Choosing a version of Excel, Powerpoint, or competitors

Many of the features you complain about exist. You just need to find out how to use them.

 

Many folks prefer 2004 to 2008
But neither is an absolute equivalent of their Windows versions (2003 and 2007)

You can try OpenOffice as an alternative to the Office Suite
You can also try Mariner's Calc as a spreadsheet substitution

Also, many consider Keynote in iWork a much better product than Powerpoint

Woof, Woof - Dawg

 

Open Office and NeoOffice aren't any better than the original. You could try iWork, but as usual with Apple applications they're mostly eye candy and don't offer any extra functionality.

 

If you need compatibility with Windows users or you work where you need anything with VBA, I would opt for virtualization and use Office 2003/2007. While Office 2004 has VBA it is based on VB 5 (same as Office 97), whereas 2000/2002/2003 is based on VB 6, so there many things that could be done on the Windows side that were not available on Mac. Office 2007 is based on .net but they have allowed some overlap with VBA for compatibility with previous Windows versions of Office. Office 2008 has no VBA capability.

I worked for a Fortune 50 company for 8 years as an analyst. We used Office 2000, then 2003 the last five years I was there. Charting was frustrating even on 2003. So after struggling with it for 3-4 years I learned some better ways to overcome Excel's limitations. In the end I never used built in charts without extreme modification. Here is a simple example, but you can get as complex as you want:

1. I put all data on one worksheet (called "Base"),

2. All set up data on another worksheet (called "A", or if I had more worksheets for setup [one for each chart], then I labeled them "B", etc.), which used formulas to automate everything pulling data from Base. And this was the set from which charts were made,

3. Then the worksheet with the charts (each chart was fitted into one cell (i.e. chart in cell B4, with the title in cell B3 [font size 10 pt] and the annotations in cell B5 [font side 8 pt]). I sized the cell B4 to be much larger, then stripped all formatting out of the chart, except the axis and data representations - never pie charts. Then by holding down the ALT key, you can snap the outer edges of the chart to the cell borders for perfect alignment. I did all this using VBA in 2003. With some minor adjustments, etc., it took me a total of 1-2 minutes to get a chart set up this way.

4. By automating this way, I never touched a chart after creating it, I never touched the setup worksheets. BTW these charts were all linked via VBA to PPT (which I detest, but it was "company policy"). So I could update the data, update every chart in Excel, which then updated every chart in Excel. With 900+ charts of data, I could finish the project in 20-25 minutes. Most of that time was using VBA to pull data from the mainframe into the Base worksheet.

Initial setup times for some of the complicated ones took 2-3 months, which included extensive testing before going live. Most of that time was ensuring that all formulas were correct - many thousands. The best part is that once I explained it, it was easy to transfer the entire project to someone else to maintain. After I began developing these spreadsheets, I was being tasked with training other analysts, and so it became somewhat of a standard in one department (about 2000 people).

Check out Excel User by Charley Kyd for excellent resources and instructions about using Excel to its best.

Probably more than you wanted...


But I had a little time.

 

I might get laughed of this thread for suggesting this. Have you looked at iWork '09?

I dunno about Numbers vs Excel, but Keynote is a very nice app (similar to Powerpoint but not as ugly).

my 0.02$

deej

 

I would take the Edward Tufte approach. Is this the right software? But more important, what are you trying to do? The biggest problem with Powerpoint (and Keynote and Impress, etc.) is the mentality of its use or better abuse.

If you get a chance, read Tufte's little booklet, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within. Check out his books Tufte Books.

At least worth thinking about.

 

I would have to say that Keynote is the best presentation software that I've used. In class we have to do "Powerpoint" presentations on different subjects and all my classmates always admire my keynotes. It's easy to use and it's much harder to make a "typical junky powerpoint" as I would call them. You know, the ones with too much effects, sounds, gradients, etc. Yuck.

Download the iWork '09 trial.

 

One further thought if you use virtualization and relative to my long post above. Never link the chart itself into Powerpoint. Rather select the cells (and the chart comes for free!) and link the cells. I had used VBA to do that, then put a button on the toolbar. Select the cells, click one button and it was linked to PPT.

 

This is on the Formatting Palette, under "chart options". Look in the Excel help for the topic "format a chart", and you'll get complete details for it.

You can make your graph look like anything you want. Select your graph, and then look in the Formatting Palette. The parts that you're probably the most interested in are the "Colors, Weights, and Fills" section, as well as the "Shadow" section.

You can remove that if you like. As in Excel, it's in the Formatting Palette.

You can also create your own custom theme, and define how you want everything to look.

Make sure that you've updated to the latest version of Office 2008 (currently 12.1.5). This was an issue that we've fixed.

This is a problem that's known by both us and Apple. We've both made changes to our code, so make sure you're up-to-date with both Office 2008 and Leopard fixes. However, the issue isn't completely fixed on either side. We've shown our code to Apple, and they can't tell us how to fix it. If you want to know the gory technical details of this, check out this blog post from one of our senior developers that explains it -- the stuff specific to Spaces is about halfway down, starting with the paragraph that begins "Bear with me while I shift gears".


Just FYI, I'm not enough of an Excel guru to answer the rest of your questions about it, but I'm looking into them 'cause I feel like I should know the answers. I wanted to answer the questions that I could quickly so that you knew that someone from MS really is listening. If you want to find a bunch of Excel gurus who can probably answer your questions off the top of their head, I highly recommend our Excel product forum. The forums there are searchable, too, so you can see if someone else has already asked your question and gotten an answer.

Regards,
Nadyne.

 

Nadyne, the link for Excel forums is bad.

 

Doh! Sorry 'bout that. I didn't close my quote in the URL tag. It's all fixed now.

Regards,
Nadyne.

 

Regarding #2, there is a workaround: it is possible to make two charts and overlap them (one for each axis). You have to set the background of the top chart to none (not to white), so that you can "see through it". Then you have to align them; hold down OPTION key and they will snap to the closest cell border.

 

I go with 04, it at least offers vb tools. and it can open newest xml based office 07 document (after you install a free format converter).

 

I'm a scientist, so, coming from that perspective, I have to ask, why are you using Excel to create figures? That might be acceptable for an undergrad, or for quickly throwing something together, but for a real, polished figure, you should be using a tool that is better suited to the job. Some options:

Sigma Plot is standard across many fields, but is windows-only
Deltagraph works on Mac and is pretty good. The interface can be frustrating at times, but it produces publication-quality figures.
Kaliedagraph - similar to Deltagarph, just with it's own set of quirks.
R - my favorite. Fully customizable graphs, very capable, but steep learning curve. Also free.

There are others out there as well.

As for presentations, I switched to Keynote a while back, and haven't looked back. If I have to give a talk using someone else's computer, I try to use a .pdf file exported from Keynote. If I absolutely must use powerpoint, I still create the file in Keynote, then export to Powerpoint, then do final touchups in powerpoint.

 

My vote for "Backhanded Compliment of the Day."

 

Oh boy... that sucks. That's about all I can offer you there.