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Saturday 27 July 2013

3 things that are not so impressive in Excel 2013

The whole cloud thing:

While it is understandable that Microsoft wants us all to purchase shiny new Surface tablets and use spreadsheets on the go, it seems like a bad idea. It annoys me that when I want to save a file, the first option I see is Kokula Krishna Hari K’s sky drive. The process of saving files to sky drive and later viewing them in browsers is very slow and often results in errors or warnings. Instead, for desktop versions, why not make My computer as first preference?!?

Sharing & Social features:

Share to Facebook?!? seriously! Why would anyone want to share their spreadsheets on twitter or facebook? Do we really want facebook to know our annual budget & appraisal ratings (so that they can show us ads that say –Buy our scissors and cut your budget in half )?

Power Pivot is not for masses:

Microsoft positioned Power Pivot as BI for masses, offered it for free in Excel 2010. Then in Excel 2013, they went ahead and implemented a licensing policy that looks just as complicated as my lawyer’s invoice. Why would a for-profit company like MS want to not offer powerful tools like Power Pivot to masses for a fee? Why sell it only to corporate customers through volume licensing program? beats me.

Bottom line

Despite these minor annoyances, I think Excel 2013 is a well designed, solid & powerful software ready to make more people awesome in their work. With features like tablet compatibility, data model, slicers & timelines, improved UI & color schemes it has quickly become my first choice when I want to use a spreadsheet (I run Excel 2010 & 2013 on same computer).

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