Microsoft Office Upgrade or Not?...
Should you do a Microsoft Office upgrade or not? The changes made to Office 2007 may change your mind for now.
Well lets look at the changes made to determine whether you should do a Microsoft Office upgrade to Office 2007.
- Microsoft's new "Ribbon" graphical user interface.
- Microsoft no longer uses the fixed menu on the top user interface as well as the hierarchical toolbars.
- New interface gives all the options you need to navigate by tab browsing.
- The Microsoft office button in the top left corner to change your global options and settings for the program.
- Designed to give a easier way of navigating all of the Office suite but at a steeper learning curve.
- If you're using office for simple documents, spreadsheets and presentations, you may want to wait before upgrading.
- If you have extensive knowledge of office 2003 and its features, you may also hold off a bit.
- Customizing Office 2007.
- Quick Access Toolbar (Drop down menu).
- You can edit the office menu by selecting commands most often used and placing them in the toolbar.
- Customize the look of the Ribbon of a single document of one Office application at a time, with the option of saving it as a template.
- Requires extra software and an extensive knowledge of the Microsoft's RibbonX XML markup language.
- Limits customization in terms of the way one can change how the Ribbon functions.
- Make third-party add-ins that can be installed by the end-user.
- XML brings with it a new form of file extension for Office documents created.
- The end of the filename extension ( i.c. .doc becomes .docx, .ppt becomes .pptx, etc.)
- Previous versions of office will not be able to open these new formats without a patch of some kind.
- Users of office 2000 and later for Windows can download Microsoft's compatibility patch.
- Macintosh users will have to wait a while longer before a viable option is available to them.
- To share documents with older versions of Office, you can save a document by choosing "Word 97-2003 Document" under the "save as" option.
- For mac users, a widget is available for download that can currently convert a .docx file to .html so you can view the document.
- This only works for Office 2007 Word documents, and IS limited WITH graphical and advanced Word 2007 features.
- The download link is http://docx-converter.com/widget/ (third party software is unsupported by the Helpdesk).
- New features available only to Office 2007 applications.
- Office Word 2007, Office Powerpoint 2007, Office Excel 2007, Office Outlook 2007.
- Blog Authoring support for Blogger, Windows Live Spaces, and more...
- Preview formatting options in real time.
- Automatic citation generator.
- Support for 3D rendered transition.
- Preview themes in real time by hovering the mouse, one click to change the global theme
- Enhanced features for Presenter View.
- Improved aesthetics on charts and graphs.
- "Data Bars" - display a gradient in individual cells to graph their contribution to a group.
- Icon sets allow users to display mini icons in cells to easily designate subgroups.
- Speedier search due to indexing.
- To-Do Bar - Combine tasks from Outlook, OneNote, and flagged mail which integrates with calendar for scheduling.
- Send and receive SMS text messages, provided Outlook Mobile is supported by your service carrier.
So whether you should do a microsoft office upgrade or not really depends on what you hope to accomplish.
If you are mainly concerned with home or small business applications, you may have to go through a learning curve before being productive.
So you may want to Microsoft Office upgrade later when time spent during the learning period would not be of main concern.
If you were working for a corporation who was upgrading because of the new features of Office 2007, you would have no choice in upgrading.
The following table summarizes what it would take to accomplish the microsoft office upgrade:
| 2007 Microsoft Office Suites |
Estimated Retail Price
/Upgrade Price |
Qualifying Products for Upgrade |
| Microsoft Office Basic 2007
|
Available only through OEMs; price not quoted
|
Upgrade not applicable. |
| Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 |
$149/NA |
Upgrade not applicable. |
| Microsoft Office Standard 2007
|
$399/$239 |
Microsoft Works 6.0–10; Microsoft Works suite 2000–2006 or later; any 2000–2007 Microsoft Office program or suite; any Microsoft Office XP suite. |
| Microsoft Office Small Business 2007
|
$449/$279 |
Microsoft Works 6.0–10; Microsoft Works suite 2000–2006 or later; any 2000–2007 Microsoft Office program or suite; any Microsoft Office XP suite. |
| Microsoft Office Professional 2007 |
$499/$329 |
Microsoft Works 6.0–10; Microsoft Works suite 2000–2006 or later; any 2000-2007 Microsoft Office program or suite; any Microsoft Office XP suite. |
| Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 |
$679/$539
|
Microsoft Works 6.0–10; Microsoft Works suite 2000–2006 or later; any 2000-2007 Microsoft Office program or suite; any Microsoft Office XP suite. |
| Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 |
Available only through volume licensing; price not quoted |
Upgrade not applicable. |
| Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 |
Available only through volume licensing; price not quoted
|
Upgrade not applicable. |
So the Microsoft Office upgrade table shows what has to be done which depends on what you have and which Office 2007 version you're interested in upgrading to.
Subscribe here for FREE!
Every once in a while we're sending out a Windows XP How To ezine. We would be honored if you signed up for it.
We understand you are careful about giving your email address to anyone. But
we promise we won't sell or give your email address to anyone, or use it for any
other purpose than to send Windows XP How To Ezine.
Important Note: Spam filters that are active at your ISP, mail service
and/or mail client, may accidentally filter out any email we send in response.
Read how you can make
sure you receive messages from us..
Return from Microsoft Office Upgrade to the Home Page
|
