Hi, all. I have Excel 2008 as part of the new MS Office suite. I am learning Excel in order to be more competitive in the job market (basic admin stuff: spreadsheets, scheduling, etc). Since '08 is so new, it's unlikely that any place that I work for will have it. So, do I need to learn, say 2007 for Windows? In other words, is Excel 2008 much different from Excel 2007 OR Excel 2004? I don't want to waste my time learning software that nobody has yet. Thanks.
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Which Version of Excel Should I Use
- Thread starter fooloof
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Excel 2008 is basically the Mac version of Excel 2007. The layout is a little bit different, but all the functions are the same. You can save it as a xls file and open it up without any problems in excel 2007 on windows if you ever need to.
If you are still learning the basics of Excel, Office 08 will be fine for you. Most of the business world is Windows based and will likely be using Office 07 or earlier versions. The Mac versions will be fine if you are learning how to use functions etc.
One big drawback to Excel 2008 (from a compatibility with Windows perspective) is that VBA macros (used in Excel 2004 for Mac and 2003,2007 for Windows) no longer work. Instead, Excel 2008 uses automator for macros. What this means is once you get to a more advanced level of using Excel, then you will either have to learn 2 different ways of writing macros (and you can't learn the VBA macros on Excel 2008) and you won't be able to transfer any files which rely on macros between 2008 and other versions.