Do you prefer MS Office 2007 or previous versions?

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mattbiernat · #31 Post by **mattbiernat** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 1:42 pm

Office 2007 looks nice but its too hard to work with, I find Office XP and all the previous versions much easier - simply because Im used to them. I feel sorry for anyone who has to do work and was forced by the company to switch from XP to 2007.

pianowizard · #32 Post by **pianowizard** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 2:04 pm

mattbiernat wrote:I find Office XP and all the previous versions much easier

Don't forget, Office 2003 is actually newer than XP.

BigWarpGuy · #33 Post by **BigWarpGuy** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 5:36 pm

Actually I prefer OpenOffice.

http://www.openoffice.org

SHoTTa35 · #34 Post by **SHoTTa35** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 9:34 pm

Well i dunno, maybe if you're thick headed and/or have spent years using Office 97-2003 but Office 2007 is pretty sweet in my eyes. I posted a while back in the Vista is taking a shellacing in the marketplace thread about my friend that's spending money on a system and would rather the new one instead of using the "old" one. I was surprised when a couple days later she was using Excel 2007 doing some project for school and she was extatic about being able to create a table that easily. She called me at 11pm to tell me how happy she was just with that 1 feature. The next day i was helping her with some other stuff, creating (fancy) charts and all that and she was once again reminded how cumbersome that would have been in the Office 2003 trial she got in her computer was. Next we went to Word and was doing some other stuff and she was trying to copy and paste stuff from some websites as well as an Excel sheet she create. I helped her with that and she considered it "waaay easier than before" She was worried about spending that much money for Office since she's just a student and an international one at that but now she considers it the best thing she's ever spent money on, even more so than the computer she uses it on!

I don't use Office enough to consider myself a guru or anything but i always had it installed on my systems since as far back as Office 95. I think i even still have the 2 disc case and CDs it came in somewhere. I do however find myself playing with it tho just to see what i can do while before i barely used it other than when my friends sent me something to edit or just read. Now i'm on there creating stuff just to see if i can. Before i had no idea what some of the features did but with Live Preview i can check them out without applying anything.

I definitely love Office 2007 - almost makes me want to go back to school just so i have a bigger reason to use it more.

Superego · #35 Post by **Superego** » Thu Oct 04, 2007 8:31 am

My vote is for Office 2007, and I actually really like the menu interface. I don't think it eats up a lot of space, especially when I think how many toolbars I had added to the menu in Office 2003. I was duly impressed with Powerpoint 2007 when I had absolutely no problem integrating TeXPoint (LaTeX editor for Powerpoint slides) into it, whereas Powerpoint 2003 crapped out when tried to install TexPoint. I will say that if I weren't a student with a free copy I would have a hard time shelling out the cash for Office 2007.

I really like the new Equation Editor in 2007 (much much better than before), which is nice for quick, unstructured documents, but if I want something done right I do it with LaTeX!

Melvyn · #36 Post by **Melvyn** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 12:15 pm

Nobody is concerned abut it?

http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/200 ... pdate.aspx

Try doing 850*77.1 in excel 2007 and get 100,000 instead of 65535

#37 Post by **GomJabbar** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 10:41 pm

Melvyn wrote:Nobody is concerned abut it?

http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/200 ... pdate.aspx

Try doing 850*77.1 in excel 2007 and get 100,000 instead of 65535

You are right!!! My daughter has Office 2007 and I get just what you posted! I tried it in OpenOffice.org Calc spreadsheet and I get 65535, just as I get on my pocket calculator.

I wouldn't be surprised however if this isn't fixed on Update Tuesday.

mattbiernat · #38 Post by **mattbiernat** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 2:49 pm

SHoTTa35 wrote:Well i dunno, maybe if you're thick headed

yeah i am. i learned it once and i don't really like to learn all the complicated stuff again. i don't really use excel so much but when i do, i don't usually have time to figure out on my own how the application works. for people who use it everyday, im sure they will get used to the new app really fast and will like the faster accesability of some options. for me, its just a hassle, so i stick with XP version of MSoffice since its the one i feel most comfortable with.
Word 2007 looks pretty nice thou and feels nicer, but since i stopped writting long research papers i have no need for it... Instead I use word XP as a quick spell checker/dictionary or when i have to write a letter.

crashnburn · #39 Post by **crashnburn** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 8:47 pm

Superego wrote:My vote is for Office 2007, and I actually really like the menu interface. I don't think it eats up a lot of space, especially when I think how many toolbars I had added to the menu in Office 2003. I was duly impressed with Powerpoint 2007 when I had absolutely no problem integrating TeXPoint (LaTeX editor for Powerpoint slides) into it, whereas Powerpoint 2003 crapped out when tried to install TexPoint. I will say that if I weren't a student with a free copy I would have a hard time shelling out the cash for Office 2007.

