The New York Times has taken a look at Microsoft Office 2007. “After a radical redesign, Word, Excel and PowerPoint are almost totally new programs. There are no more floating toolbars; very few tasks require opening dialog boxes, and even the menu bar itself is gone. (Evidently, even Microsoft saw the need for a major feature purge. ‘We had some options in there that literally did nothing,’ said Paul Coleman, a product manager.)”
Microsoft is one of the few products from Microsoft that doesn’t royally suck; if they could translate that thinking into their operating system, it would be a nice environment to use.
It seems that whilst Microsoft Office has become more consistant with the user interface, Windows Vista has gone a step back, with graphical problems that arise in some applications due to Microsofts hell bent ‘backwards compatibility for ever’ mantra.
I think that office is more like THE app of apps. IT’s been around for sooo long, it has brilliant features (even though it’s always possible to want more) and it’s been on top for so long.
The whole thing about office is that when you think about what it done to human evolution it deserves its own chapter in history.
Think about it, before Office, typewriters were commonware. Think about how many budgets, and business plans that have been made, spread and thoroughly checked in Excel. Think how many presentations that has been written and done in Powerpoint that otherwise would have been made with pen and paper and copied instead of spread through mail. Geee, time saving is the least you could say.
MS OFfice is simply not just their flagship, it’s the flagship of IT with possible the exception of e-mail.
Give me a freaking break. There were spreadsheets, word processors and presentation software well before the arrival of MS-Office.
You might also want to look into the fact that with the sole exception of Excel, which was primarily developed in-house, all the other programs that made up Microsoft Office were purchased by Microsoft from existing companies, renamed and “integrated”
Spare us the rewriting of computing history with a Microsoft-slant, will you.
And yes, Microsoft Office is a half-way decent office suite. If only, it could save to standard formats (and by that we mean ODF, not a 6000-page full-of-binary-blogs spec) that did not make us feel chained to Microsoft, my place of employment would actually consider purchasing Office 2007 as we have tested it and like it quite a bit.
Yeah, really…he seems to forget that for a good few years WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 were king of the hill…Wordstar was also quite popular back in the days.
Mmmmmmmmmmmm Wordstar
Here, try joe for *nix for all your Wordstar goodness.
Although the person who you replied to was going a little overboard as to what Microsoft Office can actually do; one has to remember what ‘life was like before Microsoft Office’ – if one wishes to use such a hyperbole.
Before Microsoft Office, you had Wordperfect, Wordstar, Lotus 1-2-3, Hardvard Graphics and DBase; all were great as stand alone applications – then again, there weren’t any real alternatives to those at the time.
The came along Microsoft Office; not only was it ‘everything’ one needed on a single product, it ran on Windows, it was WYSIWYG and most importantly, you could share data between the different applications; import word files into databases, inport a spread sheet into a word processing file and edit it with all the power of a spreadsheet available.
The old applications died because they failed to adapt; if all them got together, made themselves available for Windows, and that one ‘super company’ created the same sort of integrated kit that Microsoft provided, we’d be talking about “Hyperthetical Office 2007”.
Jeeze…spare me the blather about how Microsoft integrated everything. It’s touching but wrong. You still have multiple file formats and extensions because all of the elements of MSOffice came from different Companies. If you’re looking for integration, look at GoBe’s Productive… one format for their Word Processor, Spreadsheet, & Drawing, and tight integration between them. Too bad they crapped out as a Company, because they had a good idea.
I’ve got one question for Office 2007 testers… what size are the files it creates? MSOffice 2003 creates bloated pigs for files, full of worthless
bullshit and gobledegook. Look at OpenOffice. Better yet, do the same thing in each and see what the file sizes are.
And last but not least… MSOffice embeds formatting rules even when you don’t want them. I’ve talked to other “casual” users, and they’ve run into the same problem – the page you’re working on suddenly reformats differently for no appearent reason, and without asking.
I don’t think Gobe had the right idea. Nifty but limited word processor, sucky spreadsheet…where was the database?
The real solution is to have any word processor embed a spreadsheet object that can be opened up and edited in any spreadsheet you want-not just the source app. This way you could use the best word processor from one company and the best spreadsheet from another and they would all be integrated.
It would also be based on the datatype/translator concept so that you don’t have 5 zillion alternative office suites each with their half baked .doc implementation. You’d use the best translator with the best apps
>I’ve got one question for Office 2007 testers… what size are the files it creates? MSOffice 2003 creates bloated pigs for files, full of worthless
bullshit and gobledegook.
Fortunately they are much smaller in O2K7.
