Word and PowerPoint,
Themes provide for consistent formatting of documents across each of
these applications. For instance, if you chose to format an Excel
workbook using one of the 20 pre-defined Themes and then also chose
to format a related Word document and a PowerPoint presentation
using that same Theme, then you could rest assured that fonts, colors
and other related formatting options would be consistent across all
documents that had been formatted with that Theme, lending an overall
air of professionalism to the documents.
Charting also has been improved throughout the Office 2007 suite.
Now Excel, Word and PowerPoint all use the same charting engine
and this engine makes obsolete many of the challenges formerly
associated with creating dynamic and compelling charts and graphs.
For instance, if you create a chart and later decide you wish to swap
the data associated with X and Y axis, the new charting engine
supports that function with one simple click of the mouse.
Accountant-friendly Features in Excel 2007
Of course, the application that accountants want to know about the
most is that of Excel 2007 and how the changes in Excel affect the
ubiquitous spreadsheet. In sum, Excel contains many new features that
accountants will welcome as productivity-enhancing options.
The most striking is that of the increased worksheet capacities in Excel 2007.
Whereas previous versions of Excel limited users to 256 columns and
65,536 rows in a worksheet, Excel 2007 obliterates those limitations by
extending the number of columns to 16,384 and the number of rows to
1,048,576 – yes, that is more than 17 billion cells in one worksheet!
Virtually all other capacity limitations in Excel have been extended similarly,
to the point that for most users they are only theoretical limitations as
opposed to practical ones.
Tables are one of the most important new features for accountants in Excel
2007. With Tables, you can quickly and easily apply formats to large ranges
of data and calculate totals, averages, and other summarizations of columns
of data with a single mouse click.
Additionally, data contained in Tables can be used in formulas via a new
feature known as structured referencing in which row and column headers
replace traditional cell addresses in formulas. For instance, the formula
=SUM(Sales![April]) would create a total of all of the data in the April
column of a Table named Sales. And because a Table automatically
expands and contracts as rows and columns are added and deleted to the
Table, as additional rows are added to Sales, the values in April column of
those rows are automatically included in the summation.
Other significant new features for accountants in Excel 2007 include greatly
improved conditional formatting options; improved sorting and filtering tools,
including the ability to sort and filter by colors; a redesigned and more
powerful PivotTable function; and an easier-to-access set of Page Layout
commands. In short, for accountants there is much to like in Excel 2007!
New Features in Other Core Applications
The preceding discussion on Excel should not imply that Office 2007 has
nothing to offer Word, Outlook, PowerPoint and Access users. In fact, there are
many significant new features in each of these applications that will make it
easier for accounting and financial professionals to get quality results in less time.
For instance, Word, Outlook and PowerPoint contain SmartArt, a new
feature that allows you to create presentation-quality graphics to more
effectively communicate your message. Word also introduces Building
Blocks, pre-defined and pre-formatted text blocks that can be inserted into a
document on demand. Outlook’s new Instant Search feature allows users
to find critical data in just slightly more than a blink of the eye, while new
Color Categories make it easier to group together related data.
Not to be outdone, PowerPoint’s more powerful Slide Masters makes it
easier to globally change the look of a presentation and integration with
SharePoint-based Slide Libraries allow for simple re-use of existing slides in
other presentations. Finally, the improvements to Access may be the most
striking of all, simplifying how end users create and interact with databases.
Next Steps
If you already have installed Office 2007, be sure to explore the new
features described above – along with the many others that, because of
space limitations, are not mentioned above – and how you may benefit by
putting them to use. Remember not all commands and functions are
contained on the Ribbon; there are many commands and functions that are
available only by first customizing the Quick Access Toolbar and adding the
desired functions to it.
Additionally, do not ignore the value of investing in training for you and your
team. Office 2007 represents the most significant change to the Office suite
perhaps since moving to Windows. Because of the magnitude of these
changes, it would be unreasonable to assume that users will be as
productive as they otherwise could be without first equipping them with
necessary training.
If you have not yet had a chance to experience Office 2007 and how you
may benefit from using it, you may want to consider downloading the free,
60-day trial available from Microsoft. With the exception of Outlook, this
could be installed alongside your existing version of Office for trial and
experimental use, it could be loaded onto a computer that does not currently
have another version of Office installed, or it could be loaded into a virtual
computer. In any case, putting the fully functioning trial version through the
paces would be a wise move to assist you in experiencing first-hand the best
features that Office 2007 offers to accountants.
Mr. Stephens is a shareholder in K2 Enterprises, where he develops and
presents technology-related continuing professional education programs to
accounting and finance professionals and across the United States. You may
reach him at tommy@k2e.com. |
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