Microsoft Office 2007: NICE!

[Jerry Jones]

Check out the video explaining the new interface for the forthcoming Microsoft OFFICE 2007:

http://tinyurl.com/zckjc

I can't believe the forthcoming Microsoft Publisher will actually have Adobe Acrobat PDF output capability... finally.

Maybe Microsoft is trying to do better.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[paulw]

You're not going to be sucked into buying this peice of expensive bloatware are you??

I was under the impression that MS and Adobe had come to a stalemate over this implimentation..

[Sciascia]

Kind of hard to get excited about an office suite, but this is pretty impressive. My new job requires me to spend tons of time in Word and Powerpoint so that new ribbon thing has me interested. It is true, I spend more time trying to figure out how to to do what I want than doing it at times and I am not exactly a novice with office. The auto preview is pretty nice, applying something and then undoing it and applying something else and undoing that and so on gets really old.

Nice find.

[Dr Mordrid]

Oo2 has had PDF output for a long time, not to mention that you can get a PDF converter/printer driver for <$20 USD;

http://www.cosmi.com/OnlineStore/ProductCatalog/ProductDetail.aspx?Matnr=539000WEB

and several others....

Dr. Mordrid

[Jessterw]

Well to be fair to MS, the only reason Office hasn't included PDF support is because of Adobe. Remember, one of the 'features' for Adobe Acrobat (not Reader) is that it includes PDF tools for Office.

MS has to operate under different conditions for things like this than (Sun) has to with OpenOffice. So while it's true that OO has had PDF support for some time, it's not exactly a fair comparison in every regard.

[Jerry Jones]

Oo2 has had PDF output for a long time, not to mention that you can get a PDF converter/printer driver for <$20 USD;

http://www.cosmi.com/OnlineStore/ProductCatalog/ProductDetail.aspx?Matnr=539000WEB

and several others....

Dr. Mordrid

Doc,

I have Office 2002 and it does not have PDF output capability.

According to this Microsoft Web page:

"Although Word does ***NOT*** provide a direct way to save documents in this format, many third-party software products provide the capability to convert Word documents to PDF and to convert PDF files into the Word file format."

(Applies to Microsoft Word 2003, 97, 2000, and 2002.)

Link:

http://tinyurl.com/8zhcb

In addition, I have Microsoft Publisher 2002 and I can certainly assure you that my version does not have PDF output capability nor can I find any mention of such a feature in version 2003 (the current version):

http://tinyurl.com/jmzh5

My version of Microsoft Publisher doesn't even support CMYK color space, but I get around that by using the full Adobe Acrobat program and a third-party plug-in for Acrobat that converts all elements in a document to CMYK:

http://tinyurl.com/ra7bq

Publisher is a page layout program; Word is a word processor.

They are, of course, two different programs with two different purposes, although some people do attempt to do page layout in Word (which is sad).

As far as I can see, the PDF (and XML) output capability is listed in the "NEW" features for Publisher 2007:

http://tinyurl.com/qqqob

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Jerry Jones]

Oo2 has had PDF output for a long time, not to mention that you can get a PDF converter/printer driver for <$20 USD;

http://www.cosmi.com/OnlineStore/ProductCatalog/ProductDetail.aspx?Matnr=539000WEB

and several others....

Dr. Mordrid

I did check that product, Doc, but I'm afraid that this $20 product does not offer enough PDF output parameters to create the specific kinds of PDF files that are needed by many users. This program is primarily intended for creating PDF files for e-mail exchanges.

In the full version of Adobe Acrobat, which I own, one has access to many profiles and one can also create custom PDF output profiles.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Jerry Jones]

By the way, here's the news article about the squabbling between Microsoft and Adobe in Europe in connection with the new support for PDF output:

http://tinyurl.com/o4ryp

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Jerry Jones]

Here's a blog commentary:

http://tinyurl.com/ol7m7

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[schmosef]

something tells me that i'm going to be working with office in "classic" mode.

[Elie]

I'll give it a shot, if I find it complex, taking more time to do things, I will report back to the classic mode if it exists.