Here are some samples from my folders, same documents in both formats:
Word 2003 vs. Word 2007:
.doc: 623KB
.docx: 351KB
Excel 2003 vs. Excel 2007:
.xls: 78KB
.xlsx: 39KB
PowerPoint 2003 vs. PowerPoint 2007:
.ppt: 724KB
.pptx: 136KB
This is hilariours!
You might also want to look into the fact that with the sole exception of Excel, which was primarily developed in-house, all the other programs that made up Microsoft Office were purchased by Microsoft from existing companies, renamed and “integrated”
May I then add that Excel is what really is the flagship of OFfice then if that makes you happier. Excel excels its competition, and it does it’s job well. For instance, isn’t it odd that OOo (and many others) can’t draw proper charts? Excel has done this in a decent way for a decade. in OOo it’s just recently they even though about adopting multiple X and Y axis.
And yes, Microsoft Office is a half-way decent office suite. If only, it could save to standard formats (and by that we mean ODF, not a 6000-page full-of-binary-blogs spec)
Half way decent? I’ve personally worked with GoBE Productive, OOo, 602 PC Suite, Corel Office, and tried some others. THe only one I fancied was GoBe for some interesting integration points they’ve done. Besides from that, Corel is actually the only one in the league here. However, they’re software is just not sleak, and therefor not adopted even remotely close to Office.
This ODF thing is a good initiative, but it’s ust so funny to see someone mumbling about this as ODF has only been around for, what is it, a year? It’s just now ODF is getting interesting, have never been. Also note I never said that I approve of Microsofts methods etc etc.. I only said that Office is a brilliant app.
But just to fan the flames of discontent. Since you say “Half decent office suite”, that means you probably never worked properly with an office suite. the whole thing about your 6000 page full of xml specs and disregarding features would make me wonder if you actually are more of the Text editor/Abiword character (which unfortunately is not seldom of visitors here). So just spare us your views as you obviously ain’t using or have used a percent of what Office can do and are doing for users all over the world!
//Since you say “Half decent office suite”, that means you probably never worked properly with an office suite. the whole thing about your 6000 page full of xml specs and disregarding features would make me wonder if you actually are more of the Text editor/Abiword character (which unfortunately is not seldom of visitors here). So just spare us your views as you obviously ain’t using or have used a percent of what Office can do//
So you are saying that Office 2007 is massive overkill in functionality, and way, way too expensive, for 99% of the users out there in the real world?
Fine then. They can all use OpenOffice, and the remaining 1% can use Office 2007. That would mean barely any re-training required for 99% of office application users, too. Perfect solution, really, except that the 1% would be non-compliant with international industry standards.
PS: Abiword+Gnumeric+Inkscape+GIMP = GNOME Office
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Office
which would also more than satisfy the needs of 99% of office application users, as would KOffice.
All of Abiword+Gnumeric+Inkscape+GIMP are cross-platform applications, so like OpenOffice you can run GNOME Office on Windows. When KDE 4 comes out it too will be cross-platform, so you will be able to run KOffice on Windows too, if you want.
That leaves Office 2007 as one of the few Office suites that are so restricted as to be available only on one (or at most two) platforms.
Edited 2007-01-22 08:44
LoL
PS: Abiword+Gnumeric+Inkscape+GIMP = GNOME Office
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Office
which would also more than satisfy the needs of 99% of office application users, as would KOffice.
As it stand today, it seems more like 5% at best seems to agree with you. Otherwise we would’ve seen these softwares with market share, not MSOffice.
Oh, don’t think so? Well, people are not scared of alternatives and WILL use them if they actually stand up to what they claim. I think Firefox proves that quite well thank you.
“Spare us the rewriting of computing history with a Microsoft-slant, will you.”
Yes, please do!
Haicube,
I agree with you. While others came before, and coexist now, I don’t think it is a stretch to sa that no other suite has had such an impact on the career of individuals as well as the economies of the world.
When you think about it in this context, suddenly the high cost of Office is actually not that bad. And I stress, in that context because yes, I realize there are cheaper and free alternatives.
“The whole thing about office is that when you think about what it done to human evolution it deserves its own chapter in history. ”
I don’t think so because 100 years from now, nobody will be able to use any of those files that were locked in a proprietary or unreadable format.
That’s why ODF is so important.
“That’s why ODF is so important.”
What guarantees do we have that ODF will even be around in 100 years? Or that in the next 100 years there isn’t a breaking change (or 10) made to the ODF format? And if there is a breaking change made, will there still be OS’s even capable of running a 100 year old application that can read the older formats?
