Microsoft Office 2007 Beta Review
05.24.06 - 08:58pm
Normally I could care less about productivity tools, let alone Microsoft Office. Previously, every new edition contained a few tweaks, a slightly different interface, and a hefty price tag. Unlike the previous Office products though, this beta copy was free and it looked good, maybe even great. The last Office product I had used was Office XP and when you compare Office XP to Office 2007, the programs have very few similarities. The only relation they have is that they are productivity suites, otherwise 2007 is the better looking, faster, cooler version of Office.
Word 2007
I had originally signed up for the Microsoft beta program so that I could review Vista and see how it responds to overclocking, but this program landed in my lap and I couldn’t be more happy. From the time I started installing Office to now I have been both impressed and surprised with what Microsoft has managed to do with Office. When I initially opened Word for the first time I had this odd feeling that I was using OS X. I am just not used to Windows having such a clean interface or such an attractive layout.
Since the last Word I had used was XP, I had a little trouble navigating through the menus. Microsoft did a good thing in not changing any of the symbols for the buttons, if you have used any Office then at least the buttons will look familiar. The navigation menu is a new concept which reminds me of tabbed browsing in Firefox. At the top of the page you have tabs with Home, Insert, and other topics and when you click the tab, the window below the tab bar changes, showing all the relevant buttons and controls. Below I have shown a picture with each tab clicked and the window that appears. This picture isn’t what the menu will look like, I have compiled all the submenus so you can see what is available.
After spending an hour or so using Office to write this article the navigation began to grow on me and I must say it is a very smart way to keep the clean lines that make up Word 2007. There are no dropdown menus, no taskbars, and everything has a light blue hue making it very pleasing to the eye. Everything has a nice label next to it so no longer do you have to hover your mouse over a button to figure what it does. Buttons are also organized in each tab by specific tasks such as Font, Themes, Styles, and Footnotes.
Features
I never really explored Word before, but then again I never wrote about it. From the moment I opened up Word I started clicking on everything, dragging stuff around, and pressing buttons. The right-click has so many features that it alone would be worth a book. If you select some words with the mouse or keyboard and then right click on the selected text both the traditional menu and a new font editing menu will pop up. With this font menu, you can adjust the style, size, spacing, and color. This can be very nice if you are heavily editing a document with colors and tags. In the traditional menu, you can do your standard cut, copy, and paste but another feature that I noticed was the ability to translate your document into Spanish and French. I translated my test document into Spanish and the translation was exceptional. The thesaurus is rather strong, giving me many options for some common words.
The spellchecking feature can be very unnerving, the sentence that I wrote in these pictures was very misspelled with at least one serious letter mix-up in each word and it managed to guess the correct word for everything. It even recognized AMD and Intel, but it didn’t recognize Opteron or Nvidia or ATi. This is a few steps ahead of the previous dictionaries and spellcheckers which would balk at some of the simplest misspellings.
There are only two menus to be used in this program, the �File� menu which is accessed from the Office symbol in the top left corner, and the �Save� interface right next to the File symbol. Even the File menu features large buttons and fonts making it easy on the eyes and very difficult to click the wrong function. In regards to saving, Word will let you save in a backwards compatible file type, PDF, webpage, or XML amongst many other file types. The fact that Microsoft has made it easy to save Word files as PDF is really good news, it looks like Microsoft listened to what people wanted.
Excel 2007
Excel 2007 looks just like Word 2007 does, buttons and tabs up top, scrolling border around the edges, and the working area in the center. There is no better way to push out a new theme than by using it for everything and that is exactly what Microsoft is doing. I think it would have been very cool if they could have used a light green theme for Excel since Excel tends to have green associated with the icon in Windows. Just like Word, Excel has all the same features with a few extra things tossed in for good measure.
When I was playing with Excel I noticed there was a feature in the right click menu called �Paste Special�. When I selected this, I was able to paste whatever I had in my clipboard as a bitmap file. I think this is an interesting feature but I wish they had selected jpeg as the format instead of bitmap. Either way, cool feature. Unlike previous versions of Excel, the large buttons and easy interface actually make Excel nice to use. in the past I hated using Excel because I had no clue what stuff did, but now everything is properly arranged and labeled. Excel 2007 is a great makeover for Excel, now I don�t cringe when I open it up.
PowerPoint 2007
Once again the screen looked very similar. Every time I see this new theme though I don’t get angry, it looks that good. PowerPoint is a program that I am not very familiar with so I might mention some features that are available in previous editions, bear with me. PowerPoint has the usual tabbed menu with the Office symbol in the corner, so swapping between programs will not hamper the user. The traditional setup with the work area in the center and the outline on the sidebar is still there though which is a plus. With the default original slide up, I noticed that for each item there is a green orb that you can adjust the angle and size of the item which I liked. That green orb makes twisting words around and making original slides easy work.
