There are plenty of changes to the Office applications. Let's start by looking at what an application user will see, then we'll explain the move to SharePoint. Finally, we'll consider several important issues IT managers need to weigh when deciding whether to upgrade.
Goodbye menus, hello ribbons
Right from the start, you'll notice the most significant change to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and many screens in Outlook 2007. Gone are the familiar toolbars and menus; they've been replaced by "ribbons" that house a variety of buttons, icons and graphics (see Figure 1). The ribbons have a dual purpose: to highlight features that users are likely use most often or want most (but have trouble finding), and to promote features at the point they're most useful.
For example, the Home ribbon in Word offers shortcuts for the clipboard (cut, copy, paste) and font formatting (font and font size, underlines and superscripts and so on) -- the kind of everyday tasks most of us use in Word. If you click inside a table, Word presents a special ribbon with just table options. When you move away from the table, the ribbon disappears. It's a good example of providing help right when you need it and staying out of the way when you don't.
The word on word
Hands down, Word is the Office application that has changed the most in this release. Given that it's the most-used application in the suite, that comes as no surprise.
A large portion of the main ribbon in Word is devoted to styles, using preview icons to show the principle characteristics of the style. For instance, the Heading 3 style icon shows a small, plain (that is, not bold) font. These style buttons work in tandem with "what you see is what you get" feature. Select some text (or an entire document) and hover over the Heading 3 style icon, and Word immediately applies the Heading 3 style in a "preview" mode. The text adopts the style characteristics so you can see the effect in your document, but the style isn't applied until you click on the style icon (see Figure 2). If you move away without clicking, the text returns to its original state. It's a great way to do quick, interactive previews.
While Microsoft has made it easier to apply styles, it has done little to make them easier to design or understand. Applying a style from one document to another has been a continual source of user confusion. It remains so in Office 2007.
The preview mode is also available with other icons in the ribbon, such as font and font size, but oddly not for the paragraph-control icons (you can't preview a bulleted list or flush-right alignment, for example). The Font pull-down menu also shows font names in their associated fonts (see Figure 3).
The Insert ribbon has groups for adding Smart Shapes (arrows, connecting lines and so on), pages (cover page, blank page or inserting a page break), tables, illustrations (more on SmartArt in a moment), links, headers and footers, text boxes, Word Art, drop caps, symbols and more. Despite so many options, this and the other ribbons in Office 2007 don't feel cramped.
That's not to say that all ribbon designs are flawless. The Page Layout ribbon holds the key to margins, columns and watermarks, but some controls commonly used in editing a document, such as indents and interline spacing, are found on a different ribbon. Therein lies a problem: You can't move components between ribbons. The interface is fixed.
Other ribbons include Reference (for handling a table of contents, footnotes, citations, captions, indexes and table of authorities), Mailings (for printing envelopes or labels, or setting up and executing a mail merge, much like the mail merge wizard from Word 2003), Review (spelling, comments, track changes, document compare or protection) and View (to show or hide a ruler or gridlines, present a document map, zoom in or out, and arrange windows). A change from Beta 1: an "Add-ins" ribbon that puts third-party tools in one place.
The radically different interface isn't the only thing that's new in Word 2007. Other features we like include the ability to save a document in PDF format as well as XPS (Microsoft's answer to Adobe's PDF). Word's new Building Blocks feature is like a clipboard that persists between sessions. It's a good tool for inserting repetitive text -- a bit simpler than using AutoCorrect's "replace as you type" feature in previous versions of Word.
Word's default font is now Calibri, not Arial; Calibri is a highly readable font. When you hover over a ribbon button, a short explanation (in plain English) describes the button's purpose. The File menu is gone; now you have to somehow guess that the big icon in the upper left corner is its replacement. One feature we're happy to see: The "most recently used" list is no longer limited to the last nine files. Likewise, Track Changes now won't flag as "different" text that is simply moved, which is smart. We also like the new comparison layout that lets you more easily determine the differences between two documents.
Looking good
Office 12 applications do their best to help you use more colorful layouts. For example, insert a cover page in Word and you're presented with a variety of richly formated layouts to choose from.
SmartArt is another welcome addition for improving your documents' visual appeal. In PowerPoint, for example, you can insert a Venn diagram or a step-by-step process chart, or select a bulleted list and apply the same graphic layout to your existing text (see Figure 4). You can directly edit a SmartArt object -- when you add a step to a diagram, the Office application will redraw the image with all components properly resized and rearranged.
SmartArt also lets you add some professional touches to the images, such as shading and glow, and you can control transparency or add reflections.
Excel Excels
There aren't a significant number of new features in Excel. Microsoft focused on refining some current behavior and making it easier to use. And then there's the matter of size: Excel 2007 now supports over 1 million rows and over 16,000 columns per worksheet.
Among the more significant new features: Excel 2007's new ways of visualizing data. For example, you can use conditional formatting to color the background of cells based on their value (see Figure 5). Conditional formatting also lets you display the size of a cell's value by the length of the colored bar in the cell's background, called a Data Bar (see Figure 6).