Nothing is ever locked in stone. Look how much Linux has changed in the past decade, much less 100 years. At least most 20+ year old DOS apps can still be run on virtually any version of Windows. Which actually means that 100 years from now, there very well still could be apps for Windows that can read 100 year old office formats.
ODF means nothing to most of the world.
//What guarantees do we have that ODF will even be around in 100 years? Or that in the next 100 years there isn’t a breaking change (or 10) made to the ODF format? And if there is a breaking change made, will there still be OS’s even capable of running a 100 year old application that can read the older formats? //
You clearly do not understand “open format” and “future proof”.
When a document is saved in ODF format, it indicates in the document itself “ODF 1.0 format”.
ODF 1.0 format will always be ODF 1.0. It is known officially as “ISO/IEC 26300:2006 Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0”. ISO.
This version is fully and completely defined here:
http://www.iso.org/iso/en/CatalogueDetailPage.CatalogueDetail?CSNUM…
This version will always be the same, so this definition (of the 1.0 version of the format) will never alter. If you get a digital document in twenty years time and it calls itself a ODF v1.0 format document, then the definition I linked to will still describe exactly the format of the document.
There are no “secret recipes” here. No hidden gotchas, no lock-ins.
//Look how much Linux has changed in the past decade, much less 100 years. //
Version 0.1 of Linux (original version that Linus released in 1990) is still version 0.1 of Linux.
If you get Linux now, it will be something like version 2.6.20.
These are not the same, but nevertheless version 0.1 released in 1990 is still version 0.1. I could probably run it (version 0.1) fine (after being recompiled for whatever platform) to this very day.
Once it is open, it is open.
//At least most 20+ year old DOS apps can still be run on virtually any version of Windows. Which actually means that 100 years from now, there very well still could be apps for Windows that can read 100 year old office formats. //
This is where you are very, very mistaken. If it is closed, you only have a binary. You need an X86 machine, for a start. It is quite possible that there will be zero X86 machines on the planet in twenty years time.
Linux runs on everything from wristwatches through to “big iron” mainframes … because the source is available. It needs only to be recompiled for a given machine.
You can’t do that with DOS, or Windows, or any other program with a closed-source dependency.
If I have the source and a full definition I can run a program as old as you want. I could run a FORTH program from 1970 (before X86 was even an idea in someone’s head):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FORTH
… as long as I have the source for FORTH and the source for the program in question.
http://www.thefreecountry.com/compilers/forth.shtml
Edited 2007-01-22 12:06
//And if there is a breaking change made, will there still be OS’s even capable of running a 100 year old application that can read the older formats?//
Just to be clear here, I will re-state this as clearly as I can:
If I have a full specification of ODF Vn.n, a digital document which identifies itself as being formatted in ODF Vn.n, and the source code for an application that claims to handle ODF Vn.n files, then yes I should be able to run it and read the document in 100 years time.
Can’t do that with closed source applications and proprietary formats.
Edited 2007-01-22 12:34
It is not at all clear that Office has done very much for decision making or productivity. In fact, it has probably taken senior management backwards.
In the days before PowerPoint, it was customary to write position papers, which you thought about carefully while writing them longhand, because changing drafts on a typewriter was highly time consuming. Position papers were presented at meetings where everyone was expected to have read them carefully in advance. The presenter was subject to detailed intelligent questioning. There was a signed record of the reasons for a recommendation.
By contrast, look at minutes now, and you will find attached a series of mostly empty pages of paper with a few bullet points whose meaning has been forgotten if it was ever understood.
Because Excel did not exist, financial scenarios were not modelled in inordinate detail. People admitted they could not forecast margins in year 4 on 20 product variants to three decimal places. Instead, we had illustrative numbers, and people were called to defend the proposition that there were lots of plausible ways that they could be brought about. The result was less detail but more understanding, and more informed argument about the basics of the business proposition. Now, you will find what people mean by a business case is a huge model filled with macros which no-one but the authors understands – and research has shown they are anyway riddled with programming errors. One case is specified in enormous detail. What is needed is to look at three or four in far less, and figure out what can go wrong and what right, but the culture of Excel use makes it impossible.
Finally, because typewritten documents were visually boring, people spent more time on content both as readers and writers. With the advent of the Word macro and stylesheets, we have whole company departments turning themselves into amateur desktop publishing departments. Just find out how much time the average HR unit spends on document production now, as opposed to actually managing compensation and benefits and policy. You will be amazed and appalled.
So no, Office suites have been technically a huge step forwards, but for management productivity they have been a disaster.
And this is not even mentioning the productivity disaster that WTSIWYG in Word Processors, which makes it impossible to focus on content of writing, instead of being distracted at every turn by choices about the layout.
