Welcome to the second issue of IT Briefing notes
from appiChar. Following the success of our
launch issue discussing the benefits, and
otherwise, of Windows Vista (now available
online at
http://www.appichar.co.uk/it-briefing.htm),
we are pleased to bring you our next edition on
Microsoft’s latest version of its Office suite,
Microsoft Office 2007. As before, this briefing
will concentrate on giving you the answers you
really need, such as why you might want to
upgrade and what problems you might experience,
in a concise format that is easy to follow. We
hope you find these notes useful and please feel
free to forward them on to anyone you think may
be interested. And if you have any questions or
would like to leave us some feedback we’d love
to hear from you – just email us at:
feedback@appichar.co.uk.
What is Office 2007?
Office 2007 is the latest iteration of
Microsoft’s suite of office applications, such
as Word, Excel and Outlook. As before, it ships
in a bewildering array of editions including
Office Standard, Office Small Business, Office
Professional, Office Enterprise and Office
Ultimate. Each of these editions contain
different application sets, from just Word,
Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook in Office
Standard, through to Word, Excel, PowerPoint,
Access, Publisher, Outlook with Business Contact
Manager, OneNote, InfoPath and Groove in Office
Ultimate. For the most part, though, you will
be using Office Professional, which contains
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher and
Outlook, so this is the edition I will refer to
here.
What benefits does Office 2007 offer?
Microsoft have been stung by arguably justified
criticism of their continual updating of the
Office suite of applications, which they tried
to answer with their “Dinosaur” series of
adverts over the past couple of years. These
made the point that newer versions of the
software contain many more useful features and
so make upgrading worthwhile in terms of
productivity. Whilst this message has merit
(certainly Office 2003 is a much more capable
suite than Office 97), actually finding those
features amongst the menus and buttons had
become a challenge in itself.
To
deal with this, Microsoft decided to
sweep
away the menu-based interface and introduced the
concept of the Ribbon (below). Instead of
hiding useful features such as Styles or Find &
Replace away in the Format and Edit menus, as in
previous versions, Word 2007 makes them
immediately available on the Ribbon, the theory
being that if you can see it you’re more likely
to use it. Other
tabs on the Ribbon display other options within
the context of that tab (tables and pictures
under Insert, or spelling and thesaurus under
Review, for example). In addition, new tabs
appear depending on what you do. For instance,
if you create a table, two new tabs will appear
containing tools for changing the design and the
layout of the table.
The
Ribbon is present in all of the Office products
with the exception of Outlook 2007. Outlook is
the product which seems to have changed the
least in this upgrade, although it certainly
appears to be even more useful than Outlook
2003, itself a giant leap forward from previous
versions. The most obvious difference here is
that Outlook 2007 adds a “To Do” pane on to the
main views, displaying upcoming appointments and
tasks. This can be very useful in presenting a
quick overview of your day when you are in your
Inbox, but it does use up a lot of your screen.
A widescreen monitor might therefore come in
very useful if you intend using this view!
Are
there any downsides to Office 2007?
The Office 2007 suite of applications looks
very different to anything that has gone before,
and will almost certainly confuse those who are
used to working with the more advanced features
in earlier versions. Even those who just use
the applications for simple documents and
spreadsheets may well require training to find
their way around the Ribbon, as it’s not always
obvious at first where to find the features you
are looking for. Having said that, once people
are comfortable with the new interface, it may
well lead to the productivity gains that
Microsoft claim.
One
other point to be aware of is that Office 2007
uses a new file format by default, based on the
industry standard XML. Called .docx, .xlsx,
etc. the file formats are much smaller and
easier to recover should they become corrupt.
However, the formats are completely incompatible
with previous versions, meaning that documents
and spreadsheets created in 2007 will not be
readable in 2003 or earlier, unless they are
saved in the old .doc or .xls format. This is
fully customisable and the old file formats can
be set as the default for compatibility
purposes, but out of the box this will not be
the case and should be factored in to any
planned rollout of the software.
Do
I need to worry about Office 2007 now?
Inevitably Office 2007 will start to make
inroads into the work environment over the next
few months. Any new full Office licences you
buy will be for the 2007 version, although you
will still be licenced for the equivalent
earlier versions and can therefore continue to
install those. However, whilst we would not
recommend upgrading immediately, it is probably
sensible to prepare yourself and your staff by
perhaps looking at training or conversion
courses, and maybe installing a copy in your
organisation to familiarise yourself before a
rollout.
James
White, Service Delivery Manager, appiChar Ltd
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further information on the topic covered here,
or if you require IT support or consultancy
services, please contact us on 0845 456 3970,
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