Ozgrid, Experts in Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets

Interactive: Excel 2003 to Excel 2007 command reference guide. This guide covers the most popular commands from Excel 2003. For the complete list of command equivalents,download the Excel ribbon mapping workbook.

Here is a list of all of the major changes made to Excel 2007 in the area of limits.

The total number of available columns in Excel
Old Limit: 256 (2^8)
New Limit: 16k (2^14)
The total number of available rows in Excel
Old Limit: 64k (2^16)
New Limit: 1M (2^20)
Total amount of PC memory that Excel can use
Old Limit: 1GB
New Limit: Maximum allowed by Windows
Number of unique colours allowed a single workbook
Old Limit: 56 (indexed colour)
New Limit: 4.3 billion (32-bit colour)
Number of conditional format conditions on a cell
Old Limit: 3 conditions
New Limit: Limited by available memory
Number of levels of sorting on a range or table
Old Limit: 3
New Limit: 64
Number of items shown in the Auto-Filter dropdown
Old Limit: 1,000
New Limit: 10,000
The total number of characters that can display in a cell
Old Limit: 1k (when the text is formatted)
New Limit: 32k or as many as will fit in the cell (regardless of formatting)
The number of characters per cell that Excel can print
Old Limit: 1k
New Limit: 32k
The total number of unique cell styles in a workbook (combinations of all cell formatting)
Old Limit: 4000
New Limit: 64k
The maximum length of formulas (in characters)
Old Limit: 1k characters
New Limit: 8k characters
The number of levels of nesting that Excel allows in formulas
Old Limit: 7
New Limit: 64
Maximum number of arguments to a function
Old Limit: 30
New Limit: 255
Maximum number of items found by � Find All�
Old Limit: ~64k (65472)
New Limit: ~2 Billion
Number of rows allowed in a Pivot Table
Old Limit: 64k
New Limit: 1M
Number of columns allowed in a Pivot Table
Old Limit: 255
New Limit: 16k
Maximum number of unique items within a single Pivot Field
Old Limit: 32k
New Limit: 1M
Length of the MDX name for a Pivot Table item; also the string length for a relational Pivot Table
Old Limit: 255 characters
New Limit: 32k
The length at which fields� labels are truncated when added to PivotTable; this also includes caption length limitations
Old Limit: 255
New Limit: 32k
The number of fields (as seen in the field list) that a single PivotTable can have
Old Limit: 255
New Limit: 16k
The number of cells that may depend on a single area before Excel must do full calculations instead of partial calculations (because it can no longer track the dependencies required to do partial calculations)
Old Limit: 8k
New Limit: Limited by available memory
The number of different areas in a sheet that may have dependencies before Excel must do full calculations instead of partial calculations (because it can no longer track the dependencies required to do partial calculations)
Old Limit: 64k
New Limit: Limited by available memory
The number of array formulas in a worksheet that can refer to another (given) worksheet
Old Limit: 65k
New Limit: Limited by available memory
The number of categories that custom functions can be bucketed into
Old Limit: 32
New Limit: 255
The number of characters that may be updated in a non-resident external workbook reference
Old Limit: 255
New Limit: 32k
Number of rows of a column or columns that can be referred to in an array formula
Old Limit: 65,335
New Limit: Limitation removed (full-column references allowed)
The number of characters that can be stored and displayed in a cell formatted as Text
Old Limit: 255
New Limit: 32k

Also See Excel Formulas, Tips & Tricks & Free Excel Tutorials & Training & Overview On How To Use Excel  & Excel 2003 Audio Courses & Excel 2007 Audio Courses & Excel Video Tutorials  NEW!Excel 2007 Training Level 1 & Excel 2007 Training Level 2