The Beta for Office 2007 is now over. It is expected to RTM very soon with it probably hitting the shelves around the same time as Windows Vista. What can you expect?
The user interface is much different. Menus are a thing of the past. Instead you have a series of … panels? Each panel (?) has a display of icons for doing various functions. Anyone who is really familiar with MS Word right now will hate the the new version. Every thing is different. For example, the styles selection menu is horrible to use. But, I felt the exact same way with Windows XP when it came along. Most people who knew their way around Windows hate the new style interface. Everythign was moved to make it easier for users to navigate. And it worked. My eperience was that users loved Windows Fisher Price while administrators all swtiched to the classic theme and classic control panel. I do think the new interface in Office 2007 works really well in Exchange 2007. I’m not sold either way on Outlook 2007 yet. I know the beta prompted you to download a desktop search engine that would cripple any computer not worthy of launching rockets into space.
What else to look out for? The mass deployment method is changed slightly. I’ve documented how to do it while at my last job. The document discusses how to deploy it with SCCM 2007 but the same method applies for Group Policy or SMS 2003 deployments.
The default is that Office 2007 will save using the new XML based formats. Just when you thought that version incompatibilities, e.g. Office 95 vs Office 97 were over. Now, Word will try to save a document as a .DOCX file. You can change this to use Office 2003 formatting, i.e. .DOC but you do lose some of the new fancy formatting. I recommend you do this until Office 2007 becomes the norm with your business partners or clients. 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.
The ability to save a document as a PDF right out of the box has been removed. Adobe had some concerns about this functionality which is understandable. MS didn’t fight it much. However, MS have made a free add-on available to allow you to save as PDF or XPS from Office 2007.
Office 2007 is Microsoft’s cash cow. But you know, it’s not really that exciting for most people. Companies are generally slow to go to a newer version out of compatibility concerns. Lots of organisations are slow to move from Office 97. Lots are still on Office 2000. They really don’t see the need to change. Microsoft has radically redesigned Office with this release. 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. With this entire brand, MS aims to get corporates to buy into this new Office release like they have never done before.
I can understand the advantages and the pitch, but I don’t see it working. The message is not getting across clearly enough or at all.