Microsoft Office system 2007 is finally here. Because I am in the business of keeping up with technology, I will replace my installation of Office 2003 with it as soon as the mailman drops the package at my doorstep. In fact, I have already installed the trial version and I play around with it whenever I get a chance. After an initial jolt of disbelief, I am beginning to like it.
Whether you will like the new Office or not will depend on your familiarity with earlier versions of Office. If you are the kind of user who struggles with inserting headers and footers in a Microsoft Word document, you will love the new look of Office 2007. If you are a casual user, that is to say, you use Word to write run-of-the-mill business letters, or use Excel for not-too-complex calculations, the new look will irritate you a bit. But if you are a power user, such as an author or a financial analyst (or you are a geek who will address Office 2007 as Office 2k7), my guess is that you will mutter choice four-letter words under your breath, at least for the first few days. Allow me to elaborate.
I have used Microsoft Office since version 4.2 on Windows 3.1. As far as I can recall, the menu of every Office application has always begun with the menu items File and Edit. I wouldn’t say it is the most logical arrangement of menu items ever devised, but at the very least, it is the most familiar one. Over the years, I have written many applications in which I have had to include File and Edit menus at the insistence of my clients simply because they felt comfortable with that arrangement (or lost without it!). Imagine my astonishment when I opened Word 2007 only to find that the entire menu bar was missing! In its place were a set of completely unfamiliar tabs and an odd looking collection of randomly sprinkled icons. For once, I was lost. I wanted to make sure I had downloaded Microsoft Office 2007 and not some open source Office suite, but the Help menu was missing as well!
It took me a while to get used to the new interface. After an occasional curse and a fair amount of determined poking around, I am quite comfortable with Office 2007 now. In fact, I have begun to like it. Its navigation system is much more logical than the File, Edit business. The menu has been replaced with a "Ribbon". The ribbon houses a set of tabs and each tab has a bunch of related command items (ribbon items?) on it. Anyone using Office 2007 for the first time will find it very easy to learn and intuitive to use.
Seasoned Office users, however, will find the new interface to be a nuisance. Power users, in particular, will have to forget all the command placements on menus that have become a second nature to them after all these years and learn new mnemonics and command placements. Fortunately, most keyboard shortcuts seem to work as they used to — while I could not find the print command at first, Ctrl+P worked just fine.
Interface is not the only aspect that power users will have to worry about. Office 2007 deprecates quite a few features from Office 2003 that Microsoft felt were not used much. These changes will not affect the run-of-the-mill users, but power users who use obscure features to do obscure things with, say, Excel, may end up pulling their hair out. If you happen to be one of them, you would do well to check the deprecated features before upgrading to Office 2007.
At a different level though, everyone will have to worry about adopting Office 2007 quickly. The familiar .doc, .xls, .ppt extensions are now defunct. They have been replaced by new extensions .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx as a result of Office 2007 changing over from binary storage formats to open XML storage formats. What’s more, if your Word document has a macro, it will be saved as .docm instead of .docx. Excel has corresponding .xlsx and .xlsm formats as well.
If someone sends you an Office 2003 document, you will be able to open it with Office 2007, but owners of earlier Office versions won’t be able to open documents created in Office 2007’s new formats. If you upgrade to Office 2007, you will have to save your documents in Office 2003 compatible binary formats before sending them to others. If you don’t, your recipient’s Office 2003 will prompt them to download a "compatibility pack" to be able to open documents in the new format. I suspect, most users will stick to saving their files in the old binary format instead of making their recipients install the compatibility pack.
And yet, Office 2007 is a fantastic new application suite. Each of its applications has numerous new and improved features, which even the disgruntled power users will come to appreciate over time. One outstanding new feature is improved integration with SharePoint services. Setting up collaborative team sites is easier than ever, as is publishing documents to those sites from Office 2007. Keep in mind, however, that setting up team sites with SharePoint needs considerable IT expertise; it is not something you can do simply by looking at on-line help.
That brings me to the 149 dollar question (or 349 dollar, depending on the edition). Should you upgrade now or should you wait till the dust settles?
My recommendation is that if you are happy with the features of Office 2003, there is no pressing reason to upgrade right away. The new features are terrific, but the question is whether you really need them. Frankly, I don’t think most small businesses do. Therefore, I am not recommending an immediate upgrade to any of my smaller clients. Yes, sooner or later everyone will have to upgrade, but why upgrade now if you don’t need the new features?
After all, most people I deal with would be perfectly content even with the feature set of good old Office 4.2 for Windows 3.1!
