Top Ten New Features in Excel 2013
If you’re looking for a quick rundown on what’s new and cool in Excel 2013, look no further! Just a cursory glance down the first few items in this list tells you that the thrust of the features is being able to be productive with Excel 2013 anytime, anywhere!
|
1 Complete cloud file support
The new Excel Save (File→Save) and Open (File→Open) screens make it a snap to add your SkyDrive or company’s SharePoint team site as a place to store and edit your favorite workbooks. By storing your Excel workbooks in one of these places in the cloud, you’re assured access to them on any device running Excel 2013 (which can include your Windows tablet and smartphone along with your desktop and laptop PC).
Moreover, should you find yourself without a computing device running Excel 2013, as part of your Office 365 subscription you can still review and edit your workbooks online in almost any major web browser.
|
2 Painless file share options
File sharing in Excel 2013 has only gotten better and easier than ever. The new Share screen in the Excel Backstage view makes it easier than ever to share your Excel workbooks online. Not only can you easily invite people to view and edit workbooks saved on your SkyDrive in the Cloud, you can also present them in online Lync meetings and post them to your favorite social media sites.
|
3 Total touchscreen support
Excel 2013 isn’t just the best spreadsheet program for your Windows desktop and laptop PC, it’s also the best on your Windows tablet and smartphone.
To make sure that the Excel 2013 touchscreen experience is as rich and rewarding as with a physical keyboard and mouse, Excel 2013 supports a special Touch mode that puts more space between command buttons on the Ribbon, making them easier to select with your finger or stylus along with all major touchscreen gestures as well as the use of the Windows Touch Pointer.
Moreover, the Touch keyboard (which also offers a Writing Pad mode) is expandable, giving you access to all special cursor movement keys such as Home, End, PgUp and PgDn enabling you to use any of the keyboard shortcuts for moving the cell pointer supported by any standard physical keyboard.
|
|
4 Integrated Data Model support
Excel 2013 now supports true one-to-one and one-to-many relations between the data tables that you import into Excel from stand-alone database management programs as well as between the data lists that you create in Excel. The relationships between the data tables and lists in the Data Model then enable you to use data from any of their columns in the Excel pivot tables and charts you create.
|
5 Pivot table filtering with timelines
Excel 2010 introduced slicers to make it possible to filter the data in your pivot tables via onscreen graphic objects. Excel 2013 introduces timelines that enable you to graphically filter pivot table data using a timeline based on any date-type column included in the Data Model.
|
6 Recommended Charts
Not sure what type of chart will show off your data the best? Just position the cell pointer anywhere in the table of data and select Insert→Recommended Charts on the Ribbon. Excel then displays an Insert Chart dialog box where Live Preview shows how the table’s data will look in a variety of different types of charts.
After you find the chart that best represents the data, you simply click the OK button to embed it in the table’s worksheet.
|
|
7 Recommended PivotTables
If you’re a newbie at creating pivot tables for the Excel data lists you create as well as data tables that you import from stand-alone database management programs, you can now get Excel to recommend and create one for you.
All you have to do is locate the cell cursor in one of the cells of the data list and select Insert→Table→Recommended PivotTables on the Ribbon. Excel 2013 then opens the Recommended PivotTables dialog box showing you a whole list of different pivot tables that you can create on a new worksheet in the current Excel workbook by simply clicking the OK button.
|
8 Apps for Office
The Apps for Office feature enables you to expand the power of Excel 2013 by installing all sorts of specialized little programs (sort of like add-ins) that are available from the Office Store right within the program.
To install and use an app, select Insert→ Apps for Office→See All on the Ribbon and then select the Featured Apps option in the Apps for Office dialog box. Free apps for Excel 2013 include the Bing Maps app to plot locations, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary app to look up words, and the Mini Calendar and Date Picker app to help you enter dates in your worksheet.
|
9 Quick Analysis tool
The Quick Analysis tool appears at the lower-right corner of any selected table in an Excel 2013 worksheet. This tool contains options for applying conditional formats, creating a chart or pivot table, totaling values in rows or columns, or adding sparklines for the data in the selected table. And thanks to Excel’s Live Preview, you can see how your table data would appear using the various options before you apply any of them.
|
|
10 Flash Fill
This nifty new feature is literally a mind reader when it comes to dealing with multipart cell entries in a single column of the worksheet that contains discrete elements you could better use if they were entered all by themselves in separate columns of the sheet.
To separate discrete elements from longer entries in the column, all you have to do is manually enter the first element in the longer entry you want extracted into a cell in the same row in an empty column to the right terminated by pressing the down arrow.
Then, the moment you type the first letter of the corresponding element in the second long entry in the empty cell in the row below, Excel 2013’s AutoCorrect feature not only suggests the rest of that second entry to make, but also all the rest of the corresponding entries for the entire column.
To complete the AutoCorrect-suggested entry and fill out the entire column, you simply click the Enter button on the Formula bar or press the Enter key.
|
|
|

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.