Office 2007 – Review

You’ll either love it or hate it!

One of the things we really loved is the new feature in Outlook – it lets you look simultaneously at all the calendars you have to check. It saves heaps of time!

You’ll love it if you have to spend ages wading through masses of menu choices to find the function you want. Office 2007 has done away with the menus and replaced them with a ‘ribbon’. The ribbon displays only task-sensitive commands for you to choose from. This means that if you’re formatting a table – all the relevant formatting choices are in front of you, on the ribbon, whilst you perform the tasks.

You’ll hate it if you’re a Power User who has put a lot of effort into customising the menus and writing macros. Gone is virtually all customisation! There is a Quick Access Toolbar (QAT), where you can add your customised short-cuts.

The lack of customisation has caused many Power Users to uninstall Office 2007 and revert to 2003. However, if customisation is an issue, there is already a third-party solution to the problem; RibbonCustomizer Professional and there are plenty of discussion groups indicating that other solutions may be in the pipe-line.

Another complaint from users is that sometimes the relatively short number of steps involved to complete a certain action has been replaced, in 2007, by a more complicated route. For example: to turn off the ‘Automatic bulleted lists’ in 2003 there were 4 steps. Tools > AutoCorrect Options> AutoFormat As You Type > uncheck the box. In 2007 this has been replaced by: Click on the ‘Microsoft bubble’ (top left) > Word Options > Proofing > AutoCorrect > AutoFormat As You Type > uncheck the box. However, this is the type of customisation that you are likely to carry-out only once.

Scientists should note that there are problems with formatting equations in Word 2007; the Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) is incompatible with the ‘docx’ file format. In 2007, equations are formatted with Microsoft’s own MathML (OMML). The problems persist even when the file is converted to a lower version of Word.

To summarise, there are, inevitably, both gains and losses in upgrading. However, If you are considering taking this step, and would like to know more, the reviews linked below are comprehensive and well-balanced. They should help you decide.

The PC Magazine review of 11^th June 2006 (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2052256,00.asp)

Computer World’s Final Review: The Lowdown on Office 2007

(http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9003994)