[Dr Mordrid]

Jerry;

When I mentioned "Oo2" having PDF output I was referring to OpenOffice 2, the open source package, and not MS Office.

I'd have no problem working in MS Office 7 as the ribbon works a lot like PhotoImpacts EasyPalette & contextural toolbar. They can call it whatever they like, but the ribbon is just a contextural toobar that's pretty and too high

[Brian Ellis]

Well, I've been using Office 2k7 for some time, now, so what I say is the result of experience, not what I've read or seen on the Internet.

It IS bloatware, bad bloatware, roughly twice the size of earlier versions and it is much heavier on resources.

There is no question of using 2k7 in classic mode. You can have it in any format, provided you choose ribbon.

There is relatively little in the way of new features, just some tweaks here and there. One thing I do like is what WordPerfect has had for many versions: the ability to have multiple files open in panes and you can even synchronise scrolling. Another WP feature is to be able to Find/Replace tags, although this feature is limited to a relatively small number of them. Unfortunately, they have not seen fit to implement Reveal Codes from WP, so if a mysterious formatting fault occurs, it is still difficult to suss out the cause. The use of Track Changes/Comments is much easier than in previous versions, making editing a pleasure. I like the comments reported to the margins. Merging letters is also easier.

Like the earlier versions, the use of the Print icon drives me mad, where it goes to the default printer with no opportunity to adjust any settings. It's always a pain remembering not to use this icon.

The ribbon: this is a cultural shock! I have a love-hate relationship with it. Firstly, it takes several days to get used to it; even after a week or two, one wonders where the hell such-and-such a feature is. However, after a couple of weeks or so, it becomes second nature, at least for the commonly used features. Happily, the keyboard shortcuts are still mostly the same. A lot of thought and megabytes has gone into it. However, let's face it, with the menu system of the old versions, one sometimes had to search for something.

In older versions, the Thesaurus was a pain to use, unlike WordPerfect. The 2k7 Thesaurus is PHAN-TASS-TICK - the best I've ever seen and easy-to-use. There is also an on-line translation service (paid for good quality, free for mediocre). I'm bilingual with French and I did check the free stuff out in both directions. It had the usual machine translation errors, nothing outstandingly bad or good, on a par with Babel Fish and suchlike.

There is one big if: the 2k7 Word default format is .docx. This is not necessarily the same as .doc, so there could be compatibility problems. 2k7 has no problem reading/formatting .doc documents. Word 2000 has no problem in reading .docx files, provided that they are simple text and images, without using any advanced features of 2k7. However, there is a simple compatibility checker and, of course, it is possible to save a document as 97/2003 .doc format. I fear though that this may be stumbling block in sharing documents, if users insisit on saving in .docx format.

I've also quickly looked at Excel, Access and PowerPoint, but not Outlook, which I do not use. I've done some minor things in each, "just to see". I have the feeling that they have changed little, other than the ribbon instead of the menu, but this judgment is on a superficial look.

Pricing: I have a feeling that upgrading will not be exorbitant. My supplier is already offering Office 2003 Pro (full version) for ~£150 with free upgrade to 2k7 when it becomes available (for professional networking).

[Sasq]

As I stated to someone else, I would much prefer to save my documents to an ISO approved format.
that pretty well rules out MS office. But does mean in 10 years, I will still be able to load my documents. or at least pull apart the file.

[schmosef]

@Brian, I can't speak for Office 2k7, but in earlier versions of Office it was easy to edit the toolbar and replace the "print" icon with a "print..." icon. They look the same but the "print..." icon works like the "File->Print..." menu item, giving you a dialog box to control the print process.

Thanks for the analysis of 2k7, btw. I fear that the ribbon system is going to be very bloated but I think that since it's still beta, and not RTM, there's probably lots of code tweaking that hasn't happened yet. I hope that when that tweaking does happen it makes the system work faster.

I can only imagine the system requirements needed to run the ribbon system without any lag... Who would have thought that you'd need high end video just to run Office apps?