My pros and cons of Word 2007
I’ve been using Word 2007 for a couple of months. And no, I don’t have to just because I work at Microsoft. I use Office all day, and I love to see what new features are coming. And in this release, Office has a lot to offer. It has by far more useful changes than previous versions of Office. In fact, for me it’s been the most exciting update to Office I’ve seen. It helps me get things done faster and create more compelling documents. If you want, try Office 2007 and Word 2007 yourself. Here are some of the pros and cons of what I’ve found about Word 2007 so far.
Pros
The new user interface: The UI—organized by task—really helps me get work done. The new UI is organized around ribbons— which replace of the old menus and toolbars. The ribbons include the most commonly-needed commands in task-orientated categories. For example, when you open Word you get commands related to fonts, paragraphs, styles, and editing, because those are the tools people use most often when they start writing. Once you’re used to the ribbons (it took me about a day to adjust to them) they make Word and the other Office applications much easier to use. By far, the new UI is the biggest improvement in Word and make the upgrade worth the effort.
Chart and table tools: The new tools to create and design charts can help you design a professional-looking chart in less then 5 minutes. Gone are the days when it takes a power user to present a well-formatted, easy-to-read table or chart. The image below shows the tools to help design a table, but designing charts is just as easy. The second image is a table I made in about two minutes. What’s really great is that the design tools and options are consistent with those in PowerPoint 2007 and Excel 2007. You can paste charts or tables between these programs and use the same tools to update them.
Blogging: That’s right—you can blog right from Word 2007. You can use the same Word features that make writing easier and faster, such as spell checker, and then publish to your blog. You can learn more at Blogging from Word 2007.
Ongoing word count: This simple feature really shouldn’t excite me that much, but as an editor word count is important to me. In Word 2007, the document's word count shows in the status bar next the page count. This feature can also be helpful for writer and students.
Styles preview: In Word 2007—and throughout other Office 2007 applications—you can preview styles before making changes to the text. In previous versions, you would have to make the change numerous times if you didn’t like the result.
Cons
- New file formats: Word 2007 saves documents in the new XML-based .docx format, which isn’t compatible with the .doc format used in earlier versions. While you can save your documents so that they will be compatible with earlier versions of Office, I forget to all the time. As a result, my colleagues send back my documents asking me to save them so that it’s compatible with their versions. Once more people are running Office 2007, compatibility won’t be a problem.
- Styles changes: The default styles for things like Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3 have changed from previous versions of Office. It's not a huge thing, but a bit rattling. I'm sure I can adjust. In addition, I couldn’t get Word 2007 to use my old styles.
Simply said, a lot of people are going to be happy with Word 2007. (The same can be said about the other Office applications, but I’m more comfortable commenting on Word since I’ve use it more.) Give Office 2007 a try and let me know what you think.
—Jason Kozleski
Comments
Anonymous
September 12, 2006
I like and use the Office 2007 too (since Beta 1)
btw, you could tell them to download and install the following plugin:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/converter.mspx
"The Compatibility Pack (Beta 2) is available for Microsoft Office XP and Office 2003."
solves 2 problems @ once :)Anonymous
September 12, 2006
<quote>Once more people are running Office 2007, compatibility won’t be a problem.
</quote>
You don't need to run Office 2007 to view the docx (or other new file formats) files. There will be a public patch released for earlier versions of Office (I think there's one already up on the beta website for the testers).Anonymous
September 12, 2006
There will be support for the new file format for old versions of Office.
A link to the older version is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/converter.mspx
Not sure if that is the latest...
-RobAnonymous
September 13, 2006
It took some time for me to get used to the ribbons instead of the traditional file menus and finding the save as menu was quite the journey, but I am now comfortable with the new UI. It sure is purty! My one con so far is also the default saving of files with the .docx extension. I saved files to my thumb drive only to get to work and find out that I couldn't open them in Office XP. Overall I agree with Jason and am impressed with Office 2007.Anonymous
September 13, 2006
"Styles changes: The default styles for things like Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3 have changed from previous versions of Office. It's not a huge thing, but a bit rattling. I'm sure I can adjust. In addition, I couldn’t get Word 2007 to use my old styles."
It IS a huge thing!Anonymous
September 13, 2006
The comment about backward compatibility is true, but it's not a problem. I did this the other day and could not read a file at home where I have 2003 running. But, I was able to download the converter, which worked fine, and thus was able to quickly get to work at home on the docx file.Anonymous
September 13, 2006
Pro's
I really like the ribbon menu setup. Takes a little learning but becomes easier with use.
