Do you prefer MS Office 2007 or previous versions?

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pianowizard · #1 Post by **pianowizard** » Sun May 20, 2007 1:31 pm

My institution just got a license for Microsoft Office 2007 and I installed it on my Dell desktop. It's not a top-of-the-line computer but nevertheless has fairly good specs (see my sig). The program is soooooooo sluggish! Whenever I switch from one document to another, the program freezes for about 2 to 3 second, which is extremely annoying. Also, I hate the way the menu options have been drastically rearranged; why not just stick with the "Classic Menus"? The menus also take up too much space, leaving less room for viewing the document.

I much prefer Office 2003. How about you?

#2 Post by **ryengineer** » Sun May 20, 2007 1:35 pm

I want that office 97.

.

Office 2003 does it for me too. Office 2007 is very confusing (atleast to me) and more-or-less looks too lollipop like office XP when it first came out.

#3 Post by **gator** » Sun May 20, 2007 2:02 pm

Powerpoint 2007 messes up preseentations created with older versions of powerpoint. I hate it when I work hard on a presentation, email it, and get mail from my advisor saying it is messed up

The best thing I love about Office in generaral and 2003 in particular is backward compatibility, and Office 2007 seems to be bad in this aspect. Visually, it looks good, but that is not the only thing.

My vote is for Office 2003 till they fix Office 2007.

#4 Post by **jdhurst** » Sun May 20, 2007 2:29 pm

gator wrote:Powerpoint 2007 messes up preseentations created with older versions of powerpoint. I hate it when I work hard on a presentation, email it, and get mail from my advisor saying it is messed up <snip>

In addition, Outlook 2007 uses Word to render HTML. Word, of course, cannot properly render HTML, so Outlook 2007 messes up some of our email stores.

I guess, if the Vista and Office 2007 fleet was heading in the right direction, I would be happier. I, too, like the backward compatibility of Windows NT4/Office 97 through to Windows XP/Office 2003
... JDH

#5 Post by **AlphaKilo470** » Sun May 20, 2007 2:30 pm

I prefer Office XP because it's new enough to support lots of modern features and it's old enough that it will install on older systems and it doesn't have as large of a footprint as newer versions. I also like Office 97 for similar reasons.

pianowizard · #6 Post by **pianowizard** » Sun May 20, 2007 3:15 pm

ryengineer wrote:I want that office 97. .

AlphaKilo470 wrote:I also like Office 97 for similar reasons.

I actually had an "Office 97 or older" option but didn't click the "Add" button, so it wasn't included! Office 2000 works fine on 80486 DX4 and faster machines running Windows 95, and it's more compatible with Office XP, so I've never used Office 97 much.

#7 Post by **jdhurst** » Sun May 20, 2007 3:32 pm

AlphaKilo470 wrote:I prefer Office XP because it's new enough to support lots of modern features and it's old enough that it will install on older systems and it doesn't have as large of a footprint as newer versions. I also like Office 97 for similar reasons.

True what you write. I went Windows 95/Office 95, Windows NT4/Office 97, Windows 2000/Office 2000, Windows XP/Office XP. Office XP is certainly good enough. I finally went Office 2003 because I have clients using and I need to understand them all.
... JDH

Turbo Audi · #8 Post by **Turbo Audi** » Sun May 20, 2007 3:35 pm

I looooove Office 2007, I have the ultimate suite. Its fantastic

#9 Post by **jdhurst** » Sun May 20, 2007 4:39 pm

Turbo Audi wrote:I looooove Office 2007, I have the ultimate suite. Its fantastic

Good to know. I had planned to upgrade when I finally get to Vista. I quoted gator on PowerPoint and added my own comment on Outlook. Do either of these defects bother you?
... JDH

Temetka · #10 Post by **Temetka** » Sun May 20, 2007 4:44 pm

I just upgraded from Office 2003 Pro to Office 2007 Enterprise (thanks boss!). Office2k3 is slightly faster, but since everything is going to migrate to 2007 no matter how loud we [censored] about it, I might as well start learning it now.

I too prefer Office 97. I still have my license key and jewel case, but have lost the disc. I would love to see if it would even isntall, let alone run under Vista (my new main OS).

wolfman · #11 Post by **wolfman** » Sun May 20, 2007 7:34 pm

I think AlphaKilo470 pretty much nailed my thoughts on this as well, although I find myself using Open office more and more all the time anyway.