At the very bottom of the page are the controls to initiate a slideshow or change how you are viewing the slides. It took me a few seconds to figure out where those buttons were since they normally are placed towards the leftside of the screen. Hiding in all the tabs are some really cool features, adding special features to your slides should be much easier with the new interface, here these tabs really shine. One thing I did find was that you can alter the resolution that your slideshow is saved in. I assume this means that you can try to prevent pixilated slides by bumping up the resolution. I suppose this would also work backwards by cutting down the resolution to save disk space. I find that to be a pretty cool feature, not sure if it is useful though. You can also record a narration for each individual slide, making it possible to record an entire demonstration or lecture in one file.
Another thing I noticed were the Themes for slides. By simply mousing over the various themes you can apply them to your slide. From the default slide to this theme all I did was mouse over and Office made it look pretty cool. I was very impressed, perhaps the few slideshows I make will no longer suck.
Outlook 2007
I have never liked Outlook, this program has always been loaded with exploits and Thunderbird has always been there for me. Upon opening up Outlook, the same light blue color persisted however the tab menu was gone. The traditional Windows File, Edit, and View were there instead with their familiar menus. To be honest, the tab menus have grown on me and I was slightly disappointed with the lack of these menus in Outlook. There isn’t much to say about Outlook, I didn’t enable any of my email accounts for fear of losing an email or screwing up Thunderbird, but Outlook still looked very clean. Perhaps when I buy the MacBook I’ll install Office 2007 on it and start using Outlook.
Conclusion
If Office 2007 is a hint to the direction that Microsoft is taking, the future looks great. Vista and Office combined will be a killer combination with sleek programs, great security, and features galore. It looks like Microsoft has taken a page out of Apples book and has done well with it. Now if only the price for Office could drop from the stratospheric prices they charge. I am glad I had a chance to Beta test this software suite, there were so many things to check out and I only covered a few of them. Look for some more cool things coming from Microsoft in the near future. If half of what they are releasing go mainstream, your desktop could change greatly.
Ha, I doubt Office 2007 will be released as a Mac version for _quite_ some time. However, if they released this as a Universal Binary within a couple of months of the Windows release, I will be VERY impressed and might actually purchase the educational version of it. I must say it looks pretty darn spiffy.
Wow, thanks. I needed some strong reasons on why to download it and install it. Now, because of your review its in my download window right now at 48%! I can’t wait to try it out. Im only 15, lol, but I find this stuff very interesting. Especially things like the vista beta 2, which i also can’t wait for…anyway thank you so much.
im only 14, and im lovin it, sadly since i have a cheepy computer to keep me from hogging the family computer i dont have office, only word :-( . But now my dreams have come true, lol, i get free , legal, office!!! it loof quite flashy, hope my pc can cope with it.
88% whoooo, it sounds to be more user friendly, which i think home users will apreciate, but im not so sure about bussinesses (cant spell)
Office 2007 and Vista are the wave of the future. I know for a fact everyone will embrase these beautiful and functioning programs. Looks are one thing, but since Office also performs great and a few of the new button placements actually help make working easier I have a feeling people will embrace Office 2007. Hope you enjoy it, I sure am but I wish I had it for OS X now.
Hi there,
From a wordsmith. You start your review with, “Normally I could care less about …” I’m from Australia and we would say, “Normally, I couldn’t care less about…” Surely you could NOT care less, not that you COULD care less. No?
Regards…Austin
It took me a while to understand what you are saying, but now that I understand it is rather funny how different english can be across the continents.
What is it the MS doesn’t understand? Have they tried their own products? Do they only give them to people who’ve never used a computer before and say how would you change it? Where are they finding all these 70 plus year olds and people who’ve been locked up their entire lives?
Outlook Issues
1Does not let you open more than one outlook profile simultaneously.
2Often retrieves data from one account into another within the same profile.
3Does not close down reliably so when you attempt to switch between outlook profiles(since it won’t let you open both simultaneously) it opens the same one even if you wait a minute.
4. Using the search function in sent folders or your entire mailbox still returns only the FROM field - not sure why MS people don’t ever think we want to know who it went TO- Is this such a hard thing? Yes you can customize columns after EACH search to get the TO field but I’m pretty sure when I’m seaching MY SENT folder I already know who the e-mail was FROM - what I need to know is who did it go TO.
2 BCM - A GREAT PRODUCT - Completely GIMPED by MS.
All it needs to do is sync the most important contact info - name, address, phone number, e-mail address with contacts in outlook so that it is available via OWA and WM5 - no simple copy tool included - making it completely useless for any remote data work.
3. MS Access - no OLE or wrapper or built in handler for JPGs and other picture formats. Why make a database that can’t natively handle pictures. How can you do a decent catalog, inventory, personnel list etc, if you make it so complicated that you have to use code for pictures? Might as well hire a Oracle programmer if you aren’t going to make a simple database for non-techies.
