Microsoft Office 2007

Microsoft has a winner with the new Office 2007. The exporting to PDF feature is downloadable, but a very important feature for those posting items on the web, and for those people who use Publisher for their brochure or other marketing materials design work, because once it is finished and approved, they may export to PDF and actually take it to a commercial printer for output. That is huge, and makes Publisher an even more important program for small businesses.

Check it out, they have free trials available on their website at www.microsoft.com.

Microsoft Office 2007 is the most major rewrite of the Office series, with many new amenities that simplify major repetitive tasks. It is very obvious it in the interface of both Word and Excel. This is also most evident to us because they are the two in the Professional Suite which we use the most often. However, the Professional Suite also comes complete with:

• PowerPoint 2007
• Access 2007
• Outlook 2007 with Contact Manager
• Publisher 2007
• Accounting Express 2007

NOTE: Our review version did not include Contact Manager and Accounting Express, but everything else. So we will not touch on those two offerings.

Access is a program that helps anyone build a database. It is very easy to use, and comes complete with many common templates as well as a ton of them available online.

Over 1.4 million Access database templates were downloaded from the Microsoft Office Online Web site, www.microsoft.com/office, in 2004. The MSDN® Office Developer Center Access portal logged more than 3 million page views and downloads in 2004, averaging approximately 80,000 unique users per month.

An independent Web site, www.utteraccess.com, which provides forums supporting Access, has registered over 90,000 members and has logged over 800,000 posts. On an average day, the Utteraccess.com site records over 500,000 page views, 100 new registered users, and 1,000 new posts.

Access has also been totally redesigned, further integrating the suite with common interfaces increasing the ease of use. One really cool feature is you can send an entry form to a proposed client via email, and when they return it to you, it can be automatically added to your Access database. That is an incredible tool.

PowerPoint is the electronic version of a slide show, but so much more. The power of PowerPoint is in the design templates, special effects and audio that can be integrated into a truly impressive presentation. We have used PowerPoint for a long time, and in the earlier days, plugins helped make the presentations more powerful. Microsoft has built-in most of those old plugins so that you can do just about anything you want to do within PowerPoints own features.

PowerPoint is the ideal tool for making a business plan visual, for doing a sales presentation to an individual or a group, even a family slide show. Most anyone can do it, and with Microsoft’s new easier access desktop menus, streamlined work patterns are simple.

Publisher is a consumer-level marketing materials design program. Full of templates and wizards, it can make near-novices look talented. It doesn’t take place of professional graphic artists, and honestly, most print houses won’t touch Publisher projects that are submitted via electronic media because it is not a pro-level design program. What it is, is a program that small businesses can utilize to develop their own in-house marketing materials; flyers, brochures, business cards, and others for in-house printing.

Publisher’s real strength is in the templates. Doing projects from scratch with Publisher really defeats its entire value. Even professional graphic artists can obtain great design ideas by thumbing through the myriad of templates, those that come with the program as well as those available online.

Microsoft also revamped the interface of Publisher, making all tools much more easily accessible. The days of huge drop-down lists are gone, with Microsoft anyway. They have refined their Office Suite so well that it has become better than ever before.

Outlook is the preferred e-mail program for professionals the world-over. We use it in our offices as well. While Outlook Express is fine for many home applications, Outlook is a fully featured e-mail manager that can help organize your contacts, the e-mails you keep, as well as responses you have sent to customers, friends, family and others. Our take on Outlook is that it is one of the best e-mail programs out there.

Word. The new Word is truly a pleasure to deal with. While it does take a bit getting used to, the new interface eliminates drop down menus. The trick is to figure out where they put such things as spell check but it is still our preferred program for keyboarding stories. The new Ribbon, a component of the Office Fluent user interface, groups your tools by task, and the commands you use most frequently are close at hand.
They have the best spell and grammar check available.Several spelling checker options are now global. If you change one of these options in one Office program, that option is also changed for all the other Office programs. This is a major change that is very beneficial to all of us who use the various Microsoft products.
The spelling checker can now find and flag some contextual spelling errors. Copy such as “we will be their at noon” can now be automatically found and corrected. In Office Word 2007, you can enable the Use contextual spelling option to get help with finding and fixing this type of mistake. It works in documents containing English, German, or Spanish.

