I recently saw a complaint where someone using PowerPoint wanted to know why you couldn't see your presentation on the projector screen and your notes on your laptop at the same time.
Er...
In the forum someone responded that it was possible but hardware was probably why they couldn't do it (however, they didn't say precisely where the functionality was).
Er...
One of the reasons that Microsoft created the Ribbon (instead of toolbars and menus) from Office 2007 is that that the majority of requests for new functionality in all Office products was for stuff that was already there, but not known. In these Excel forums I visit there is loads of proof that this is the case; people asking for things which can be done easily, and without resorting to programming a solution in Visual Basic. There is loads of stuff in Office that "experts" (like I think I am) are unaware of. Help forums continually annoy me by showing up my ignorance about Office. And from the postings and replies I know I'm not alone.
The reason that Excel and the rest of the Office suite is probably the most popular business application in the world is because Microsoft have been very good at creating features and functionality that meet the needs of both basic and "power" users. If I want to do something "new" these days, I assume someone at Microsoft was tasked with addressing it probablyfive years ago, and it is there "somewhere". I try to resist the temptation to click Alt-F11 to get to the code editor and bang away at the keyboard, and instead look first at the toolbar/menu/ribbon. It's amazing what you can learn from this.
By the way, to get to see the presentation and notes at the same time, go to "Slide Show/ Set Up Show (2003)", or "Slide Show/ Set Up Slide Show (2007)" which also has some other useful functions, such as Presenter View. The functionality has been around for a long time.
A complaint is that in Presenter View in 2003 you can't see the Notes, which is a pain. You have to uncheck the Presenter View box and select the second display for the presentation, then you can see both, but you lose some Presenter View functionality. In 2007. Presenter View works fine with Notes - testimony that Microsoft at some stage picked up on this pain.
