Office 07 vs 03

just wondering what is the difference between office 2007 and 2003? and why should i upgrade if i have xp still?

 

take a look at this M$ technet article and see if you need any of these changes and see if if justifies the upgrade price.

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/a9189734-e303-4d7d-93eb-3584c358d1c91033.mspx?mfr=true

 

Basically, they've moved around anything you can imagine and added a few things here and there. They also put up a new skin for it ..

I wouldn't get it because I'm so used to the old version and that one is a pain in the ass.

Did I mention they moved everything around?

 

In my opinion office 2007 is by far the best upgrade yet. I've had it for about a month and never looked back. It's much easier to use than office 03 and a bunch of useful features have been added. I've only used word and excel so far so I don't know much about the other programs.

 

i like 2007 a lot. it makes everything accessible without doing so many clicks(user friendly)! and it's more beautiful than 2003.

 

Quote from bash.org sums it up perfectly.

<theGaurav x45> yo i got
<theGaurav x45> Microsoft Office 2007
<theGaurav x45> greatest thing ever invented
<theGaurav x45> so amazing
<theGaurav x45> it took me 15 minutes to find spellcheck
<theGaurav x45> but still
<theGaurav x45> amazing

 

To add on what CeeNote said ....

Publisher, Powerpoint and Excel are MUCH more easier to use and more feature rich. Not to mention the Visual Design & toolbar of each program under Office that makes the Learning curve even for people who never used Office almost instant.

 

That is because it was your first time using it. i'm sure after several days of using you'll never go back to 2003!

 

anyone new to office 2007 should at least look at tutorials in MS site! you'll see more how good it is!

 

what an awesome site.

 

haha another bash:

Kirkburn: Shouldn't RCs be called Gamma?
Maldivia: in Microsoft's case: RC = Alpha, Release = Beta, Service Pack 1 = RC, Service Pack 2 = Release

QFT

 

I think 07 is worth it. It feels like an UPGRADE as opposed to an update lol. BUt it WILL Require a bit of adjusting =)

 

Like everything, it's definitely user preference. A couple of things to consider:

1. If you create/use macros, you customize your toolbars or you use features more advanced than formatting, 2007 will be a major adjustment.

2. The program appearance of the 2007 Office programs is not the same across the board.

3. If you exchange a lot of Office files, you may run into some problems with the new XML format. There are some fairly easy work arounds, but it can be frustrating.

There are some improvements and trying to make Office's features (especially the ones people often don't know are there) more obvious via the Ribbon are the main things.

There's a good review at Computer World. Covers most of the changes without being too technical or biased.

 

Well, 2003 is good enough, if you're in a budget its not necessary to upgrade. But Office 2007 is significantly better than previous versions if you can upgrade from 2003.

The whole layout has been redesigned, which while confusing at first ends up being more convenient than Office's previous layout. Also, as LIVEFRMNYC said, PowerPoint and Excel and Word can do much more things, with more variations to it, much easier.

 

Office 2007 is amazing.

 

wow thx for all the info everyone

 

You can also Save new Documents to old compatible formats and Resave/convert old documents to newer compatible formats.

Not sure about the quality of turning old into new tho.

 

The conversation is pretty good from what I have noticed. With docs that use Office 2000 and down, you don't have full editing abilities with 2007 but I haven't noticed what they are yet.

Office 2007 is one of Microsoft's few improvements and it is a good one.

 

This is what I think, Microsoft Office 2007 is VERY hard to use... this first time. After you've played around for a few hours, and found all the things you normally would use on 2003, you'll come across all sorts of excellent new features only in 2007 that will make you want to ditch 2003 forever. I'm very fond of the new Office 2007, especially Excel!

On a side note, can anyone tell me how to change Macro security to "Prompt me if a document contains a Macro and let me decide whether or not to allow it?"

 

I would love to have office 2007 but its too expensive.

 

Go to the Office Button > Word Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings and select "Disable all macros with notification." Then it prompts you every time you open a document to allow or block the macros, though I'm not sure if this behavior will be exactly what you're wanting. I think this was on by default on my install, though I made so many changes the first day I can't remember.

For everyone else: If you feel a little lost when you start Office 2007 for the first time, think of it this way: the "ribbons" are just the old menu bar menus shown horizontally. They just renamed a few of them and moved the features around a little. They don't replace the command bar buttons -- those have been removed by default, although you can add your favorite buttons back one at a time, if you want -- to the title bar, of all places. You can also hide the ribbons by default to free up precious vertical space (though then they will overlay the document when selected). Bascially, I'm trying to say that there are still tons of customization options. In my opinion, this is Microsoft's best product in years.

It was an adjustment, but after I got used to it, I actually found the new layout to be much more logical. I can't imagine going back to an older version of Word or Excel now. The other programs, however, are still a toss-up for me.

 

well like i said, thx for all the info and i have decided to get it and so i got office 07 and i have to say that im rly hapy with it. but what is this about a different file format??!!

 

Office 2007 is quite good - ilike it - but if you already have Office 2003, the 2007 is NOT worth extra money. That is an honest, cold blooded assessment, where money is concerned.

 

I agree completely.

 

I am in agreement that 2007 is the best yet! Now that they have added the ability to save .pdf in office...I couldn't have been happier. In Word and Excel...documents saved in the new format are about 50% smaller than the 97-2003 format. I liked it so much in beta that the day it came out...I got it. Never looking back.

Bob

 

My job offered 2007 enterprise ed. I only used excel and outlook thus far. I like it. I cant really compare it to 2003 since my work didnt officially support we were forced to use office pro 2002 sp3. But I am in full agreement, I like the interface and the new menus. But if its worth paying for? not in my opinion. Not the amount MS is asking for it.

 

Office 2007 files aren't completely compatible with former versions of Office, so any file you save in the default Office 2007 format (.docx and so forth) can't be opened by someone else using Office 2003 or earlier -- at least not without a massive formatting loss. But the good news is that you can save all your files as an Office 97-2003 file, which are fully compatible with eariler versions. And you can get your office programs to save in "compatibility mode" by default under Office Button > Word [for example] Options > Save > Save files in this format: Word 97-2003 Document (.doc). I'm probably going to keep mine in compatibility mode for at least the next year, depending on how fast my colleagues adopt. But I do save some files that I'm only going to use on my computer manually in the new .docx format in order to take full advantage of the new formatting options.

Speaking of file formats, everyone needs to download this "Save as .pdf" add-in from Microsoft as soon as possible. It rocks -- they just couldn't include it with the release without getting sued.

As for the value versus Office 2003 (at full retail price, that is), I would say it depends totally on when you bought 2003. If you bought 2003 within the last year or two, then you might want to hold off and get a little more use out of your last purchase (and you probably could skip over 2007 entirely, depending on when "Office 14" comes out). But if you bought 2003 when it came out -- and certainly if you're still using Office XP or earlier -- I say upgrade now. It's that much better, IMO, plus the sooner you upgrade, the sooner you'll transition to the new interface, and the more productive you'll be in the long run.

Of course, it's possible that I'm only recommending Office 2007 just so I can stop using "compatibility mode" sooner. I'm not even sure myself...

 

so with the save as .pdf, you can save files as pdf's?

 

Heck yeah! They may not be honest-to-god pdf files in terms of the actual encoding (I think they're just Microsoft's pdf emulation), but Adobe Acrobat Reader opens them up all the same.

 

...but I should add you can't edit the pdfs using Word. You publish your Word documnets as a pdf file in a manner similar to printing-to-file. If you change your Word doc, you have to resave the file as a pdf again, too. So it's not a perfect all-in-one pdf solution, but it's pretty darn useful all the same.