Microsoft Office 2007 for Providers

Important note: this document is designed for Local Support Providers (LSPs). This page was last modified on Monday, 25-Feb-2008 13:06:33 EST.

On January 30th, 2007 Microsoft released Office 2007 for Windows, the latest version of this software suite which includes applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Microsoft has substantially revised Office, providing a dramatically different 'Ribbon' interface and changes in a number of features. Because of this, Information Systems & Computing (ISC) believes that upgrading will entail a significant learning curve for many longtime Office users.

Office 2007 uses new default file formats (examples include .docx instead of .doc for Word and .xlsx instead of .xls for Excel) that other versions of Office for Windows and versions of Office for Macintosh other than Office 2008 cannot understand. Early adopters of Office 2007 therefore are advised to use the Save As feature to save files in the formats that older Windows versions and Mac versions understand, especially if they need to share files with other people or applications. Users of Office 2000, XP, and 2003 for Windows can install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack to read Office 2007 files in their default format. A beta converter for Word for Mac is available, but Office for Mac users can't open Excel 2007 or PowerPoint 2007 files at this time.

Provider note: ISC has an article with more detailed information on this issue located on the Provider Notes Wiki here. Microsoft to release the next version of Office 2008 for Mac OS in January 2008.

Office 2007 is compatible with Windows Vista and Windows XP Service Pack 2. Note that Office 2007 will not install or function on PCs running Windows 2000 Professional or any non-SP2 version of Windows XP.

Provider note: Microsoft has once again reduced the operating system space footprint of Office with this latest version.

ISC will support the Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook components of Office 2007 for its clients, including off-campus students.

Provider note: ISC placed the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint components of Microsoft Office 2007 on the supported products list for FY 2008. Outlook 2007 had previously been approved as a supported product for FY 2008 by IT Roundtable.

Microsoft Office 2007 has significantly greater system requirements than many previous versions of Microsoft Office. ISC suggests the following minimum system requirements:

• 1.0 GB of RAM
• 1.0 GHz processor
• between 1.5 GB and 2.0 GB of free hard drive space

Provider note: a full installation of Office Ultimate 2007 on a fully patched Windows Vista Business workstation took 1.9 GB.

Many Different Versions

Office 2007 ise available in three different editions from the Computer Connection.

• Standard includes four University-supported primary applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook). It is available for $129 (educational pricing).
• Professional adds Access, Accounting Express, and Publisher to Standard. It is available for $169 (educational pricing).
• Ultimate adds InfoPath, Groove, and OneNote to Professional. It is available for $239 (educational pricing).

Microsoft software is available to University of Pennsylvania departments through the Microsoft Select Program, a volume license agreement. A detailed description of the Microsoft Program including product information and a FAQ has been prepared by the Office of Software Licensing. All purchases of Microsoft Select software are made through the Computer Connection.

Provider Note: Office 2007 is available in a total of eight different versions.

• Basic: this version is available only through OEMs and includes Word, Excel, and Outlook.
• Home & Student: this version includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
• Standard: this version includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
• Small Business: this version includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Accounting Express, and Publisher.
• Professional: this version includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Accounting Express, Publisher, and Access.
• Ultimate: this version includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Accounting Express, Publisher, Access, InfoPath, Groove, and OneNote.
• Professional Plus: this version is available only through volume licensing and includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, Access, InfoPath, and Communicator.
• Enterprise: this version is available only through volume licensing and includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, Access, InfoPath, Groove, OneNote, and Communicator.

Some components of Office are less common and/or less well known than Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Access. These applications are:

• Accounting Express: Microsoft's challenger to Intuit's QuickBooks Basic, this new product is a basic small business accounting package.
• Publisher: this is Microsoft's long-running basic desktop publishing package.
• InfoPath: this is an electronic forms creation tool.
• Groove: this work team-oriented collaboration application was purchased by Microsoft in 2005. Some versions of Office 2007 are the first versions of Office to include it.
• OneNote: this application is designed to serve as a kind of digital notebook. OneNote works especially well with Tablet PCs.
• Communicator: this is an integrated communications client and works with instant messaging (IM) and Voice Over IP (VoIP) systems. It is designed for large organizations and is only available with volume-licensed versions of Office 2007.

Microsoft's chart of what's included in all eight Office versions is here.

Analysis

Unlike the last few releases of Office, Office 2007 is not an evolutionary revision of Microsoft's application suite. This is a big change for Microsoft and it shows considerable thought about how people create documents - not just being locked into how folks have previously used Word, Excel, etc.

With these encouraging changes, comes a lot of short term pain. Lots of users who are heavily invested in workflow using command keys will find that some of those combinations no longer function in Office 2007. Furthermore, there is far less opportunity for customization: you can no longer design your own custom toolbars - you have only what Microsoft's new 'Ribbon' interface (an example of which is shown below) chooses to display for you.

One thing to be aware of is that not all applications in the Office 2007 suite show as many interface changes as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint do. For example, users of recent versions of Outlook (such as Outlook 2003) will find most of Outlook 2007 to be reasonably familiar.

--Edda Katz, John Mulhern III, & Amy Phillips, ISC (January 23, 2007)