Charting features have improved; the graphics sport a more polished, up-to-date look. Unfortunately, finding the right set of tools in the ribbon proved frustrating. When a pie chart we created didn't have a title, it took us over five minutes of right-clicking and searching before we found the Chart Layout "contextual tab" -- a subribbon, if you will (see Figure 7). While Microsoft says this user interface feature helps expose functionality only when it's needed, in this particular instance it's a case of a contextual tab/ribbon being too subtle to be noticed.
Charting is also one area where you may waste plenty of time -- not because the program is inefficient but because there are so many options to tempt you.
Microsoft says it has enhanced PivotTable creation, but the changes are minor at best. A panel provides some overviews, but the actual creation of a PivotTable remains befuddling, which is one reason the feature is among the least-used. That's sad, because PivotTables are amazingly powerful. Now if only Excel would provide a bit more handholding -- examining your data and making suggestions, for example. Microsoft still has work to do here.
Outlook
The new version of Outlook adds a host of useful features. Parts of Outlook work better together: You've always been able to flag e-mails for follow-up, but now you can right-click on the flag icon and the message is automatically added to your list of tasks to be completed.
If you depend on Outlook calendars, you'll be pleased to see support for multiple calendars (see Figure 8), including a side-by-side view (see Figure 9) that helps you compare your schedule with that of one or more colleagues or calendars on the Web that are available for sharing.
Several third-party tools incorporate RSS feeds into Outlook, so new feed items appear as new messages in Outlook. You won't need outside tools or a separate RSS feed reader; Outlook 2007 now supports RSS feeds directly (see Figure 11).
Among the other changes in this version: Outlook has a new Instant Search that lets you locate information in e-mail messages, your contacts, tasks or calendar items. Thank heavens! If you organize your e-mail into folders (by project or contact name, for example) and also use other Outlook features such as contacts and the calendar, you're surely tired of Outlook's inability to easily search through multiple types of folders at once.
Search is also much faster because Outlook now indexes messages and attachments, as well as calendar, contact and task information.
Other application changes
PowerPoint picks up SmartArt and the new ribbon bar, and you can change themes to give your presentation a more pleasing look and feel (themes control everything from background color to the color of a table or chart, the text font(s) and the bulleted style). Otherwise, it's pretty much the same as the 2003 version.
In Access, new field types let you attach any file (a document or image, for example) or enter multiple values in a field.
Details on changes in Visio 2007 and Publisher 2007 were not available at posting time.
Working with multiple applications
Office has evolved from the days when linking data in one Office application to another was considered revolutionary. Cross-application interaction is stronger in this release.
In Outlook 2007, for example, you can automatically import meeting details from a calendar item into OneNote. OneNote also indexes text within image files by using a optical character recognition engine, so its Instant Search can find words within images, scanned documents or handwritten notes. As in Outlook, search results begin to appear as soon as you type the first few letters that match an item in the index.
There are some surprises, such as how Office simplifies or automates what you could do in previous versions (but only manually). Word's "Insert Excel Chart" option opens an Excel spreadsheet, creates a chart, embeds the chart into the Word document, and links the data to the Excel document. Change a value in Excel and the Word chart is automatically updated.
Office InfoPath forms can be sent in an e-mail message; recipients using Outlook can complete the form and e-mail it back to the sender without having OneNote installed on their systems. Assignments from Microsoft Project 2007 can be viewed within Outlook, and status and time spent can be reported and returned to Project for automatic updating.
Share and share alike
The major change in Beta 2 was the introduction of Office SharePoint Server. Built on SharePoint technologies and requiring Windows Server 2003, Microsoft's direction is clear: sharing, collaborating, searching. You can post PowerPoint slides to a SharePoint server, and your colleagues can select which ones to use in building their own presentations. Enterprises today typically put entire presentation files on a shared network drive; using SharePoint lets users select individual slides in what Microsoft calls a SharePoint Slide Library. And users can be automatically notified when a shared slide is changed (so you'll know when a slide you've incorporated has been updated with the new company logo, for example).
SharePoint pioneered several technologies that Office SharePoint Server now incorporates, such as workflow: You can track the status of documents or start new workflows with Office SharePoint Server, or create a workflow that automates document review and approval routing. There's more document management via check-in/check-out for documents, as well as versioning. You can also employ Office SharePoint Server 2007 with policies (a set is included with the product), such as labeling, expiration and auditing, with flexibility to assign policies to an entire site, a specific list of files or a particular content type.
Microsoft has learned a lot about search since Office 2003. Using Office SharePoint Server, you can conduct a search across a wide range of file types, then use filters to limit results. Speaking of file types, you can create HTML-based views of Excel worksheets and upload them to SharePoint and allow others to view the data. Likewise, an Excel PivotTable can be manipulated through a display on an Office SharePoint Server site, though the underlying data is protected. It's a good way to introduce business intelligence into an organization.
Access, which gets a user interface update in the 2007 release, lets you upload your Access data to a SharePoint Server, thus allowing you to use the server's backup, revision history and user access features.
