Mac Mojo: The Office for Mac Team Blog

Mac Mojo: The Office for Mac Team Blog - Excel 2008 And Solver http://www.officeformac.com/ms/blog Since the launch of Office 2008 for Mac, a number of customers have asked about the fate of <a href="http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HA011245951033.aspx">Solver</a>, an Excel add-in we shipped in Excel 2004, but that is not part of Office 2008. Generally, the two questions we receive are, “What happened to Solver?” and “What should I do to get Solver functionality?” I’ll take each in order. First, Solver (if you don’t know) enables you to do <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_programming">linear programming</a> in Excel, which makes it enormously useful for cracking business problems around scheduling (how many tellers should a bank have on hand to meet demand?), capacity planning (which of our factories should be producing widgets, gizmos, or doohickeys?), or finding the minimum or maximum value for a problem, given certain constraints. While linear programming techniques are regularly used in businesses, most people first encounter Solver in higher education; Solver is a common requirement among business schools (including, it must be said, <a href="http://foster.washington.edu/">the one I graduated from</a>). Solver was not included in Excel 2008 because it depends on Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to function. When we removed VBA from Office 2008, it meant that we also removed Solver. Now, on to the second question – “what should I do to get Solver functionality?” Today, the best option for people who need Solver is to run Excel 2004 and Excel 2008 side-by-side, and switch to the 2004 environment for workbooks that require Solver. However, we have been hearing loud and clear from our customers – particularly in education – that the side-by-side solution is suboptimal. For many people, Solver is a critical and necessary tool for coursework, and they want to work with Solver natively in the Excel 2008 environment. We definitely hear you, and we’re working on it. The Excel team is actively working to bring Solver to Excel 2008 as part of a future update. We have two distinct technical approaches and are exploring both. Once we have established which is the best option – and have code that meets our quality bar – we will announce a timeframe for availability here on Mojo. In the meantime, please know that this is a top priority for the Excel team. Watch this space for details. Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:07:51 GMT Web Crossing(r) Unix-v6.4 built Jan 14 2010 18:50:13 (source:1372 2010-01-14 15:39:31 -0800)/Unix-6.4 (http://webcrossing.com/) http://backend.userland.com/rss