Office 2003 vs 2007

OspreyO · 24 Feb 2008 at 18:40

For anyone thats done it. Any problems in moving from Office 2003 to 2007. Any pitfalls to look out for. I have both installed at the moment, and wondering do I really need to keep 2003. Any backward compatiblity issues for files. If I convert my files to 2007 and then need to use them on Office 2003 etc.

Sone · 24 Feb 2008 at 18:54

for me office 2007 is considerably more stable than 2003. Also it gives warnings of things that can cause problems in 2003 and strangely enough these are where it would normally crash.

Teki187 · 24 Feb 2008 at 19:14

My girlfriend loves office 2007. She swears the updates are amazing.

modo77 · 24 Feb 2008 at 19:21

Yeah its has the biggest improvement on this version compared to the others, takes a bit to get used to it though.
You can save the files in older formats if you need to, so you wont have compatibility problems.

Caged · 24 Feb 2008 at 19:43

Office 2007 is excellent, the built in styles are actually worth using, and the Ribbon is fantastic. No issues saving in the old format either.

Burnsy2023 · 24 Feb 2008 at 20:01

Caged said:
Office 2007 is excellent, the built in styles are actually worth using, and the Ribbon is fantastic. No issues saving in the old format either.

Agreed. I would never use any other office suite if I had the option.

Burnsy

Greenlizard0 · 24 Feb 2008 at 20:40

I wish that Opera would hurry up and integrate office 2007 settings into it (file formats etc.).

OspreyO · 24 Feb 2008 at 22:27

Thx. I'll get rid of 03 on the lappie. I still have a other machine with 03 for VBA stuff.

Draeger · 24 Feb 2008 at 22:35

Another vote here for Office 2007.

Just watch out for the backward compatibility issues between .doc and the new .docx formats. Easily overcome by tweaking the "Save As" options within MS Office 2007 though.

MarcLister · 25 Feb 2008 at 00:59

Burnsy2023 said:
Agreed. I would never use any other office suite if I had the option.

Burnsy

What he said. Never used Office 2003 but I'm happy with Office 2007 so it doesn't matter to me what Office 2003 was like.

1337z0r · 25 Feb 2008 at 01:16

Draeger said:
Another vote here for Office 2007.

Just watch out for the backward compatibility issues between .doc and the new .docx formats. Easily overcome by tweaking the "Save As" options within MS Office 2007 though.

The amount of times I saved files as .docx and then tryed to open them up on a machine with office 2003

.

snowdog · 25 Feb 2008 at 01:23

I personally prefer office 2000.
Only updated coz It wen't fubar and asked for the office 2000 cd every time while to install some auto correction lists or whatever, I lost that cd ages ago.
So I installed 2007.

Archaius · 25 Feb 2008 at 01:27

I made the jump from Office 2003 to 2007 recently. It takes a bit of time to get used to the new ribbon. The layout of the menus hasn't changed for a long while so I had memorized where everything was basically. The ribbon changes a bit of that but no real complaints from me thus far.

MarcLister · 25 Feb 2008 at 01:28

snowdog said:
I personally prefer office 2000.
Only updated coz It wen't fubar and asked for the office 2000 cd every time while to install some auto correction lists or whatever, I lost that cd ages ago.
So I installed 2007.

I went from Office 2000 to Office 2007. As Office XP and 2003 came out I either couldn't afford them or didn't think they offered me much new over Office 2000. But when Office 2007 came out I knew it was time for me to upgrade, that and the student deal for £40 made it a must.

TheVoice · 25 Feb 2008 at 07:54

1337z0r said:
The amount of times I saved files as .docx and then tryed to open them up on a machine with office 2003 .

It shouldn't matter; there's an add-on for previous versions of Office that allows them to open and edit Office 2007 files.

Cosimo · 25 Feb 2008 at 09:05

Office 2007 is a superb product, very stable, the best one so far. I would hate going back to using a previous version.

afraser2k · 25 Feb 2008 at 09:28

You'll need to watch for some of the files that Outlook 2007 blocks that 2003 doesn't. I was affected as it blocked my works security certificate for the IMAP server (.der file) and apparently it's a pain to sort out.

Also, hasn't the 2007 file format changed so it's not backwards-compatible with previous versions unless you specify Save As 2003?

SiHH · 25 Feb 2008 at 09:37

afraser2k said:
You'll need to watch for some of the files that Outlook 2007 blocks that 2003 doesn't. I was affected as it blocked my works security certificate for the IMAP server (.der file) and apparently it's a pain to sort out.

Not really if its like previous versions of Outlook, its just a quick reg hack to say which files you want Outlook to not block although perhaps it would be nice to have a gui for users to be able to specify easily the file types they want unblocked.

Cosimo · 25 Feb 2008 at 09:53

afraser2k said:
Also, hasn't the 2007 file format changed so it's not backwards-compatible with previous versions unless you specify Save As 2003?

Yes, you have to save as “word97 –word 2003 document’.

There is also a Microsoft Office compatibility pack, http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...70-3AE9-4AEE-8F43-C6BB74CD1466&displaylang=en , which allows previous Office versions to Open, edit, and save documents, workbooks, and presentations in the file formats new to Office 2007.

bad_ass_neil · 25 Feb 2008 at 11:54

only had one issue with some fancy macros in excel that finance use that did not like 2007 but other than that the users love it.