Everyone in the tech industry and tech enthusiasts have been keeping their eye on two brand new products from Microsoft that are due to be released on January 30th, Windows Vista and Office 2007. The new version of Office is perhaps the most updated release since the first version of the Microsoft Office suite back in 1997. Previous updates had just small minute changes that were certainly nothing over-the-top. However, the new Office 2007 is virtually unrecognizable to users of previous Office versions. In the following review, we will evaluate Office 2007 as a whole and then mini-reviews highlighting the main points of Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Excel. We have done reviews of Office 2007 in the past, but those were reviews of beta and pre-release versions. This review is based solely on the final product, in fact, they are free downloadable 60-day trial versions that you download right from Microsoft's Web site.
To start off, the biggest change is the interface, which is both good and bad. The bad side of this is that people who use Office in a work environment and with other users will have to essentially relearn where everything is located in each program. The same features are still there (although there are new ones) and they all work the same, but now they are accessible in different locations.
Now for the good...At the top of the Office 2007 applications no longer lies the traditional gray drop-down menus, but rather a high-tech looking "ribbon." The new ribbon is a series of tabs that contain features that are grouped together in categories by what they do and how they work. The ribbon will force you to hunt around the application for the feature that you are looking for, but at the same time, it introduces you to new features in Office that you never knew existed. Office also now includes a new feature called Live Preview, which when you select text in the application and hover over a new text font (for example), the font is applied to your text temporarily so you can see how it looks without having to do multiple clicks to change it back if you don't like it.
If you don't like where a feature is located on the ribbon, you can place any button inside a Quick Launch toolbar that lies either above or below the ribbon at all times for easy access to your features of choice.
Microsoft Office 2007's new ribbon menu replaces the traditional drop-down menus.
Another huge change in Office 2007 are the new XML-based file extensions. You can tell an Office 2007 file from older files by an "x" at the end of the file extension (for example, .docx instead of the traditional .doc for Word documents). The new XML file extensions allow for better open-source development for software developers as well as additional document features for users. There is one downside however, when a user of Office 2003 and earlier tries to open one of these new XML documents, they will get an error message saying that it isn't possible. There is good news though, Microsoft has released a patch for these earlier versions of Office to solve this issue. People who have received the patch and try to open an Open XML file within Office XP or 2003 will get a pop-up window informing them that they need to get a 2007 Office Compatibility Pack, which is a free 27MB download. With the Compatibility Pack installed, Office XP and 2003 users will be able to open, edit, and save to the new XML file format.
WORD 2007
Microsoft Word 2007 is definitely loaded with new features and since it is the more often used program in the Office suite, there is bound to be a lot of complaining from avid Office users about the learning curve involved in the new program. Of course the new ribbon toolbar is the biggest challenge to over come. (I don't want to sound like I'm portraying the ribbon as a bad thing, because it really isn't. I've become pretty well accustomed to the ribbon and I have to say that I personally like it better than the traditional drop-down menus.) Some features have moved around in the sense that they are not in the same "category" as previous versions. For example, I've heard a lot of talk on the Internet about how in Office 2007 the drop-cap feature is under the "insert" tab and in previous versions it was under the "format" menu.
The Live Preview feature mentioned earlier in this review is a really nice addition to Word because you don't have to keep going back to change a setting if you didn't like it the first time. Other neat features include blogging capability and a nicely improved mail merge wizard. Thanks to Microsoft, all of Word's unique document tools are nicely organized in the ribbon, which makes them very easily accessible and easily discovered. (Since using Word 2007, I've discovered tons of features that I never knew Word could do thanks to the ribbon.)
POWERPOINT 2007
The best thing about the new PowerPoint 2007 is that it really tries to help users create the best looking PowerPoint presentation regardless if they are total experts or first-timers. The helpfulness of the new PowerPoint is perhaps one of the most friendliest programs that we've ever seen. PowerPoint 2007 takes full advantage of Office 2007's ribbon menu and new design features and tools.
The best feature added to PowerPoint 2007 is the massive variety of professionally designed slide themes that are very stylish and will make any presentations stand out and shine. The themes are completely user editable as well, so you can start with one of the designed themes and modify the colors and graphics to suit your liking and make your presentation unique. Also, because themes are available in both Word and Excel, you can use the same theme for your PowerPoint presentation as well to make all your documents match.
PowerPoint comes with new themes that look very professional; they are also fully customizable.
Tables are now much easier to use and import data from Excel. You can format tables with ease and make them look really fancy. PowerPoint also has a new feature called SmartArt, which is a drawing tool for making graphs to show data relationships. PowerPoint does need a little work though, such as the multimedia features. The importing of adding video, audio, and animation are still pretty basic. Also, slide transitions are still the same ones from Office 2000 and they are in desperate need to updating. Exporting presentations to the Internet still needs work; Web presentations do not display correctly in non-Internet Explorer Web browsers. Besides that, PowerPoint 2007 is by far the biggest update in its history and PowerPoint users will be happy about it.
EXCEL 2007
One of the biggest complaints from users of Excel in the past was the harsh restrictions on rows and columns. Excel users have been stuck with the same limits on spreadsheet size: 65,536 rows and 256 columns. Excel 2007 skyrockets way past these limits to 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns. This is big enough to allow people to build very large databases. Excel also includes many performance upgrades, such as support for dual-core processors and the ability to handle more complex formulas.
Another improvement that will have the number crunchers rejoicing is the improved look of all the data charts and graphs. They are all 3D and have a very professional look to them to set them apart from previous versions. However, Excel has not added any new graph or chart types, which will continue to make some Excel users unhappy. The new SmartArt feature allows you to draw professional looking data graphs, charts, and tables to show relationship among sets of data.
Excel's new SmartArt wizard allows you to create organizational charts and graphs to display and present relationships among sets of data.
Microsoft has updated a feature called conditional formatting, which allows you to specify data values or variables that will format those cells differently than the rest. It may sound new to some users, but that's just because it was a hidden and very complex tool in previous Excel versions. One thing that we really liked is the new formula autocomplete feature, which will suggest formulas as you type so you don't have to waste time remembering the exact formula.
OUTLOOK 2007
One thing different about Outlook 2007 is that it didn't get a complete interface makeover in this suite like every other program did. In the standard mailbox view, it looks just like Outlook 2003 did (meaning...no ribbon, just the traditional drop-down menus). The ribbon does appear, however, when you are composing a new e-mail message (this is because it actually opens a form of Word to write e-mails).
When you first run Outlook 2007, you are prompted to install Windows Desktop Search, which is just a small search box that gets added to the top of the Outlook window. So after you download the 5MB Windows Desktop Search and install it, Outlook runs very nicely. As with Outlook 2003, we still really like the mail interface with the reading pane on the right side of the screen (You can customize its location, but that's the default.). Also in Outlook 2007, you can now preview text, images, and other files in attachments in the preview pane before you open them.
In conclusion, Office 2007 is definitely a must-have for users who currently use any of the Office suite on a regular basis. You don't necessarily have to get the whole suite, you can buy only the programs you want if you wish. The new ribbon menu at the top really makes this version of Office stand out, in a very good way. Microsoft has also packed in a bunch of new features that will allow you to make documents that are unique and professional. Office 2007 works on any computer running Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista.
Pricing for Office 2007 Suites-
