Don’t get me wrong. I’m looking forward to having spark/spike lines out of the box. In fact, I even asked for it!(See 3rd comment), and I think MS have done a bang up job (from what I’ve seen).

But this is what’s playing on my mind. How many Excel users even know what sparklines are? I would say with some confidence that it’s less than 0.5%.

How then does this fit with the idea of the Ribbon UI, which is designed for the (apparent) 90% of Excel users that can’t read and click a lists of words! – (menus). I know this arguments flaky, but I hope you can see my point, I know that the UI team is from a different part of MS than the Excel guys. But in my head it doesn’t stack up. Has the charting engine been fixed?

I’ve not actually touched 2010, but I just feel that after the relative disaster of 2007, it would not have been the first thing I’d have started working on. I hope they’ve ironed out all the over issues, they’ve had 13 years to work on 3D charts!

BTW, sparklines for Excel are not new, there are a number of addins that can make backwards compatible spike lines, relatively easily.

Free ;-)

http://www.spreadsheetml.com/products.html [bit pants]

http://www.bloggpro.com/nanocharts-milestone-release-v051/ [my fav]

http://sparklines-excel.blogspot.com/ [most comprehensive]

Paid

http://www.bonavistasystems.com/

http://www.bissantz.com/sparkmaker/index_en.asp