Never thought, in the early days of the Office suite, that it would turn out like this. What a liberation it seemed then. Illusory.
“Microsoft is one of the few products from Microsoft that doesn’t royally suck;”
you know the joke : microsoft products will not suck only the day they will release a vacuum cleaner.
“The bad news, of course, is that this Office bears very little resemblance to the one you may have spent years learning. Virtually everything has been moved around or renamed. Count on a couple of weeks of frustration as you play the free bonus game called Find the Feature.”
This is going to be sheer hell for normal users. My girlfriend refuses to touch OpenOffice on the grounds that it was to hard for her to find functions she knew from MSOffice. I can’t see her touching this new version. Her collegues can barely bang out a simple document now. These are teachers by the way. Luckily school budgets being what they are there’s no danger of them upgrading soon.
My wife is a student in a program that is very heavily MS Office oriented. When I showed her Office 2007, she wanted nothing to do with it. It was too different from her and said she wouldn’t use it unless school went to it.
I almost had her satisfied with OO.o before she got into this program. My occasional classes typically accept pdf, so OO.o is just fine for me. For documents sent to my consulting business cients, I would rather send PDFs so they don’t see erroneous grammar and spelling notifications scattered about. They’ve never had a hang up about it.
The UI changes might make people not want to switch, or switch to OO.o as it keeps improving (and is free). Now if they could only add the Outline mode to OO.o…
I still think MS should have included ODF support. They could have if they had wanted to, that much is clear. The reason they didn’t want to should be obvious to everyone.
That said, I’ll probably end up using the new Office some time in the future…though I don’t think my company is going to move away from Office 2003 for at least a couple of years.
“Now if they could only add the Outline mode to OO.o…
“
Have you tried using the “Navigator” in OOo? The UI is certainly different, but it seems to me that it facilitates the functionality from Outline mode.
How can it gone from bloated to sleek when memory consumption has gone up from about 15MB to about 35MB?
The new office apps no longer load ‘instantaneously’ either.
Office 2007 is a horrible change. The change to the UI was unnecessary for most people. No businesses I work with have any interests in changing to it, anytime soon because of that.
>>How can it gone from bloated to sleek when memory consumption has gone up from about 15MB to about 35MB?
OpenOffice devs would kill to get their memory consumption down to 35MB. That’s a dream compared to the bloated pig that is OpenOffice.
35 MB is roughly a Java Swing hello world program.
35 MB is roughly a Java Swing hello world program.
But that means Office 2007 should be around 250 MB, as it needs Windows running, right?
Who remembers the idea of the paperless office?
I find it interesting that the the major program used in business today for the creation of data is generally for the creation of data in the form of a printed A4 page.
Just seems strange to me.
paperless office makes as much sense as having all your email on your hard drive, when a crash could knock it off, or on the web, making you totally dependent on the provider.
There’s this little thing called backups to prevent this very thing.
Backups mean nothing when the power goes out or the network is down. Our entire organization grinds to a halt if the computers are down.
If the power goes out, everything else in your office functions except for the computers? Phones, lights, A/C, the works? If not do you guys just break out the Colemans and read files off paper out a window? I mean, yeah, if your network is down, certain functions of a “paperless” office are definitely compromised, but under the proper circumstances, ANY system would fail. So, merely stating a circumstance that a technology fails upon does not refute its merits unless the circumstance is common, pervasive, and completely unavoidable.
That’s because of the obsession with WYSIWYG interfaces that are little more than type writer emulators oriented towards printed documents. WYSIWYG goes against the very idea of having display/media independent documents and data.
Personally, I dream of a day when all documents are written in a high level abstract markup and “compiled” into their final forms as the need arises.
“Personally, I dream of a day when all documents are written in a high level abstract markup and “compiled” into their final forms as the need arises.”
In universities, we still have LaTeX. It does everything you want. And it’s turing-complete too.
Change – it is inevitable. The only question is, will you accept it and go along with it?
I agree, Office 2007 UI is a very big change, but a welcome one. I for one totally love it, everything is just that much more intuitive now.
For those who find it too hard to relearn (it took me like 5 minutes to get accustomed), I’d suggest you stay away from computers, period.
The problem these days is that people don’t learn how to do things with computers, they learn where a certain functionality lies.
And if something is a just a little bit out of place (the name is a bit different, the icon is different, or the menu position is not exactly the same) then it’s “god forbid I canno’t work like this” and they call the IT staff to fix things.
Oh, and the biggest problem of all, when they somehow happen to make a menu or column dissapear, then they have absolutely no idea of how to get it back!
Such people really don’t belong behind computers, but who ever said that the world was perfect?
