Office 2007?

clv101 · 17 Sep 2009 at 08:56

I use MS Office 2003 a lot, well Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Whilst maybe not a "power user" I'd call myself an advanced user in that my Word documents are typically over 50 pages, have many sections, cross references, customised templates, customised tool bars, my Excel workbooks usually contain VBA...

Now I don't really have any problems with 2003 but I'll be upgraded to Windows 7 next month and with my company I can get a very cheap version of Office 2007. Basically, is it worth it? How is 2007 better than 2003?

Dolph · 17 Sep 2009 at 09:24

2007 is a bit marmite, some of the extra features are quite nice, some of the feature removals are a bit annoying, and the new ribbon interface is a love it or hate it thing (I love it in access but dislike it in Excel)

I'd say it's worth it, but be prepared to take some time to learn your way around the new menu structure.

boxman2000 · 17 Sep 2009 at 09:33

* Formatting is night and day. Much more intuitive with things like bullet points, spacing and other formatting. Saves a lot of time faffing about!
* Excel now longer has no row limits (previously 64,000 rows).
* The new ribbon menu system is actually very good. Took me a little bit of getting used to, especially doing the simple things such as page numbering was a bit of a challenge! Have to admit it does work very well.
* The two new main fonts to replace Arial and Time New Roman (Calibri and Cambria respectively) are much clearer IMO and do look much nicer.
* Save directly as a PDF
* RSS feeds
* Pivot tables much easier to create
* XML formats

I use Excel intensively for work and Word a fair bit as well - it will take a bit of patience to get used to mainly the ribbon bar but it makes things much quicker.

Just Google ‘Office 2007 benefits’ for loads more features.

osc89er · 17 Sep 2009 at 09:40

boxman2000 said:
* Save directly as a PDF

Now, I don't know much about the pros and cons but this one bit I can comment on, to provide a contrasting view.

As an incentive to buy Office 2007, this feature alone should not be a deal breaker as there are several, very good, completely free, open source solutions that already allow you to print any document from any program as a pdf.

boxman2000 · 17 Sep 2009 at 09:45

I understand this but the OP asked the question of benefits of Office 2007 over 2003 - that is a benefit.

As for third party applications for use with PDF generation, I personally use (and still do) PDF Factory Pro which is perfect for my work needs. I know there are several other solutions out there that will do the same for less or for free.

Burnsy2023 · 17 Sep 2009 at 10:00

Microsoft Office 2007 is one of the best products to come out of MS in recent times. Yes it's worth it

Hamish · 17 Sep 2009 at 10:01

Also

* much better looking charting
* ribbon in excel is great, I use excel about 5hours a day and never get annoyed with it, most things can be accessed with two clicks and everything is laid out logically.
* common things e.g. page set up, building forumulas and conditinal formatting are much easier to use.

clv101 · 17 Sep 2009 at 10:22

Thanks for your input... order placed!

philjohn · 17 Sep 2009 at 10:29

osc89er said:
Now, I don't know much about the pros and cons but this one bit I can comment on, to provide a contrasting view.

As an incentive to buy Office 2007, this feature alone should not be a deal breaker as there are several, very good, completely free, open source solutions that already allow you to print any document from any program as a pdf.

yes, but having it integrated directly into word is a much better solution than printing to a virtual printer or similar, for one, you can have the table of contents inserted properly and things like hyperlinks work correctly.

fini · 17 Sep 2009 at 10:31

The one really annoying thing with Excel is that they've squirrelled the autosum button under the formulas tab, which now means it's quicker to just type it in usually then go clicking for the button which REALLY was a lot better being instantly accessible.

osc89er · 17 Sep 2009 at 10:43

boxman2000 said:
I understand this but the OP asked the question of benefits of Office 2007 over 2003 - that is a benefit.

As for third party applications for use with PDF generation, I personally use (and still do) PDF Factory Pro which is perfect for my work needs. I know there are several other solutions out there that will do the same for less or for free.

philjohn said:
yes, but having it integrated directly into word is a much better solution than printing to a virtual printer or similar, for one, you can have the table of contents inserted properly and things like hyperlinks work correctly.

Simply having a pdf function in itself is not a lot of a benefit and in my opinion isn't enough to upgrade for. However, now we all know why the integrated Save As PDF function is better!

boxman2000 · 17 Sep 2009 at 10:44

fini said:
The one really annoying thing with Excel is that they've squirrelled the autosum button under the formulas tab, which now means it's quicker to just type it in usually then go clicking for the button which REALLY was a lot better being instantly accessible.

Quick Access Toolbar?

fini · 17 Sep 2009 at 10:56

Things look so cluttered if you start putting them up there though

philjohn · 17 Sep 2009 at 11:19

osc89er said:
Simply having a pdf function in itself is not a lot of a benefit and in my opinion isn't enough to upgrade for. However, now we all know why the integrated Save As PDF function is better!

perhaps not, but it's a useful feature: you can send someone a document that they can open on everything from an iPhone to a Linux install and ensure that the formatting will be 100% correct and not an approximating (for example if they were opening in OpenOffice).

osc89er · 17 Sep 2009 at 12:30

philjohn said:
perhaps not, but it's a useful feature: you can send someone a document that they can open on everything from an iPhone to a Linux install and ensure that the formatting will be 100% correct and not an approximating (for example if they were opening in OpenOffice).

Well... yes it is useful, I never said it wasn't. But as I said you wouldn't upgrade just so you could save in PDF format and send it to someone else as you could do it without spending any money.

However, like I also said, the added value of having comments and bookmarks and links preserved is worth upgrading for. If it's something you use.

Hamish · 18 Sep 2009 at 10:15

fini said:
The one really annoying thing with Excel is that they've squirrelled the autosum button under the formulas tab, which now means it's quicker to just type it in usually then go clicking for the button which REALLY was a lot better being instantly accessible.

It's on the homepage: far right in the editing section.

Participant · 18 Sep 2009 at 10:21

fini said:
The one really annoying thing with Excel is that they've squirrelled the autosum button under the formulas tab, which now means it's quicker to just type it in usually then go clicking for the button which REALLY was a lot better being instantly accessible.

'Alt =' is the quickest way anyway

.

sturmtruppe · 18 Sep 2009 at 10:45

2007 is much better, and if you can get it cheap i would go for it. Microsoft is starting to add that ribbon toolbar into everything so its worth getting used to it now.

fini · 18 Sep 2009 at 10:54

Hamish said:
It's on the homepage: far right in the editing section.

Oh wow, I have no idea how I missed that for so long. Thanks!

paradigm · 18 Sep 2009 at 11:01

sturmtruppe said:
2007 is much better, and if you can get it cheap i would go for it. Microsoft is starting to add that ribbon toolbar into everything so its worth getting used to it now.

By "everything" you mean MSPaint, right?