Question:
Most of the PC users in my company are running Office 2000 and 2003 and we are happy with those, but we have the opportunity to upgrade to Office 2007 as we have just bought a number of additional licenses.
I'd quite like to install Excel 2007 as I had a file the other day containing more rows than Excel 2003 can handle, but I am a bit wary of upgrading just for the sake of it especially as it's so new.
I know it has a totally different appearance but the magazine review I read sounds good, so I wondered if anybody has any experience of using Office 2007 as yet, and if you have any comments or advice please?
Answers:
Yeah we've got it. The full pro version I believe.
I've not used it to its full potential yet, but so far am very impressed myself. In terms of basic functionality, it's probably not much different from Office XP or 2003. The whole experience is much improved though.
It looks nicer for a start, is easier to look at, find things etc... Ribbons are a great addition. Plus there's plenty of little gui tweaks which make it more responsive to the user in terms of feedback. In built PDF support is handy too. It's also pretty quick. I can't see or feel any difference between it and Office XP or 2003.
Also Outlook has been refined quite a bit. Again just easier to use and get around. We've also got Sharepoint 2007 which integrates brilliantly with Office 2007. Just makes sharing documents, writing wiki's, content management etc... so much easier and puts it all under one roof.
Some of the guys have been allowed to test Vista (I had to remove it ), but it's looking good so far. We mainly want to use it for IIS7 (that may mean nothing to you).
I'm quite happy with Ubuntu and OpenOffice at home, but at work it's nice to have the newest stuff
Office 2007 is a great product, a very solid and well evolved suite from MS.
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A bit of feedback for anyone interested - I downloaded and installed Office 2007 today and boy does it look different! Excel can now take up to 1 million rows which is my main reason for using it.
There seem to be more functions available and I'm sure once I get used to the new look it will be better and easier to use.
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I'm just going to stickto 2003 pro. it has the lot and am use to it, knowwhere everything is. when that gets abit more out of date it might upgrade, but for now, i'm sticking for 2003
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I have it - certainly a big improvement over previous versions but not sure it would be worth the cost for organizations - especially if they are running 2003
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Outlook 2007 is fantastic. Word and Excel - arghhhhhh I can't find anything anymore. Everytime I go to use it I end up spending ages trying to find where the menu options are. We've decided that we're not rolling it out across the computer because of exactly that reason.
If I recall correctly, the increase to the max number of rows in Excel is only applicable if you use the new file format, which is not compatible with previous versions of excel and various other applications.
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you can also install it alogn side your existign office, so you dont have to remove it, therefore if you really disliek the new office, jsut revert back to using your existing version.
however remember that files saved in 2007 froe xample word files that have a the .docx extension cannot be opened in older version, however addons can be downloaded to enable 2003 to open .docx and you can also just save as the older versions .doc
Rob
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you can also install it alogn side your existign office, so you dont have to remove it, therefore if you really disliek the new office, jsut revert back to using your existing version.
Yes this is true apart from Outlook, you can only have one installation at a time so you will have to remove Outlook 2003 if you wish to use the 2007 version.
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also worth noting is Microsoft dropped Outlook from the Home/Student version. You now need Small Business, Professional or Enterprise to get outlook. Or you may be able to buy it seperatly.
I suppose Microsoft thinks the new Windows Mail for Vista is good enough for home users. That or they are secretly admitting Thunderbird from Mozilla is better and free.
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also worth noting is Microsoft dropped Outlook from the Home/Student version. You now need Small Business, Professional or Enterprise to get outlook. Or you may be able to buy it seperatly.
I suppose Microsoft thinks the new Windows Mail for Vista is good enough for home users. That or they are secretly admitting Thunderbird from Mozilla is better and free.
Outlook isn't really need for anything other than business use. It's a bit heavy for personal use. Where it really comes into its own is when there are multiple users, sharing folders, calendars, arranging meetings etc... For a simple mail client it's a bit much.
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also worth noting is Microsoft dropped Outlook from the Home/Student version. You now need Small Business, Professional or Enterprise to get outlook. Or you may be able to buy it seperatly.
I suppose Microsoft thinks the new Windows Mail for Vista is good enough for home users. That or they are secretly admitting Thunderbird from Mozilla is better and free.
They did this to stop companies feel tempted to buy Home Edition and also to accommodate pricing. Home Edition can be installed on 3 home PCs, but Microsoft do not want to extend this to Outlook. Even if you buy both, because of the drastic reductions on cost for Word/Excel, its actually affordable - even more so if you have 3 PCs.
Also, the other reason is that in Windows Vista, Windows Mail has been introduced. I have not seen it, but as I understand it, it removes the need for Outlook for the home user.
AMO
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Office 2007 is bloatware.
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I have now dumped MS and I'm using openoffice.
Its pretty darn good - and its FOC!
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Office 2007 is bloatware.
Well done. Great post.
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Well done. Great post.
Exactly it was a well written, well reasoned argument with plenty of evidence and citations given to back up the factual statement (not even claimed to be just opinion).
Answers:
Most of the PC users in my company are running Office 2000 and 2003 and we are happy with those, but we have the opportunity to upgrade to Office 2007 as we have just bought a number of additional licenses.
I'd quite like to install Excel 2007 as I had a file the other day containing more rows than Excel 2003 can handle, but I am a bit wary of upgrading just for the sake of it especially as it's so new.
I know it has a totally different appearance but the magazine review I read sounds good, so I wondered if anybody has any experience of using Office 2007 as yet, and if you have any comments or advice please?
It depends on how much the upgrade will cost you. For new licences, if it costs the same for 2003 and 2007, go for 2007. If you have to pay for upgrading existing 2003 licences it depends on how many existing licences vs how many new licences.
If you can have new licences in 2007 and existing licences in 2003, provided you don't mind that from an administration perspective, I'd go for this option if it costs too much to upgrade existing licences.
Overall, whatever you do, try not to buy old software when you can buy new. Otherwise you'll get into a state where in a couple of years, you'd wish you didn't make that decision. It's hard enough keeping up with software without intensionally holding back. It's costly as well if you select 2003 for new licences and pay the upgrade cost in a few months as well.
From what I've heard 2007 is pretty good.
AMO