Getting What's Missing in Excel 2002 You Can Put Back What Microsoft Took Out of Office XP's Spreadsheet Helen Bradley
Wed 1/9/02 -- So you've upgraded from Office 97 or 2000 to Office XP? You've probably discovered several nifty new features -- and become frustrated when you try to perform a task you'd mastered in a previous version of Excel and find the tool to do it is missing.
Some of Microsoft's spreadsheet add-ons have been removed from Excel 2002, but others are still available -- just not supplied on the suite CD, so you'll have to search them out. Why weren't they included with Office XP? We can't second-guess the thought processes inside Microsoft, but we can tell you what's missing and where to find it.
Where's Report Manager? One tool missing from Excel 2002, for no good reason, is the Report Manager -- which lets you combine disparate parts of a workbook into a single report and save the report structure along with the workbook for reuse. It's a great tool when you're using Scenarios and Views, or for any application where you routinely need to print more than one sheet from a workbook at a time.
Fortunately, you can find the 2002 version (a 165K download) here. If you're new to the Report Manager, you can learn more about using it here.
Track Down Data Tracking: Excel's Template Wizard with Data Tracking is a great tool that lets you set up a template for a task such as an invoice and then store the data from every invoice you create in a single Excel file or database. It's been around for a while, but -- you guessed it -- is missing from the XP disk. Download it (343K) here. To find information about using the Template Wizard with Data Tracking add-in, your best bet is to follow the instructions in Microsoft's Knowledge Base article Q214246.
Clip Gallery Is MIA: Even if you like the new Office XP Clip Organizer, you might be wondering where your old, downloaded clip art has gone and why you can't easily use it in any XP application. Well, up until last week, you could, but now you can't. But you may soon be able to.
Sound confusing? The secret was a terrific 2.5MB utility available on the Microsoft download site that let you access old Office Clip Gallery files from within Office XP. Just as WinPlanet went to press, however, the program disappeared, as did the Knowledge Base article about it (Q297993). Microsoft Support says the utility is currently being rewritten and will reappear sometime soon, so it’s worth checking the Office site every week or so to look for it -- or maybe even hitting your favorite search engine to see if XPCAG.EXE is still somewhere on the Net. If you find it, we can’t guarantee it’ll work (after all, Microsoft must have had some reason for pulling the program), but our Windows 98/Office XP system is running it without a hitch.
Access to Access: If you've got Office XP Professional, the Access Links add-in allows you to create links between your Excel 2002 files and Access 2002 databases. For example, you can take a list of data created in Excel and use it to create an Access form to display the contents of the list, and even to locate and sort the data.
Once again, this add-in was shipped with previous versions of Excel but not with 2002. You can find and download it (204K) here, and learn more about exchanging data between Excel and Access from this article, with some extra help for jumping back from Access to Excel in Knowledge Base article Q137739.
Mystery of the Missing Map Tool: If you believe Microsoft, the Excel Map tool is permanently out of action in Office XP; it's been replaced by the $249 mapping and data analysis package MapPoint 2002. Microsoft assures you that you can still open and view Excel 97 and 2000 files that contain maps in Excel 2002, but you can't alter them or create new ones.
Well, I don't always believe what Microsoft tells me. In fact, I've got the Map tool working pretty well from inside Excel 2002. To be sure, my PC still has Excel 2000 installed as well, but this trick might be worth a try even if you don't, as long as you still have your Office 2000 CD-ROM and don't fancy shelling out the cash for MapPoint: Using Excel 2002, open an Excel 2000 file with a map in it and double-click the map. If you're prompted to, place your Office 2000 disc in the drive so it installs the Map tool; the application will then load and you can alter the map from within XP.
You can also create new maps in Excel 2002 using Insert / Object / the Create New tab / Microsoft Map and clicking OK. Choose the country, then, when the map is created, choose Insert / Data to select the data for the map. It isn't as easy as it used to be, but it does work.
The moral of this story? Just because something doesn't seem to be there doesn't mean it isn't somewhere. So if your favorite tool isn't available in Office XP, don't give up before having a good look around the Microsoft Office, Office downloads, and Office Web tools sites. You might get lucky and find it.
