Software Review: Excel 2003

Stars: 3 out of 5

Pros: Makes adding numbers and creating number reports easy

Cons: It’s 10 years old

The Bottom Line:

Creating spreadsheets

Becomes easy and painless

Software out of date

Excel 2003 Adds Up to…Usable but Outdated Software

Computers have revolutionized how we do business.  Between word processing and spreadsheet programs, it’s easy to create documents and then edit them on the fly.  Honestly, I can’t imagine going back to the pencil and paper days.  Since Microsoft has a virtual monopoly on these types of software programs, the go to program for spreadsheets is Excel.  Currently, I am using the 2003 edition which is outdated but still so useful.

While a word processing program seems fairly obvious when you first open it up, spreadsheet programs can be a bit intimidating if you aren’t familiar with them.  After all, you just see a grid with letters for the columns and numbers for the rows.  What exactly do you do?

Anything you want.  Excel is actually a very powerful software if you have to do anything with numbers.  And in today’s business world, who doesn’t?  Its main purpose is to report financial information in ways that are easy to read and follow.

You can enter any type of information you want in each cell in the grid – words, symbols, numbers, or any combination thereof.  You can label rows and columns and then enter the actual numbers in the resulting grid.  For example, the columns might be the months of the year and the rows could then be revenue and expenses.  You’d plug in the values for each in the cell the matches.  Or you could flip that.  Or you could break it down by week and sub-sub-sub account.  Anything you want with as much or little detail as you need.

Of course, one reason I love this program is the formulas.  Instead of manually adding up the numbers entered, Excel does it for you.  Actually, you can add, subtract, multiply, or divide.  Change a number?  The formula updates automatically for you.

And, of course, you can cut, copy, paste, print, change color, format, or anything else your little heart desires.

Looking for more features, you can create pie charts and other graphs.  Or you can even create a pivot table.  This will take a huge amount of date and summarize it for you.  Change your source data?  Just update your table.  It really is that easy.

And I have a feeling I’m missing out on some other powerful features, but these are the ones I use the most.  I love having all of these at my finger tips.

My computer at home is a dinosaur, so I still use Excel 2003 there.  I am using it at my current job as well since I’m using old computers there, too.  But I used to use 2007 and even 2010 at my last job.  The basic functionality remains the same.  You’re still putting numbers in spreadsheets and adding them up.

However, the jump from 2003 to 2007 was a major upgrade.  So major in fact that Microsoft created a new file system.  You can open any file created in Excel 2003 in the later versions no questions asked.  However, if someone sends you a file in Excel 2007 or 2010, you need a special conversion program to open it.  It does a good job (I’m using it quite a bit at work).  But then you need to save a new version of the file in Excel 2003 instead of just saving any changes or updates to the old file.

The other major change is what Microsoft called the “ribbon.”  Instead of the old menu options displayed on the top with further drop down menus, the options were displayed on several different tabs.  Think of the old traditional icons but with icons for everything.  Yes, the old shortcut keys did still work, but I’m not a keyboard shortcut guy, so that was never an issue for me.  It did take people a little while to learn where the commands were located now, but once you get used to it, it’s easy to use.  It’s certainly no harder than Excel 2003.

So what do I recommend?  There’s really not even a question.  Why would you go out and buy Excel 2003?  It’s 10 years old!  Go with the latest and greatest edition because it’s the one that Microsoft will be supporting for the immediate future.  But if you have Excel 2003, there’s no reason to rush out to upgrade.  The changes are nice, but you can still use the one you have just fine.