“The latest version of the software suite, called Office 2007, due out Jan. 30, is a radical revision, the most dramatic overhaul in a decade or more,” Walt Mossberg reports for The Wall Street Journal.
Mossberg reports, “I don’t use the word ‘radical’ lightly. The entire user interface, the way you do things in these familiar old programs, has been thrown out and replaced with something new. In Word, Excel and PowerPoint, all of the menus are gone — every one. None of the familiar toolbars have survived, either. In their place is a wide, tabbed band of icons at the top of the screen called the Ribbon. And there is no option to go back to the classic interface.”
“As if this weren’t enough, Microsoft has also changed the standard file format for Office files. Older versions of Office, on both Windows and Macintosh computers, won’t be able to read these new file types without special conversion software. The new version can, however, read files created in the older versions, on both Windows and Mac, without any conversion software,” Mossberg reports.
Mossberg reports, “These changes in Office, while much less publicized, are far bolder and more important than the mostly cosmetic user interface changes in the highly hyped new version of Windows, called Vista, which comes out on the same day.”
“Microsoft deserves credit for being bold and creative in designing Office 2007. It has taken a good product and made it better and fresher,” Mossberg reports. “But there is a big downside to this gutsy redesign: It requires a steep learning curve that many people might rather avoid. In my own tests, I was cursing the program for weeks because I couldn’t find familiar functions and commands, even though Microsoft provides lots of help and guidance.”
Mossberg reports, “Basic composition and editing are aided by the new design either very little or not at all. If you mostly compose plain Word documents, simple presentations and plain spreadsheets, the new design may not be worth the effort to master it, and you might want to stick with an older version of Office.”
Mossberg reports, “Mac Office users will have to wait until later in the year for Microsoft to release converters that will allow their version of Office to read the new file formats. But a third-party conversion program, for Word files only, has already been released. It’s called docXConverter, and can be downloaded at http://www.panergy-software.com for $20.”
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