Nobody is currently forcing anybody to upgrade to Office 2007, so I don’t see what the real fuss is about.
If Office 2003 or even Office 2000 satisfies all your needs, then just keep on using it.
People also tend to forget where the MS Office suit power lies. It’s not in creating a presentation or a document, it is collaborating it!
Although Office 2007 does have some extra candy in it to make it more appealing – the UI and the presentation layer.
And what on earth is the problem with Word using 35MB instead of 25?!? Big deal. If your going to pay a couple of hundred $$$ for an Office suit, you may as well buy some extra memory, if your PC is so low on it.
//I agree, Office 2007 UI is a very big change, but a welcome one. I for one totally love it, everything is just that much more intuitive now.
For those who find it too hard to relearn (it took me like 5 minutes to get accustomed), I’d suggest you stay away from computers, period. //
Tell this to people who are disabled (especially blind or near-blind). These people use screen-magnifiers and have learned every single keyboard shortcut and menu-key-sequence in Office off by heart.
Are you going to be the one to re-train them for “the ribbon”?
(In your answer, please bear in mind the Microsoft used “access for the disabled” as an objection for ODF adoption).
//Such people really don’t belong behind computers, but who ever said that the world was perfect? //
So are you going to be the one to sack all the disabled people who must use a computer as part of their job just so you can roll in Office 2007 and cost your company/organisation millions of dollars in the process?
>Tell this to people who are disabled (especially blind or near-blind). These people use screen-magnifiers and have learned every single keyboard shortcut and menu-key-sequence in Office off by heart.
All the same keyboard shortcuts work and there are even more of them.
“All of the keyboard shortcuts in Office continue to work exactly as they did in previous versions. In fact, we’re doing more in the UI to advertise the keyboard shortcuts and adding new ones based on usage data.”
http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/13/480568.aspx
Update: http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/04/12/574930.aspx
Those pages also tell about the KeyTips that activate when Alt is pressed. Makes learning shortcuts even easier than before.
About screen readers, the latter link has this part:
“You can use the arrow keys and Tab to navigate the Ribbon, letting the accessibility aid (such as a screen reader) identify the controls you have selected. Because the Ribbon uses dialog box-like navigation, it provides enhanced accessibility compared to the old toolbars.”
hi guys, in its review, pogue tells us word2007 find the error in “I need to loose 10 pounds.”
could you please tell what is wrong with this sentence ?(i am still learning english)
//hi guys, in its review, pogue tells us word2007 find the error in “I need to loose 10 pounds.”
could you please tell what is wrong with this sentence ?(i am still learning english)//
“lose” and “loose” are both correctly-spelled words, but they mean different things.
“loose” means not-tight, sloppy, liable-to-come-undone.
“lose” means (effectively) the opposite of “find”, or the opposite of “gain”.
So the correct spelling in the phrase you quoted is actually: ‘I need to lose 10 pounds’.
Strangely enough, “lose” rhymes with “choose” and “loose” rhymes with “moose”.!!!
Edited 2007-01-22 06:46
And the context sensitive spell checking alone might make Office 2k7 worth it, unfortunately most people seem to be unable to spell, which makes reading reading reports a gruelling exercise.
I hate reading reading reports too..
Sleek? Geoworks Ensemble was “sleek” back in its day, but that’s because it included vector and bitmap drawing apps, a decent word processor, a basic spreadsheet, and a nice drag-and-drop filemanager plus its own multithreaded multitasking kernel into roughly 13MB of disk space (with fonts and everything included), and because it would run on a 286 box with 1MB of RAM and a CGA card.
Office does a lot more than GWE, but the ratio of size to functionality is vastly in GWE’s favor.
Office 2007 might be smaller and faster than its predecessors, but I think calling it “sleek” is a misuse of the word. Elephants might be smaller than sperm whales, but that doesn’t make them a “sleek” mammal…
This is really true that Office 2007’s interface is completely new, easy to use, and polished which again give reasons to buy it. Microsoft have done great work in interface design for this new Office…Nice Job!
Over the years, Microsoft has added toolbars Word for everything. You could display so many that you barely had visible room to display your document. The difference in the look will likely be helpful, as you’ll actually be able to use toolbar functionality and see your document at the same time.
I only have one hope after 16 years of using MS Word: keep the screenshots in the same place when I edit a document. It’s the only word processor that really has terrible problems with keeping things in order.
Well, for advanced users, the interface doesn’t matter much. I rarely use the menus and all anyway.
New users may find it more useful I suppose. I am more interested in what they have done to improve accuracy, because it wasn’t very good for some uses, or at least, as accurate as would be hoped.