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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Merkuri" data-source="post: 4532627" data-attributes="member: 41321">I wouldn't actually recommend upgrading to Excel 2007 if you only use it for basic things.  The biggest difference your average user will see in Excel 2007 is the interface, and its WAY different from 2003.  If you do decide to upgrade be prepared to take a few weeks (if not months) to get used to where everything is.  Really the main reason I have 2007 is because that's what they gave me at work, and when I went to go by a version for my home machine I decided it was best to have the same version on both home and work machines.  I could've lived with the version I had at home (Excel 2000) except it wasn't quite a legal copy and when I was no longer a poor college student my conscience wouldn't let me keep using it.  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/angel.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":angel:" title="Angel    :angel:" data-shortname=":angel:" />The features I used were "auto filter" (or just "filter"), "conditional formatting" and "freeze panes".  Auto filtering and freezing panes are easy to use once you've found them in the menu (and I can't help you there... I'd need to look at a copy of Excel 2003 to find it).  For the auto filter just highlight the top row (where your column headers are) and click the auto filter menu item.  It'll add the dropdown arrows.  If you add more columns later just select the top row again and hit that menu option again (you may need to click it twice: once will remove the old arrows and again will add them back, including the new columns).For the freeze panes, highlight the row UNDER where you want it to freeze (in my case I highlighted row 2) and click the menu option.  The rows above where you highlighted will be frozen in place and when you scroll up and down they'll stay in place.  Alternatively you can highlight just one cell and it'll freeze the rows above that cell and the columns to the left of it, so if you end up with a lot of columns and need to start scrolling left and right you can select cell B2, click the freeze panes option, and you'll always have your first column and first row visible no matter where you scroll.The conditional formatting is a little harder, and it changed a bit from 2003 to 2007 so I can't give you a step-by-step on how it's done.  Basically you select a cell or a group of cells and click the conditional formatting option and it'll ask you for a formula and the format you want.  When that formula is true it'll apply the formatting to those cells.  The hard part here is figuring out what formula to use.  The EXACT() function is handy here.  To apply formatting to a whole row based on the value of one cell in that row I usually do the following:1) Select one row2) Use this type of formula:=EXACT(C$3, "Value")In that example, C is the column I'm checking, 3 is the row I highlighted, and "Value" is the text I'm looking for in that cell.  The $ behind a row or column means that item won't change.  C$3 means it'll always check column C but it might check different rows.3) Pick the formatting you want and look to see that it got added to your row correctly.4) Highlight that same row again (if it got un-highlighted), click the "format painter" button, then apply that format to all of your rows.It's possible to select all of your data at once and apply the formatting in one fell swoop, but it's hard to figure out what to use for your formula in that case (do you use the last row number, or the first row number, or something else?) so I like to apply it to one row, make sure it works, then use the format painter to apply it to all of the rows.I think in Excel 2003 you can only apply three or four conditional formats to a given cell.  One advantage to Excel 2007 is that you can have more conditional formats.  If you find yourself liking that feature and wish you had more than three conditional formats that might be a good reason to upgrade.Another reason you might want to upgrade is that in Excel 2003 the "auto filter" dropdown menu lets you pick one item to filter on, and if you want to filter on more than one item (for example, if you want to see "Verbs" and "Nouns" at the same time) you have to write a formula.  In Excel 2007 the dropdown menu gives you checkboxes for each item, so you can filter on as many as you want without having to write formulas.</blockquote>

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