The upgrade decision
Should you move to Office 2007? The question comes down to how you view two key issues that are the same for individual users and enterprises alike: training and productivity.
The first issue is how quickly you or the users you support will be able to adapt to the new interface and how much (re)training will be required. How will experienced users react to (or rebel against) this menuless version?
Experienced (power) users are likely to find the interface restrictive. For users who mourn the loss of the classic menus, all is not lost. If you want to do a word count, the shortcut in previous versions of Word is Alt+T and then W. That still works -- when you press Alt+T, Word pops up a window that says it recognizes the shortcut and tells you to proceed. When you press W", Word displays the Word Count dialog box. Thus, if you remember the shortcuts from Word 2003, you can still use them. Microsoft eliminated the menu system, so there are no visual clues to help remind you of the shortcut, but at least the shortcuts work. (Power users can also make use of an application's Quick Access toolbar, Office 2007's single customizable toolbar, where you can place your favorite toolbar icons.)
Beginning or occasional users may profit from the ribbon-centric interface, but such users are a much smaller portion of the workforce these days.
One consequence of the new interface Microsoft is mum about: The user interface makes all previous materials (such as books on Office applications) outdated. Corporate training courses will have to be rewritten. Almost every instruction will need to be examined and, most likely, corrected. An individual user's reference library is of significantly diminished use; while the keyboard shortcuts work, some dialog boxes and task panels have changed, which could lead to confusion.
Another issue when considering an upgrade is how much of a productivity improvement you can expect. Are many tasks easier as Microsoft claims? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. While many ribbon features are where you might expect, some design choices are puzzling. Why is header and footer control on the Insert ribbon and not Page Layout, since headers and footers typically appear on each page? Our guess: because header/footer control was part of the Insert main menu in previous versions. Sometimes Microsoft puts pretty ahead of functional: When you select Insert/Header, why is the drop-down menu stuffed with formatting options instead of leading with "Edit header," which allows a user to enter header text simply and easily?
There's no doubt there are benefits to the contextual tabs. When you create a header or edit an existing header, Word switches the ribbon to a special Header/Footer ribbon that offers some rarely used (because you can't find them) options, such as letting you set a different header on the first page of a document. (In Word, this is inexplicably hidden in the Page Setup section. In Word 2007, its location makes far more sense.) This is just one example of how Word works with you to highlight options you need just when you need them (see Figure 12). That could reduce help desk/tech support calls.
The inflexibility of the ribbon interface could also be a plus for the help desk, because users can't mess with the interface. Resolving user problems should be easier, because the support technician can rely on a consistent, not custom, interface among users. (The streamlined menu -- where options that weren't used could be suppressed on an application's menu -- is also gone, removing yet another help desk headache.)
On the other hand, the new interface could put a temporary strain on the help desk or tech support, as users struggle to find their favorite or most-used commands. In our view, the ribbon's arrangements of buttons and icons is hit or miss. Microsoft says its testing shows that users pick up the new interface quickly. We're not so sure. While we found where most of our commands had moved and grew more comfortable with the interface after about four hours, the average enterprise user may not be so patient or forgiving.
There's no question that Office 2007 is going to take some adjustment and will affect productivity, at least initially. Will the new interface eventually kick in and lead to improved productivity? We're not sure, and any improvements may be minor and not compensate for the headache any upgrade brings. Enterprises must explore these areas when making upgrade decisions.
Other considerations
Though not new in Office 2007, the suite now uses a Zip-compatible XML-based file structure. In Office 2003, this format was available as an option; in Office 2007, it's the default. While you can still open and edit .DOC files in Word, files are automatically saved in DOCX format.
These new file formats are not backward-compatible with earlier versions, though Microsoft has said that a conversion add-in will be available for Office XP and 2003 users.
There's no doubt that using XML helps other applications expose data contained in Office documents. The format also chops a document into several pieces, improving the likelihood of successful data recovery (with Office 2007, an inability to recover one portion of a file doesn't impair recovery of the rest, as is now the case).
What if you adopt Office 2007 but your clients, customers or collaborators don't? You will have to be diligent in saving files to the "standard" (non-XML) formats, such as DOC, XLS and PPT. For how long? Word 2000 and Word XP use is still heavy, which leads us to believe such diligence will be needed for several years.
Bundles
Application bundling in Office suites has changed. OneNote, a product that hasn't gained much traction (it's of limited use to most users) is now part of the Enterprise, Home and Student versions. The Student version drops Outlook because, Microsoft says, students typically use online e-mail and thus don't need an e-mail client -- which ignores Outlook's good task and calendar features. A full list of which applications are in each version can be found at www.microsoft.com/office/preview/suites.mspx.
Enterprise versions are expected to be available later this year (most likely in November), with the consumer versions due at the beginning of 2007.
Your bottom line
For the individual user struggling to use Word, an intermediate user who wants to get more done with Excel or an office worker who could benefit from seeing multiple calendars at once, Office 12's new interface and updated graphics are welcome, but may not be sufficiently compelling to justify an upgrade. Pricing is available at www.microsoft.com/office/preview/pricing.mspx.