The Beta for Office 2007 is now over.\u00a0 It is expected to RTM very soon with it probably hitting the shelves around the same time as Windows Vista.\u00a0 What can you expect?<\/p>\n
The user interface is much<\/em>\u00a0different.\u00a0 Menus are a thing of the past.\u00a0 Instead you have a series of … panels?\u00a0 Each panel (?) has a display of icons for doing various functions.\u00a0 Anyone who is really familiar with MS Word right now will hate the the new version.\u00a0 Every thing is different.\u00a0 For example, the styles selection menu is horrible to use.\u00a0 But, I felt the exact same way with Windows XP when it came along.\u00a0 Most people who\u00a0knew their way around Windows hate the new style interface.\u00a0 Everythign was moved to make it easier for users to navigate.\u00a0 And it worked.\u00a0 My eperience was that users loved Windows Fisher Price while administrators all swtiched to the classic theme and classic control panel.\u00a0 I do think the new interface in Office 2007 works really well in Exchange 2007.\u00a0 I’m not sold either way on Outlook 2007 yet.\u00a0 I know the beta prompted you to download a desktop search engine that would cripple any computer not worthy of launching rockets into space.<\/p>\n What else to look out for?\u00a0 The mass deployment method is changed slightly.\u00a0 I’ve documented<\/a> how to do it while at my last job.\u00a0 The document discusses how to deploy it with SCCM 2007 but the same method applies for Group\u00a0Policy or SMS 2003 deployments.\u00a0 <\/p>\n The default is that Office 2007 will save using the new XML based formats.\u00a0 Just when you thought that version incompatibilities, e.g. Office 95 vs Office 97 were over.\u00a0 Now, Word will try to save a document as a .DOCX file.\u00a0 You can change this to use Office 2003 formatting, i.e. .DOC but you do lose some of the new fancy formatting.\u00a0 I recommend you do this until Office 2007 becomes the norm with your business partners or clients.\u00a0 It’s possible to do it in each product but I expect an ADM template will offer you the ability to do it centrally from a GPO.<\/p>\n The ability to save a document as a PDF right out of the box has been removed.\u00a0 Adobe had some concerns about this functionality which is understandable.\u00a0 MS didn’t fight it much.\u00a0 However, MS have made a free add-on<\/a> available to allow you to save as PDF or XPS from Office 2007.<\/p>\n Office 2007 is Microsoft’s cash cow.\u00a0 But you know, it’s not really that exciting for most people.\u00a0 Companies are generally slow to go to a newer version out of compatibility concerns.\u00a0 Lots of organisations are slow to move from Office 97.\u00a0 Lots are still on Office 2000.\u00a0 They really don’t see the need to change.\u00a0 Microsoft has radically redesigned Office with this release.\u00a0 Part of their effort was to introduce Office as a brand that includes a range of server products including the anticipated Sharepoint Portal 2007, Lice Communications, Project Server and of course, Exchange 2007 which will be a major upgrade on functionality and design.\u00a0 With this entire brand, MS aims to get corporates to buy into this new Office release like they have never done before.<\/p>\n I can understand the advantages and the pitch, but I don’t see it working.\u00a0 The message is not getting across clearly enough or at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Beta for Office 2007 is now over.\u00a0 It is expected to RTM very soon with it probably hitting the shelves around the same time as Windows Vista.\u00a0 What can you expect? The user interface is much\u00a0different.\u00a0 Menus are a thing of the past.\u00a0 Instead you have a series of … panels?\u00a0 Each panel (?) … Continue reading “Office 2007 Beta Ends”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}