• · Find and remove hidden metadata and personal information in documents
• · Add a digital signature or signature line to your documents
• · Convert your Word documents to PDF or XPS (This is a biggie - see below)
• Office Word 2007 supports exporting your file to the following formats:·
  - Portable Document Format (PDF) PDF is a fixed-layout electronic file format that preserves document formatting and enables file sharing. The PDF format ensures that when the file is viewed online or printed, it retains exactly the format that you intended, and that data in the file cannot be easily changed. The PDF format is also useful for documents that will be reproduced by using commercial printing methods.
• - XML Paper Specification (XPS) XPS is an electronic file format that preserves document formatting and enables file sharing. The XPS format ensures that when the file is viewed online or printed, it retains exactly the format that you intended, and that data in the file cannot be easily changed.
• There is much more, but as usual, Microsoft has done their homework in reworking all of the Office components.

Excel , the best spreadsheet available has also been redesigned to make repetitive tasks easier. The interface is also set up as the other new Office components, with the tabbed structure at the top helping to eliminate drop down menus. Inserting a new column or row is very easy, as well as pages insertion.
Excel 2007, enables you to quickly format the data in your worksheet by applying a theme and by using a specific style. Themes can be shared across all other 2007 Office programs, but styles are designed to change the format of Excel-specific items, including tables, charts, PivotTables, shapes, and diagrams.
Microsoft made some important changes in relation to writing formulas including:.

• · Resizable formula bar
  The formula bar automatically resizes to accommodate long, complex formulas, which prevents the formulas from covering other data in your worksheet. You can also write longer formulas with more levels of nesting than you could in earlier versions of Excel.
• · Function AutoComplete
  With Function AutoComplete, you can quickly write the proper formula syntax. From easily detecting the functions that you want to use to getting help completing the formula arguments, you will be able to get formulas right the first time and every time.
• · Structured references
  In addition to cell references, such as A1 and R1C1, Office Excel 2007 provides structured references that reference named ranges and tables in a formula.
• · Easy access to named ranges
  By using the Office Excel 2007 name manager, you can organize, update, and manage multiple named ranges in a central location, which helps anyone who needs to work on your worksheet interpret its formulas and data.

MORE NEW FEATURES HELP SPEED WORKFLOW

• · Improved sorting and filtering
• · Excel table enhancements
• · In Office Excel 2007, you can use new charting tools to easily create professional-looking charts that communicate information effectively. Based on the theme that is applied to your workbook, the new, up-to-date look for charts includes special effects, such as 3-D, transparency, and soft shadows.
• · In Office Excel 2007, PivotTables are much easier to use than in earlier versions of Excel. By using the new PivotTable user interface, the information that you want to view about your data is just a few clicks away—you no longer have to drag data to drop zones that aren't always an easy target. Instead, you can simply select the fields that you want to see in a new PivotTable field list.
• · In Office Excel 2007, PivotTables are much easier to use than in earlier versions of Excel. By using the new PivotTable user interface, the information that you want to view about your data is just a few clicks away—you no longer have to drag data to drop zones that aren't always an easy target. Instead, you can simply select the fields that you want to see in a new PivotTable field list.
• · Page Layout View In addition to the Normal view and Page Break Preview view, Office Excel 2007 provides a Page Layout View. You can use this view to create a worksheet while keeping an eye on how it will look in printed format.
• · In Office Excel 2007, you can base a new workbook on a variety of templates that are installed with Excel, or you can quickly access and download templates from the Microsoft Office Online Web site.