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Why "Upgrade" To Office 2007
walterbyrd writes "IMO: Office-2007 is a contender for the least useful upgrade in the history of computing. It's expensive, has a steep learning curve, and it's default format is even less compatible with anything else. Stan Beer discusses the "upgrade" in his article: Question: why do I need to upgrade to Office 2007?."
The only feature I have heard of that makes me want to upgrade is the ability to have more than 65,536 rows in excel. Of course, if you have that many rows of data, maybe you should be converting the data into a real database format and working with the data that way.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
It supports saving/loading backwards compatible formats too...
It also had a surprisingly low learning curve for me, despite the vastly more accessible UI it seems to have than 2003 with its menu jungles.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Site's down -- try mirrordot -- http://www.mirrordot.com/stories/cf8757aa5cc8bc162 ddb78c82313ed5f/index.html
The ability to open large datasets in Excel, instead of having to use vim to figure out what the structure is. I'll be pleasantly surprised if the rest of the features aren't a step backwards, but it'll still be worth it the next time I have to figure out why SAS is choking on some huge text file.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
It's not entirely true that the new formats will force you to upgrade. There is the Office Compatibility Pack which allows Office 2003 + XP to open and save OpenXML formats as well as convert between them.8 6761033.aspx
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/HA1016
Well, we researched the product, and while Office 2007 isn't a bad thing, its way too damn expensive. When we are looking to upgrade 125+ licenses, its going to cost us way more than any of us can justify, no matter how cool the options are. We are currently running Office 2000 and our next "upgrade" is, Open Office.
2) Want to see how a change will affect your document without changing it? Just put your mouse over a document skin or formatting and the document will temporarly "apply" the changes for you. The formatting will reverse to normal when your mouse is out of the area.
3)The new contextual spelling checker.
4)Building Blocks. Great time saver That's only from the op of my head, but of course if you are a average slashdotter MS could add *real gold* toolbars and you won't like it, so...
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Compatibility Pack for 2007 File Formats.
Also see Word Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer 2003, Visio 2002 Viewer, Word 97/2000 Converter for Word 6, etc.
Disclaimer: This is not an endorsement of closed formats; rather, an alternative for staying software version/vendor-independent.
I've been showing Office 2007 off for quite some time now to my clients, people I work with at the local university, and friends of mine.
Not once has their response been "where is the file menu?" or "where are my icons?" Each time they've seen the ribbon and thought "Oh, that is smart!" They see how easy it is to change margins or add a Header/Footer and immediately want to know when they can buy it.
Will businesses think it's worth $400 per desk? If it saves that employee about an hour of time every month, because they can do tasks faster now, then it pays for itself quite quickly.
That's not mentioning how much *better* things look when created in Office 2007 using their new features. Have you seen the new shape rendering tools? Professional looking slides can be created in PowerPoint without the aide of the graphic design guys. Same goes for charts.
Employees will make better use of styles in Word, conditional formatting in Excel, all because the features are easier to find now.
People who boo-hoo Microsoft really need to sit down in front of Office 2007 for ten minutes and just check out its new features. Throw out your old ideas of menus and icons and just give it a try before you bash it.
-David
In the mac world, word 6 actually had fewer features and was harder to use than mac word 5. the difference was that it was identical to the PC product. that is, they advanced the PC product to have features that were already in the mac product, and then regressesed and reskinned the mac product ot make it identical. I remember my extreme rage, shared by many, at this and vowen not to upgrade. Then after a month or so I got a critical contract application form in word 6. I could not read it in word 5 and had to buy word 6. so yes to your question.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I love Office 2007, and think it's one of the greatest interfaces I've seen in the last decade.
But since I work at Microsoft, I *would* think that, wouldn't I? So here's a concrete example. I think this rocks. You can make up your own mind.
I often build PowerPoint slide decks (I will refrain from making excuses for this; I have my reasons). I rough out a group of slides, then tweak them until they look good. In PowerPoint 2003, the way that worked was I would save the slides, then apply different styles until I found one I liked. On a large slide deck, each of these changes might take a minute or more.
In PowerPoint 2007, styles are visually applied when you hover. This is great, because it only applies to the slides you can see, which is a lot faster. So instead of applying two dozen different styles at a minute or more each, I hover over the style I'm considering and see whether it looks good. Once I see one I like, I click and apply it. The time drops massively from a 45 minute exercise to a 90 second experiment.
It doesn't take a lot of little things like this to start adding up. Office 2007 is full of them. Everything I do in Office is easier and faster and more intuitive. If you work with Office frequently, it's fantastic. If you use Office for an hour a month, and you don't really do much with it... well, you're probably not going to get anything really noticeable out of the upgrade.
Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?