Excel -
Doesn’t easily remove data/links. Copy and paste a table showing prices on any product - e.g. E6700 processors. Now go ahead and delete the rows or data. The “buy now” link is still there - isn’t it?
Word -
Doesn’t let you easily change spacing between paragraphs and sentences - e.g. this paragraph 1.2 next sentence 1.5 etc. If you want to vary randomly and between lines different when jumping to a new line.
qiuero instalar el windows live beta
i think this isnt enough. it should be installed in previous versions of windows. why only service pack 2 or later????
Considering this is an application created by Microsoft for its future operating system it makes sense for them to make this available to only their most up to date operating system. I hate SP2 for all the processes that it creates however the only option is to install SP2 or to wait till Office 2007 releases.
Will the ribbon be customizable, or is it WYSIWYG?
Well, i think that if you’ve never used office then you are probably going to find it all very intuative, however, if you are a poweruser, then you’ll HATE IT, it’s like learning to ride a unicycle after spending 50 years on a trycycle. I’m hoping that in addition to the ribbon menu, they’ll also alow me to turn on the old fashioned menu. so i can find a few things.
Office 2007 is a brilliant suite. although the layout is initially confusing, when you find everythin you will find it very easy to use. also its very easy to make your documents look highly professional. also integration is very tight when importing graphs etc from excel, you have all the features of excel in word. awesome product, hopefully it will be faster in the final release :)
@rod
I would rather say it’s like learning to ride a trycycle after spending 50 years on a unicycle.
I don’t know will the ‘old fashioned menu’ option be available, but I would definitely appreciate it
I downloaded the home version last evening and spent a day with the program. I have used word excel for nearly twenty years starting on a Mac II in 1988. Powerpoint I use daily. The new interface has some positives. Some aspects of the program are more availibale from the ribbon then with the old menu interface. However, many things are more difficult to do, requiring a click on a ribbon item, which then opens a dialog box, requiring you to then check a box to change the context within the dialog to get to the item that needs to be changed. An example is changing the default scale on a chart used to be a simple double click on the axis opened a dialog with fields for changing the min, max of an axis. This common operation now requires a selcetion of the axis menu at the both of one panel in the ribbon, the menu drops down to allow selection of the horizontal axis or the vertical axis. After you make this selection a dialog opens. Two more steps are required before you can edit the default min and max axis values. This is not progress. In excel I was hoping for real improvment in the professionalism of the default charts. I am very disappointed in that I seem to have gained very littlet o help create great charts. All the effort has been put into creating many ways to add meaningless chart junk in ever more clever ways. Do we really need thousands of options for graded shadng of the plot background. Do we need dozens of variations on 3D effects and shading that are almost always used not to enlighten the data but to hide the fact that the underlying data is sparse and of little meaning. Besides the increase in the size of the dataset to 1 million rows from 65000 and the increase in the number of columns to 16000 from 256, I see little in excel 1007 that is of any benefit to getting the job done.
All I can say is I’m loving the fact that word can do bibliographies and citations. Much awaited.
I don’t like the new layout - MS declared that they listened to people and people wanted to see what they are doing not MS buttons and menus. Now they have a huge “ribbon ” that takes half of my screen on a 14″ wide laptop. I want to see the darn page when I am writing documents in word not MS buttons. I don’t want this single click functionality for stuff I never ever use. You can’t move the darn ribbon, you can’t rearrange it, you can’t change the size. What the f*** are they thinking?
bobosan, you should try using a higher resolution as that is what is causing your problem… and if you can’t, buy a better laptop and stop your whining.
While new functions maybe great, I hope MS can fix the current issues I have with Outlook including:
1. Stability - I have stopped using Outlook and now use Google’s wonderful gmail to collect my mail - and as gmail allows you to send ‘from’ any email account, I can use gmail to both receive and send all my mail… and no crashes! So I will try Office 2007 and see…
2. One of my frustrations with Outlook 2003 was that the bright boys at MS disabled one of their most useful ‘Find’ functions whereby you used to be able to use an email account domain name to find contacts - I always felt this was a critical requirement when looking for contacts - if you know their internet ‘domain name’ but you forget their ‘Display Name’… or if you know the company domain name and you want to find all contacts (or mail from contacts) in that company. An older version of Outlook had this ‘Find’ function, and then it dissapeared some years ago!
So when Outlook becomes stable and brings back a decent ‘Find’ function, I will start using it again… but I will try it!
what is the point of this review? To giggle childishly over a different button layout scheme? Is _that_ the only point to the 2007 upgrade? Is that the only reason why people want to upgrade, because they’re excited by Office’s new *aesthetics*? Are you that superficial?
