What's new in Excel 2010

New/changed Excel 2010 feature - RETURN OF THE FILE MENU

There is a welcome FILE tab on the Excel ribbon - as so often happens in software, Microsoft are making good their omissions and mistakes from previous versions.

New/changed Excel 2010 feature - CUSTOMISABLE RIBBON

In Excel 2007 you couldn't customise the ribbon (unless you knew XML and were a techie). Now you can create as many tabs as you like - here we have a new Wise Owl tab on the ribbon:

New/changed Excel 2010 feature - SPARKLINES

Sparklines allow you to show and compare trends easily:

New/changed Excel 2010 feature - SLICERS

You can add a slicer to a pivot table to make it (possibly!) easier to filter. For the following example, it's easier to see just the herbivorous dinosaurs, for example (you'd just click on the relevant box):

New/changed Excel 2010 feature - OTHER FEATURES

Other additions to Excel 2010 include:

• Because Excel now supports 64-bit processors, the maximum workbook size is now 4 gigabytes (that's a LOT of cells)
• There are now web and mobile phone apps to let you view Excel 2010 spreadsheets even without having Excel 2010 loaded (Microsoft trying to compete with Google Apps?)

Oh, and you can insert captured screenshots onto your worksheet!