Top Ten Features in Excel 2010
If you’re looking for a quick rundown on what’s cool in Excel 2010, look no further! Just a cursory glance down the list tells you that the thrust of the features is graphics, graphics, graphics!
Conditional Formatting & Sparklines: Conditional formatting in Excel 2010 gives you the ability to define formatting when the values in cells meet certain conditions. You can now instantly apply one of many different Data Bars, Color Scales, and Icon Sets to the cell selection merely by clicking the set’s thumbnail in the respective pop-up palettes.
When you apply a set of Data Bars to a cell range, the length of each bar in the cell represents its value relative to the others. When you apply a set of Color Scales, each shade of color in the cell represents its value relative to the others. Additionally, when you apply one of the Icon Sets, each icon in the cell represents its value relative to the others.
Sparklines are the newest graphic addition to Excel. They are tiny charts (so small they fit within the current height of a worksheet cell) that visually represent changes in ranges of associated data. You can use sparklines to call attention to trends in the data as well as to help your users quickly spot high and low values.
Cell Styles: Excel 2010 offers more than 40 colorful ready-made styles. These are styles you can preview in the worksheet with Live Preview before you apply them. You apply a cell style to the cell selection by quickly and easily clicking its thumbnail in the Cells Styles gallery.
Formatting and Editing from the Home tab: The Home tab of the Excel Ribbon literally brings home all the commonly used formatting and editing features. Gone are the days when you have to fish for the right button on some long, drawn-out toolbar or on some partially deployed pull-down menu. Now all you have to do is find the group that holds the command button you need and click it. What could be easier!
Charts from the Insert tab: Excel 2010 retires the Chart Wizard and offers you direct access to all the major types of charts on the Ribbon’s Insert tab. Simply select the data to chart, click the command button for the chart type on the Insert tab, and then select the style you want for that chart type. And with a little help from the many command buttons and galleries on the Design, Layout, and Format tabs on its Chart Tools contextual tab, you have a really professional-looking chart ready for printing!
Format As Table: This feature is a real keeper. By formatting a table of data with one of the many table styles available on the Table Styles drop-down gallery, you’re assured that all new entries made to the table are going to be formatted in the same manner as others in similar positions in the table. Better yet, all new entries to the table are considered part of the table automatically when it comes to formatting, sorting, and filtering.
Page Layout View: When you turn on this view by clicking the Page Layout View button on the Status bar, Excel doesn’t just show the page breaks as measly dotted lines as in earlier versions but as actual separations. Additionally, the program shows the margins for each page, including headers and footers defined for the report (which you can both define and edit directly in the margin areas while the program is in this view).
As an extra nice touch, Excel throws in a pair of horizontal and vertical rulers to accompany the standard column and row headers. Couple this great feature with the Zoom slider and the Page Break Preview feature and you’re going to enjoy getting the spreadsheet ready to print.
Style Galleries: Excel 2010 is jammed full of style galleries that make it a snap to apply new sophisticated (and, in many cases, very colorful) formatting to the charts, tables and lists of data, and various and sundry graphics that you add to your worksheets. Coupled with the Live Preview feature, Excel’s style galleries go a long way toward encouraging you to create better looking, more colorful, and interesting spreadsheets.
Document Information and Printing in Backstage View: The brand new Backstage View in Excel enables you to get all the properties and stats (technically known as metadata) about the workbook file you’re editing (including a thumbnail of its contents) on one pane simply by choosing FileInfo (Alt+F). This new Backstage View also makes it a breeze to preview, change settings, and print your worksheet using its new Print panel by choosing FilePrint (Ctrl+P or Alt+FP).
The Ribbon: The Ribbon is the heart of the new Excel 2010 user interface. Based on a core of standard tabs to which various so-called contextual tabs are added as needed in formatting and editing of specific elements (such as data tables, charts, pivot tables, and graphic objects), the Ribbon brings together most every command you’re going to need when performing particular tasks in Excel.
Live Preview: Live Preview works with all the style galleries as well as Font and Font Size drop-down menus in the Font group on the Home tab. It enables you to see how the data in the current cell selection would look with a particular formatting, font, or font size before you actually apply the formatting to the range. All you have to do is mouse over the thumbnails in the drop-down menu or gallery to see how each of its styles will look on your actual data.
Many of the larger style galleries sport spinner buttons that enable you to bring new rows of thumbnails in the gallery into view so that you can preview their styles without obscuring any part of the cell selection (as would be the case if you actually open the gallery by clicking its More drop-down button). When you finally do see the formatting that fits your data to a tee, all you have to do is click its thumbnail to apply it to the selected cell range.

Excel Glossary
active cell
The worksheet cell that contains the cell cursor. Each worksheet can have only one active cell.

Excel Glossary
AutoComplete
A feature that looks at the entries that you make in a worksheet column and automatically duplicates them in subsequent rows whenever you start a new entry that begins with the same letter or letters as an existing entry in that column.

Excel Glossary
AutoCorrect
A feature that alerts Excel 2007 to common typing errors and your own typing errors (that you specify) and tells the program how it should automatically fix them for you.

Excel Glossary
AutoFill
An Excel 2007 feature that quickly creates a series of entries based on the data you enter in one or two cells. AutoFill works with days of the week, months of the year, yearly quarters; consecutive series of numbers; and formulas. You also can add your own custom AutoFill series.