I wonder how this will play out in terms of open office and their allignment around the "classic" office menus vs the going forward use of the ribbon interface in the Microsoft office suite...

SafeHarbor · #12 Post by **SafeHarbor** » Sun May 20, 2007 7:53 pm

Well, I voted for 2007, but I've not much experience at all with 2003. The deal was the company needed somebody to run Vista, which they provided, to support our customers. Since I have the big box running Media Center 2005, I volunteered, but then I learned the license was only for Vista Office. So I went and spent the bucks on Vista Ultimate myself, and the company provided Office Pro 2007.

I find the ribbons pretty well organized around the way I work.

I alsothink it would badly constipate my ThinkPad.

Of course, later I learned that I could have installed Vista Office and upgraded to Ultimate for a fraction of what I paid for it outright.

This live and learn business gets old, but it's better than the alternative.

Lamar

Turbo Audi · #13 Post by **Turbo Audi** » Sun May 20, 2007 8:42 pm

jdhurst wrote:
AlphaKilo470 wrote:I prefer Office XP because it's new enough to support lots of modern features and it's old enough that it will install on older systems and it doesn't have as large of a footprint as newer versions. I also like Office 97 for similar reasons.
True what you write. I went Windows 95/Office 95, Windows NT4/Office 97, Windows 2000/Office 2000, Windows XP/Office XP. Office XP is certainly good enough. I finally went Office 2003 because I have clients using and I need to understand them all.
... JDH

Yes in fact, I forgot about this. I emailed myself a paper I wrote in .docx format. I went to the computer lab here on campus, and Word here does not support such a format. I had to upload the file to some website online, and I basically had to reformat the document manually (9 pages!). However, there is a default setting that allows you to automatically save in .doc format, which now I use.

#14 Post by **KristianJ** » Sun May 20, 2007 11:20 pm

I only really have 2007 on my T40 because of the cheap student offer I got from MS, and the copy of XP that the family has is already installed on 2 machines. As long as I save everything in the 97-2003 formats, it works fine. I don't use Outlook, so I'm not familiar with the issue described earlier. Overall I prefer XP/2003 in terms of having the classic toolbars available, but I'm slowly getting used to the ribbon on 2007.

blackwood · #15 Post by **blackwood** » Mon May 21, 2007 9:48 pm

I'm formatting my system this weekend, and I'm reverting to 2003.

I really don't like 2007.

Thane_Bitter · #16 Post by **Thane_Bitter** » Mon May 21, 2007 11:19 pm

Happy with Office XP (once Clippy & friends is shut off that is).
Oddly enough I can still check my hotmail account via Outlook; my understanding was this service was going to be discontinued (in order to sell you the exact same functionality with another new product). The DOC format has always irritated me with issues with backwards compatibility, and "machete like” format conversions. Frankly I don't see the point of spending money on a few more unused templates or themes.

pianowizard · #17 Post by **pianowizard** » Tue May 22, 2007 8:56 am

An "Office 1997 or older" option was just added by an admin/mod!

I find it very interesting that Office 2007 has received the most votes. Perhaps I will like it more once I've learned how to navigate the menus. But the sluggishness will continue to bother me.

milstein · #18 Post by **milstein** » Tue May 22, 2007 9:29 am

IMHO, the strength of Office 2007 is in OneNote 2007 and OneNote's integration with Outlook & others

OneNote 2003 is good enough but that's not included in Office 2003 as a standard package

BTW, I hate the new menus too, I heard that it can be made small in size, does anybody know how to make it smaller?

Turbo Audi · #19 Post by **Turbo Audi** » Tue May 22, 2007 10:53 am

The wide screen support for '07 is fantastic as well. Now I can have 2 documents side by side without having multiple instances of Word going. I could not figure out how to do this with '03, I am not sure you can.

Here is a pic link of a screen shot using Word '07 on my dual 22's. So much space for multiple pages.

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b284/PJTocci/here.jpg

pianowizard · #20 Post by **pianowizard** » Tue May 22, 2007 11:01 am

Turbo Audi wrote:Here is a pic link of a screen shot using Word '07 on my dual 22's. So much space for multiple pages.

