Office 2007 - A Mixed Bag
Every year or two, Microsoft releases a new version of their Office suite. Office 2007 has been around for a while now, and made it's sometimes controversial presence felt.
New look, new file format, same old annoyances
There are two really obvious differences with Office 2007 that stand out. Firstly, the user interface is different, with the familiar menus and toolbars gone in favour of the new 'ribbon'. Well - mostly gone. Outlook and Publisher continue to use the old style menus and toolbars, while the rest of the suite uses the new style layout.
The ribbon takes a bit of getting used to and it uses quite a lot of space on screen. For most tasks it is actually quicker once you get used to it, but for some it is irritatingly more cumbersome requiring more mouse movement and clicks to get the same job done. The giant ugly office button in the top left corner makes opening your most recent files or changing preferences quite unintuitive at first.
The second notable change happens when you go to save a file. Office 2007 introduces the new controversial OOXML file format, which is backwardly incompatible with older versions of Office without a free plugin download from Microsoft. Thankfully you can change the default file format to the older type so that you don't end up with irate Word and Excel users who can't open your email attachments, because they haven't got around to installing the update to allow the new format to open.
You'd expect great new things with Office 2007, but in some areas it shows a great lack of innovation. A relatively straightforward task I thought, was to create a powerpoint show with an embedded audio file to email to a friend. It turns out Powerpoint even in this day and age, only allows embedded .WAV files! Even Microsoft's own .wma format can't be embedded. In the end I found a third party work around so that I could embed MP3 files by tricking Powerpoint into thinking they were .WAV files.
Great for Students
On the plus side, I found a feature that should send every student rushing out to get hold of a copy of Word at least. There is a referencing feature that turns the rather unexciting task of providing citations in academic documents into something that's almost fun. You enter the details of the source, choose the style of citation you want, and Word does the rest for you. This is a must have for anyone who has to write essays or research papers.
There is also a free download now that allows you to save to pdf files, however Corel Office has allowed that for years, and Open Office for a while as well, not to mention free pdf printers that let you print anything to pdf, so this really isn't a killer feature.
Database Powerhouse
One big plus with Office, but one that won't affect most people, is it's ability for Access to interact with SQL Server. If you use databases extensively, particularly if you need to share access to data on a network, then Microsoft Access combined with SQL Server 2005 is a fantastic combination. SQL Server 2005 Express is free, so you can start of small and pay up as your business grows. The down side is Microsoft makes the ability to create an Access database project which links to an SQL Server database rather counter-intuitive. Presumably they assume that only geeks build real databases.
The cheapest way to purchase Office for individuals might appear to be bundled with a new computer, but buyers should beware, as Microsoft no longer supplies installation CDs, and the software will come preinstalled on your PC, with installation CDs costing extra should you require them. If your hard drive dies, then you're out of luck. In any case, even with a CD you're not legally entitled to install a bundled version on another PC if you replace the first PC.
To buy or not to buy?
Overall impression? If you're purchasing a new PC, and have Office 2000 or older, then Office 2007 has some nice new features, but if you're already running Office XP or Office 2003, it's probably not worth the cost of an upgrade, unless you need database functionality (in Office Professional or above).