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 - Look Before You Leap!WARNING! Do not assume that installing Office 2007 will make your life easier. If you have been a long-time user of MS Office, and you install Office 2007, you will EXPERIENCE EXTREME FRUSTRATION when trying to use OUTLOOK, EXCEL, WORD and POWERPOINT (I haven't tried the other programs). In order to navigate the programs somewhat effectively, I had to purchase a progam from China to make the use of Office 2007 Pro more familiar. It is inconceivable to me that Microsoft would trash all of the excellent work that has been done on the Office product suite . . . but they have succeeded! I unistalled Office 2007 Pro and have re-installed Office 2003 Pro. I pity those employees who have been "upgraded" to Office 2007 by their company. If you insist on trying Office 2007, I wish you the best of luck! Rating:  - Once you learn it, it works *for* you, not against you.I love Office 2007, a reaction that exists in sharp contrast to how I feel about Office 2004 (See my review on the Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Student and Teacher [OLD VERSION] page). Though I am occasionally stymied by trying to complete a task that yes, would've taken me seconds in Office 2003 or 2004 (both of which I have used extensively during my time at college), I find the ribbon interface to be fresh, bold take on something that had become quite old and stale. From a functionality and usability point of view, the completely redone "insert symbol" and "insert equation" functions in Word '07 make so much sense and are so easy to use that it really frustrates me if I end up working on somebody else's computer that only has Office '03: the process by which you build up your equations is much more streamlined than ever before, something that I appreciate as an engineering student. Additionally, the tools for manipulating images in PowerPoint (cropping, resizing, et cetera) are much improved. Office 2007 is my favorite of the five versions of Office that I've used (X, 2003, 2004, 2007, and 2008)--I've got an install of Windows XP in Parallels on my Mac so that I don't have to use Office '08 to do my work. Thanks, Microsoft--you took a gamble, but it really paid off! Rating:  - Microsoft's WORST Product! I recently bought a new laptop, and the changeover involved an "upgrade" to Office 2007. I was aware that there was a new user interface, but was not aware that Office 2007 is, in almost every respect, an INFERIOR product to any Office version that came before it! I have used MS Office for many years, and am what could be called a "power user," especially for Word and Powerpoint, which I use weekly. One of the great features of Office is that it has been totally customizable. For those who use office frequently, it has been easy to create your own custom toolbars so you have what you need easily available. Most tasks could be done with one or two mouse clicks... Until Office 2007! In Office 2007, hardly anything is customizable! You have a constantly changing tool ribbon, which takes up a lot of screen real estate. The ribbon presents a set of icons based on what it "thinks" you will need at the moment. It is rarely right! ... so you go searching through the tabs trying to find the icon that was on the ribbon a few moments earlier! There is one small "tool bar" up on the title bar that you CAN customize, but it is not convenient, and will not hold many icons. It has the option of being moved below the ribbon, which takes up even more screen real estate, but is still very limited, and cannot be docked or moved from there. Granted, there are third party programs, such as Ribbon Customizer and Toolbar Toggle, that add back some of the ability to customize, but it is still far inferior to what Office users are used to! Even the third party programs, however, cannot get around the fact that there are some features in earlier Office versions that are simply NOT included in the new one. In previous versions of Powerpoint, you could add a set of icons that, with one mouse click, allowed you to adjust the vertical spacing of text. That has been omitted in 2007. In the "improved" 2007 version, you must open a dialog box, and make several mouse clicks to adjust vertical spacing! To make matters worse, Office 2007 documents are not compatible with earlier versions. After spending years establishing formats such as .doc and .ppt as industry standards, Microsoft has introduced a version of office that does not use these formats! If you want to send a document to someone who still has Office 2003 (or any other program that reads .doc files) you need to remember to save it in that format. The default 2007 format cannot be opened by earlier versions! Office 2007 CAN open the older formats, but even in opening earlier Office formats, there are problems. For example, most users of Powerpoint have learned the trick of adding drop shadows behind the text to make the text stand out on the screen. Office 2007 has changed the way these shadows are formed. When you open a powerpoint presentation made on an earlier version, your old drop shadows WILL NOT ANIMATE with the text. When a slide appears, the shadows of the letters are already in place, and the letters animate in on top! Mircosoft's only suggestion... go through your slides and take the old shadows out, and put new shadows in! (I tried this... it takes 30-40 minutes per presentation! ...And I have hundreds of powerpoint presentations in my file!) For someone who never used Office before, or who just uses Word to type simple letters, 2007 may be okay, but for anyone who depends on Office for detailed tasks and productivity, 2007 is a nightmare. I have always loved Microsoft Office. It has been an industry standard for ease of use. In my opinion, that is no longer the case. I believe Microsoft tried to produce something "different" to attract new users, but in the process totally ignored the needs of those who have used their products in the past. If you have the option of staying with an earlier version, DO NOT UPGRADE to this product! Rating: - Zero FunctionalityI have been using the new version of MS Office since last November, and still have trouble location the commands that I need. The layout is sooo non intuitive. Actually, the layout does not make any sense at all. I would not recommend this product to anyone currently using MS Office in XP. Rating: - Why doesn't Office 2007 import Excel Office 2002 graphs properly?I just installed Office 2007 for Windows and was very disappointed that my graphs in my Excel files (Office for Windows XP 2002) were a complete mess. The font sizes were way off, some of the graphs came into 2007 in a tiny size I couldn't restore to normal size. Just a big mess. I spent an hour trying to fix my graphs (which were in separate worksheets from the data). I fixed one, but several more were "trapped" in a tiny viewspace and I gave up. Access, Word and Powerpoint files converted ok. But I've given up on Excel. I reinstalled my older version of Office and will continue to use that until Microsoft stops making software that's backward compatible with the old style Office. I don't have time to screw around with software that makes me re-do my past work.
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