Word 2003 can certainly do the same, take a look at this screenshot of my Inspiron's WUXGA display:

http://i198.photobucket.com/albums/aa13 ... 026re2.jpg

Turbo Audi · #21 Post by **Turbo Audi** » Tue May 22, 2007 11:13 am

Ah ok, I could not for the life of me figure out how to do that in 2003. Apparently I missed something.

Disregard my previous post

Stargate199 · #22 Post by **Stargate199** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 9:52 pm

I just recently got Office 2007 Ultimate through a school promotion. I absolutely love it. I was running Office XP before. My favorite new feature is that Word can now handle research material information of citations and bibliography. It is such a pain to look in my writing handbook to figure this stuff out. Now I just enter the information into work, and just press a few buttons. It is great! I also do like the new interface. I can find the features I want to use more easily instead of having to dig through menus like before. It does take some getting use to, but it is well worth it for all the features it offers.

mgo · #23 Post by **mgo** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 10:26 pm

pianowizard wrote:I much prefer Office 2003. How about you?

I kinda sorta like Office 2007. The "Ribbon" thingy takes some getting used to, but after a while, I got to appreciating it.

The big reason Office '07 is so suitable for me, is the OneNote program. A super-dooper program for taking notes & keeping a journal.

I have the Student and Teachers edition, so that muddled Outlook doesn't come with it.

Of course, one has the option of saving files in the older Office format, not the newer *.X extension which makes ones output compatible with other Office programs.

Techgurl · #24 Post by **Techgurl** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 10:36 pm

I have office 2007 on this computer and I went to send an email from outlook 2007 and I will be darned if I could not find the send button.

I had to use Thunderbird.

#25 Post by **GomJabbar** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 10:50 pm

Sorry, I use Wordperfect Office for myself. Never did really like Microsoft Office. I haven't seen or tried MS 2007 yet.

#26 Post by **gator** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 10:55 pm

Techgurl, exactly my gripe ... I pretty much know Word/Excel/Powerpoint 2003 (and previous versions) in and out, but using Office 2007 was a nightmare ... MS could have introduced the new UI gradually, instead of dumping it all over in a single go like this ... And the default saving to .docx format - well, the less said about it the better. I do know that we can save in compatibilty mode, but why the suddent move to shift to a new format, I'll probably never understand

mgo · #27 Post by **mgo** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 11:24 pm

gator wrote:Techgurl, suddent move to shift to a new format, I'll probably never understand

You may already know this....Using Word Options the default extension can be changed to the old .doc by going to Word Options\Save. Ditto for Excel, etc.

The "howto geek" website has a bunch of Office tricks that you may find helpful.

The new .docx extension allows for much smaller files, which would be useful when the user or company has tens of thousands of them and need to preserve space.

qviri · #28 Post by **qviri** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 7:29 am

gator wrote:MS could have introduced the new UI gradually, instead of dumping it all over in a single go like this ...

I'm sorry, what? Introducing it over three versions would take something like 10 years with Microsoft's product lifecycles. People would [censored] and moan about MSFT realising products that don't really change much as a moneygrab. Not to mention the horrible effects of chopping up a new UI concept and trying to somehow stuff parts of it in with a five-year-old one.

Did you work on Windows Me by any chance?

pianowizard · #29 Post by **pianowizard** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 8:06 am

qviri wrote:
gator wrote:MS could have introduced the new UI gradually, instead of dumping it all over in a single go like this ...
I'm sorry, what? Introducing it over three versions would take something like 10 years with Microsoft's product lifecycles.

I agree with gator. I also understand that "gradually" would mean "over a decade". Microsoft should have started making these gradual changes with Office 2000.

Techgurl · #30 Post by **Techgurl** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 9:37 am

gator wrote:Techgurl, exactly my gripe ... I pretty much know Word/Excel/Powerpoint 2003 (and previous versions) in and out, but using Office 2007 was a nightmare ... MS could have introduced the new UI gradually, instead of dumping it all over in a single go like this ... And the default saving to .docx format - well, the less said about it the better. I do know that we can save in compatibilty mode, but why the suddent move to shift to a new format, I'll probably never understand

Or give an option to use the "classic toolbars and menu's.

This seems like it would be easy. I heard there is a third party vendor that offers this but I forgot the name.