I am determined not to let this blog degenerate into another link collection, which is what many blogs out there have become nowadays. One blogger (or non-blog site) says something interesting, and then everybody else links to that, and posts a sentence or two, but doesn’t add anything new. Quite an incestuous club.

However, there are some sites out there that I just find too interesting to be ignored.

The blog about the upcoming new version of Excel is one of them. It’s a thorough overview of new features in Excel 12, with lots of detail and lots of screenshots. The blog is also quite well written, and the guy himself is very responsive. The blog is a pleasure to read and participate in.

For the first time ever, I find myself looking forward to a new version of Office, and feeling excited about what is coming. So many annoyances are getting fixed, and so many nice new features are coming!

Excel is my #1 tool at work – I use it for maybe 75% of my projects & tasks, so any shortcomings have ample opportunity to make themselves felt. Indeed, with many of them I’ve progressed through all 5 stages of frustration – ignorance, annoyance, denial, damning them to the nethermost hells, and acceptance. Finally I get so used to them that they become fixtures in my life, and I no longer question them. In fact I’ve almost grown fond of them and the workarounds and tweaks that I’ve learned to use in order to get around them, and I’ve long since given up expecting them to be fixed.

One doesn’t expect Microsoft to change any of the things that matter, after all – upgrades mostly just make minor tweaks to existing features, and change the looks of all toolbars. (This version is no different, of course – the toolbars get a new design again.) There hasn’t been anything really new for about 10 years, since Excel 97.

It is interesting to see that this time, Microsoft is actually fixing many of these annoyances – formula length limits, IF() nesting limits, array formula limits, the awful interface for conditional formatting. As one of the commenters at that blog jokingly said, Microsoft “are putting us developers out of business… In the old days, those of us who knew how to do Conditional Formatting wielded great power over less competent users.”

At the same time, they’re adding a lot of new features that really look very useful. And I’m sure we’ll discover that all sorts of new unexpected things will become possible as well. It’s an exciting time to be an Excel developer.

The blog is also interesting in and of itself. Well before the product is released, a Microsoft employee is sharing the firm’s plans and designs with users, engaging in a discussion with them, and soliciting their comments and feedback. A blog is an excellent medium for such a discussion. I’ve never submitted comments on any of Microsoft’s web sites or surveys – there’s always the feeling that they’ll just disappear into a black hole, get chewed up by the Microsoft Machine and never emerge again. Here, there’s a person on the other side who actually responds to my comments. A novel feeling!