Con''
It seems you cannot print any TOC correctly. The page numbers in the TOC change when you use the print command. Actual page numbers stay the same but TOC does change. You must reset TOC after each print attempt and printouts are incorrect.Anonymous
September 13, 2006
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 13, 2006
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 13, 2006
I like the easy access to various commands in Office 2007 programs as well I find it to be somewhat faster than 2003. The colour scheme looks very classy as well. You can be sure that I will be updating as soon as it becomes available. Thank you for a fine product!Anonymous
September 13, 2006
I like the Office 2007 easy access to program commands making it easy to use. I also find that idt loads and runs faster than 2003. I also like the colour scheme, it's very classy. I will be obtaining 2007 as soon as it is released. Thank you for a fine product.Anonymous
September 17, 2006
If other people aren't willing to download the Compatibility Pack (presumably not a problem at Microsoft), you can make the Word 97-2003 format the default. Go to the Windows menu, click Word Options at the bottom, click Save in the left column, then change the "Save files in this format:" drop-down list.Anonymous
September 28, 2006
Glad I'm not the only one to not celebrate the new UI. I'm used to it now but agree that having the option to use the older one would've been nice. At least it was an easy way to test & tweak thru beta.... Like the template feature too but wish I could "save" the template search results while downloading a selection. The smart art tool - way cool though.8 out of 10 for meAnonymous
October 01, 2006
In general I like the programme. What I do not like is the lack of facility to insert text from other files/folders/sources. It used to be so easy. Now there is an excellent facility for pictures, but not text. Grrrrrr !Much gnashing of teeth !!Anonymous
October 02, 2006
That tip from Taqus was very, very helpful. Thanks. My partner is in a remote island in the Solomon Islands. I sent her a very long but important document she wasn't able to open, and I can now see how it all went wrong. Thanks.Anonymous
October 06, 2006
Thanks for the heads up on Office 2007. I work for www.yourtechonline.com as a technician and we are testing out Windows Vista and Office 2007 now too. I am very excited about the upcoming changes. Love your site.Anonymous
October 20, 2006
Since installing 2007 betatr2 i cannot insert page numbers when i try i get following message. The Office Open XML file Building Blocks.dotx cannot be opened because there are problems with the contents. All worked well before the tr update. i have tried going back, all is well, the the same problem when tr2 installedAnonymous
October 21, 2006
i have some problem in direct mailing from word 2007, i make a file attached n open in to ms outlook 2007. instead mailing directly from word 2007Anonymous
October 23, 2006
Office 2007...one word... AWESOME.Anonymous
October 26, 2006
My great big CON is the new UI. I've spent time learning the Word UI over the years. Now I have to learn it all over again. Sheesh. I wish MS had given me a way to use the old menus, as well as offering the new.Anonymous
October 26, 2006
Insert file does not work - it loses headers, margins change. I can't see business upgrading as much as home users. I still have Windows 2000 with Office 97. The ability to work with the old menus would have been ideal.Anonymous
November 03, 2006
The comment has been removedAnonymous
November 09, 2006
How does the new Office work wirh screen readers such as JAWS? As a blind user I need the menu bar to work. I do not use the mouse and I have a freind with no vision who not only does not use the mouse he does not even have a mointor.Anonymous
November 11, 2006
Well I'm very happy with the new interface because it is going to generate a lot of work if 2007 catches on in our computer training business, but sadly I suspect it will not be as popular as Microsoft might wish. I used Word 2007 Beta for a couple of months but found it too pretty and slow as a result. Most of my students just need the basic features and these are already available in Office 2003. There was a big problem getting 2007 uninstalled and reloading 2003. I will not do that again as I'm staying with 2003 until I see some major improvements in the new interface.Anonymous
November 18, 2006
Outlook 2007 does not give you anything much over Outlook 2003 except that it hangs and is a lot slower The last upgrade to Office 2007 added admin features which prevented me from reading Word 97 format files. So far I haven't been able to fix it. Microsofts work around doesn't work!Anonymous
November 22, 2006
After using Word 2007 for several weeks I have found that the ribbons contain many commands/icons which I will never use and take up valuable desktop space — so I have copied those icons/commands that I use on a daily basis for all of my generic documents up to my Home Ribbon and minimized the other ribbons and now I have a much larger work space, access to the icons I use on a daily basis, keystrokes I use do not need icons, and in the case of a highly formatted or technical document, I can open up a ribbon!! It works for me!Anonymous
March 28, 2008
PingBack from http://employmentwagesblog.info/tiptalk-from-microsoft-at-home-at-work-my-pros-and-cons-of-word-2007/Anonymous
June 14, 2009
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