Where’s the critical discussion of the new features? Of Office’s actual useability and exposure to what it does rather than just how it looks? Is it stable? Fast? Where is the discussion on Office’s iteroperability even with previous its own previous verions?
Why be excited about a colour shift and large buttons when you should be talking about how the software actually *works*?
> All I can say is I’m loving the fact that word can do bibliographies and citations. Much awaited.
bwhaha. you ARE joking, right? It’s taken THIS long to get that figured out?
I’ve been using Office 2007 for a couple of months now, because I figure that sooner or later I’ll be stuck with it for work anyway.
It certainly looks great. Every time somebody sees it on my computer they go woo! cool! what’s that!
The trouble is, it’s all but unusable.
What has gone wrong, as far as I can see, is that the interface has been flattened. When Morse invented the Morse code he chose quick easy codes for common letters — a single dot for ‘e’ — and kept the longer codes for infrequent letters — dash dash dot dash for ‘q’. Microsoft office used to be like that. Stuff I did a lot was (mostly) on short keystrokes. “Find” was -e f. Stuff I didn’t use often was buried deep in the menus, and I could get there if I had to but I usually didn’t.
Microsoft clearly think that’s not democrat enough. “Find” is now -h f d f. Double the keystrokes to do something I have to do a lot. But now with a nice quick -p m I can set the margins — which are set in the template anyway, so like every corporate user in the world I should never have to touch.
Microsoft have made almost all common tasks a lot harder, and made it easy to do the the tasks that should be done once and once only if you’re doing real work, not just playing.
I was excited by the prospect of proper citations, but even there Microsoft have let me down. I have to use one of the very few formats Microsoft have provided. I can’t use the format mandated by my employer. I can’t use the format mandated by my college. So I can’t use citations.
And the user is stuck with it. The ribbon monstrosity (not a visual monstrosity — it looks cool, but a usability monstrosity) — the ribbon monstrosity is dumped on the user whether they like it or not. They can minimise it, and lose the stuff they want, as well as the stuff they don’t, or they can leave it open, which feels like having the contents of all one’s toolboxes scattered over the workshop floor. But what they can’t do is configure it to the actual way they work.
Procrustes would have been delighted.
My experience with Office 2007 is distinctly unfavorable. Excel locks up when working in spreadsheets that ran fine under Office-XP. (And when it locks up and you click “Send Error Report”, that locks-up as well.) The new Excel also doesn’t like spreadsheets with VBA macros. Word doesn’t handle documents with embedded spreadsheet objects (although this may be Excel and not Word’s fault). You cannot use a “Select All” to copy both picture objects and text to the clipboard. It will usually only get the text, as it doesn’t like to copy graphic objects. Outlook’s “Junk” filter works OK, but it disables any links in messages it places in the Junk folder so, in the event it junks a message you need to respond to (like confirming your e-mail address as part of a sign-up procedure), you must move it to the inbox. Also, Outlook always indicates it’s sending more messages than you have in your outbox. For instance you may be sending two messages and it will indicate “Sending 2 of 4″, etc. Any idea where the other two messages are going?
The migrations is on. Microsoft Office 2007 has been rolled out and it does have a great look. However, the Ribbon will not be easy for folks that have hard time dealing with change. There is a cool utility called ToolbarToggle — http://www.toolbartoggle.com that allows you to download the old toolbar on your screen and work with Office 2007 the way you are used to…it helps with the learning curve and productivity.
RandyO, very interesting find! I’m sure that’ll help many individuals ease into Office 2007. Thanks for the comment.
Well, I’m just a poor shmo who bought a new laptop and ended up with Office 2007. Nobody warned me I’d have to relearn Powerpoint from scratch! If I’d known, I’d have bought a Mac. My fingers have years and years of muscle memory that made me a Powerpoint pro. When I try to use Powerpoint 2007, my muscle memory gets the better of me and I open or launch something I didn’t expect. And to do the simple things I could once do with a minimum of keystrokes now takes me forever, it feels like, to poke around and find the new way. I’m going to have to grow a whole new cortex in my brain to get up to speed on Powerpoint 2007. I’ve just downloaded OpenOffice Impress and, clunky as it is, I already feel better. I’m also going to try ToolBarToggle with Word and Excel. (I hope it’s better than “Classic Tools” from Addintools.com, which was unsettlingly amateurish.)
I totally agree with Annoyedby2007 - I have been teaching and using all the Microsoft office products for over 15 years, and building PowerPoint presentations for companies all across the US. It took me over 10 min just to find the ‘Master Slide’ This whole Office Suite is a nightmare, companies who are planning on migrating will have a very big learning curve, and employees are going to hate it! It will now take them more time to perform the tasks they never even needed to think about. Did Microsoft even bother to talk to any acutal business users? or did they leave it up to the imagination of the engineers and programmers, who will never be using it. If one of my clients asks me whether they should switch to 07, I tell them - I wouldn’t do it!