Excel 12 - Holy Sheet!

As promised, some Office 12 news: The official Excel 12 Blog was created late last week. In his first post GPM David Gainer divulges a quick fact which proves that this next version is going to be big.

Excel 2003 currently gives us 65,536 rows and 256 columns for a total of 16,777,216 cells per sheet. Excel 12 will give us 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns per sheet for an enormous total of 17,717,869,184 cells. That's a 1024-fold increase of available cells per sheet - close to 18 BILLION cells!

Sheet shape: when you look at it from a pixel perspective (taking cell height of 17px and width of 64px into account) a 2003 sheet is 68 times as long as it is wide; a ratio of 68:1. The increased width of '12' will reduce this ratio to approx 17:1. So we're going to get a 'fatter' sheet, or at least a bit pudgier than the rake-like 2003 version.

So, you ask, if the average sheet is going to be bigger how is the Excel engine going to support users who fill the whole thing up? I'd love to be able to tell you more but can't. I'm sure David will post more details when the time is right. I'll add my two cents worth thereafter.