Excel Glossary
AutoFilter
A feature in Excel 2010 that enables you to temporarily hide everything in a table except the records you specifically want to view, based on criteria you specify.

Excel Glossary
Backstage view
A new feature in Excel 2010 — accessible from the green File tab — that enables you to manage files and to view the properties and stats about the workbook file you're editing.

Excel Glossary
cell
The intersection of a column and row in the worksheet.

Excel Glossary
cell address
The cell identifier, determined by its column letter(s) followed by the row number, as in cell A1, the very first cell of each worksheet at the intersection of column A and row 1.

Excel Glossary
cell cursor
The black border that surrounds the active cell in a worksheet.

Excel Glossary
clip art
Readymade drawings, illustrations, and photos offered by Microsoft for use in Microsoft Office applications.

Excel Glossary
Compatibility Checker
A utility in Excel 2007 and 2010 that you use to find potential compatibility issues if you plan to save an Excel workbook file in the older Excel 97–2003 file format.

Excel Glossary
current cell
The worksheet cell that contains the cell cursor. Each worksheet can have only one current cell.

Excel Glossary
data table
A range of cells in a worksheet in which you enter a series of possible values that Excel plugs into a formula so you can perform what-if analysis on the data.

Excel Glossary
dialog box
A rectangular window with settings and commands that appears when you click a dialog box launcher or certain other commands on the Ribbon.

Excel Glossary
dialog box launcher
A small icon in the lower-right corner of a group of command buttons on the Ribbon that you click to access a dialog box with additional related settings and commands.

Excel Glossary
function
A part of a formula that takes a number of specific arguments and then returns a single value based on those arguments.

Excel Glossary
gallery
A drop-down list of thumbnail selections that appears when you click certain command buttons on the Ribbon.

Excel Glossary
group
A section of a tab on the Excel 2007 Ribbon that organizes related command buttons into subtasks normally performed as part of the tab's larger core task. The name of a group appears at the bottom of the group, such as the Font group on the Home tab.

Excel Glossary
hyperlink
Specially formatted text that anyone can click to jump to Web sites, move to other cells or workbooks, or create an e-mail message.

Excel Glossary
keyboard shortcuts
A combination of keys that you can press to execute certain commands, as opposed to finding and clicking the commands' buttons on the Ribbon or elsewhere.

Excel Glossary
Live Preview
A feature in Excel 2007 that enables you to point to thumbnails on a drop-down gallery to see how a new font, font size, table style, or cell style would look on your selected data before you actually apply it.

Excel Glossary
macro
A series of commands or actions in Excel that are recorded and saved together in a file. You can run the macro whenever you need to perform the task.

Excel Glossary
Name box
The left-most section of the Formula bar that displays the address or name of the current cell.

Excel Glossary
pivot table
A special type of table unique to Excel 2007 that enables you to summarize large amounts of data and pivot or rearrange the table's data to display different summaries of the information it contains.

Excel Glossary
Ribbon
A new feature of the Excel 2007 interface that replaces the menus and toolbars of previous versions; appears at the top of the Excel window, just below the title bar.

Excel Glossary
ScreenTip
A small window that displays descriptive text when you point to but don't click a command on the Ribbon or other objects in a worksheet.

Excel Glossary
sheet tabs
Small tabs near the bottom of a worksheet that you click to move between the worksheets in a workbook. You can assign descriptive names to sheet tabs.

Excel Glossary
slicers
New graphic objects in Excel 2010 that enable you to quickly filter the contents of a PivotTable on more than one field.

Excel Glossary
SmartArt
A type of graphic object in Excel 2007 that gives you the ability to quickly and easily construct graphical lists and diagrams in the worksheet.

Excel Glossary
sparklines
Tiny graphs (miniature charts) that fit within a single cell in the worksheet, used to show basic trends in data.

Excel Glossary
Status bar
A horizontal bar that appears at the bottom of the Excel 2007 window and keeps you informed of Excel's current mode. In addition, you can use the Status bar to select a new worksheet view and to zoom in and out on the worksheet.

Excel Glossary
tabs
The various "pages" of Excel 2007's Ribbon interface that you click to display command buttons relating to the tab's name, such as Page Layout and Formulas.

Excel Glossary
template
A pre-designed worksheet that can be used as a basis for creating new worksheets.

Excel Glossary
WordArt
Stylized text objects that you use to add pizzazz and emphasis to headings and other text in Excel 2007 worksheets.

Excel Glossary
workbook
The basic file type that you create when you use Excel 2007. A new workbook consists of three worksheets by default.

Excel Glossary
worksheet
The main document that you work in when you enter data into cells within Excel 2007. A worksheet is stored in a workbook file.

Excel Glossary
worksheet area
The portion of an Excel 2007 worksheet in which you enter cell data and add objects such as charts and graphics.

Excel Glossary
XPS XML Paper Specification
A file format developed by Microsoft that enables people to open and print documents in XPS Reader without access to the original programs with which the documents were created (such as Excel).

Excel Glossary
Zoom slider
An object on the Status bar in Excel 2007 that enables you to increase the magnification in a worksheet or shrink it down to get an overall picture of the worksheet data.