I really like the new Equation Editor in 2007 (much much better than before), which is nice for quick, unstructured documents, but if I want something done right I do it with LaTeX!

I had no idea one could integrate Latex with Microsoft office products. Any other such recommendations from you would be great to hear.

ThinkPad · #40 Post by **ThinkPad** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 9:27 pm

I tried Office 2007 and totally dislike it. Everything is moved around and has become foreign to me. Now I could learn it in a few weeks and be comfortable, but why fix something that isnt broken.

ThinkPad · #41 Post by **ThinkPad** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 9:28 pm

Oh and I prefer Office 2003.

dsigma6 · #42 Post by **dsigma6** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 7:35 am

pianowizard wrote:Do you prefer MS Office 2007 or previous versions?

I thought for sure this was a sarcastic thread!

I can't stand 2007. Even when I save files in 97/2000/XP mode, it's still doing the stupid ".docx" extension. Retarded!

They made the menus so you have to think, whereas every other version was straightforward. That goes along with the new MS policy I suppose.

Superego · #43 Post by **Superego** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 5:32 pm

crashnburn wrote: I had no idea one could integrate Latex with Microsoft office products. Any other such recommendations from you would be great to hear.

Yeah, I was a little surprised when I first found out. I should mention that TexPoint is shareware...I think the license is $30. There is some initial setup required that's not too painful (installing latex, ghostscript, imagemagick). Once it's configured, TexPoint does some nice things. You can do a simple one-line type of LaTeX equation or you can use the the option to copy whole sections from your tex source and then generate an EMF, PNG, BMP, or EPS file. There are some limitations; any kind of custom macros won't work. Other than that it's pretty good. Check it out here if you want:

http://texpoint.necula.org/

dsvochak · #44 Post by **dsvochak** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 1:06 pm

42 replies and no one has mentioned product activation. Apparently that's become a non-issue

The only reason I have Office 2000 is people started e-mailing ".doc" files a few years ago. As long as I can read everything people send, I see no reason to upgrade.

Nigellus · #45 Post by **Nigellus** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 5:35 pm

Don't use many of the Office applications other than Word, and I prefer Word '97 to the newer versions I've encountered... but this could be because I've deactivated so many of the automatic features over the years... Word '97 doesn't fight with me like the newer ones do.

I'm still a fan of wp51, but Word is just more convenient these days.

#46 Post by **bill bolton** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 7:35 pm

dsigma6 wrote:whereas every other version was straightforward.

You may have become familiar with it over time, but from the usability point of view for a new user, it was never straightforward

Cheers,

bill B.

ajkula66 · #47 Post by **ajkula66** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 12:16 am

Hmmm...NO to Office 2007...definitely. Bloated. Confusing. At least to me...

No to MS in general....but if I had to choose, I'd go with Office 2003.

I'll stick with Open Office, thank you...

bhurley · #48 Post by **bhurley** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 2:50 pm

As an editor who works with complex manuscripts developed in Word and then mangled by people with OpenOffice, I have to say that OpenOffice's compatibility with MS Office is not there yet. I would love to switch, but based on my experience so far it's not going to happen anytime soon.

I've only just started using Office 2007, and while I'm not looking forward to the learning curve I can already tell this version is a significant improvement over previous ones (except that Outlook now uses Word's horrible rendering of HTML, an unforgivable mistake).

Most people hate major overhauls of any kind of software or operating system that they use all day, simply because it's unfamiliar and nothing is where they expect it to be. I detested Mac OSX when I first started using it, because I'd been using the "classic" Mac OS since the Mac came out in the 1980s. But after a few months you couldn't have paid me to go back to OS9. OSX is so much better in every way, it just took me time to get used to it. I think the same will ultimately be said for Office 2007. We will waste hours in the beginning figuring out where things went, our productivity will plummet, but once we get past that hump I bet most of us will find it easier to use than previous versions.

ZDiablo · #49 Post by **ZDiablo** » Sun Nov 04, 2007 12:29 am

For now I will stick with Office 2003 and it works well with Vista. The company I'm working for still uses Office 2000 with Outlook 2003.

ulrich.von.lich · #50 Post by **ulrich.von.lich** » Sun Nov 04, 2007 4:13 pm

I'm running both Office 2007 and 2003 on 2 TPs and in my university we still use Office XP. I would say I prefer the 2007 version. The new interface is different but not that hard to get used to. The new version of OneNote is absolutely stunning and I'll never go back. I also like the to-do bar in the new Outlook. However it's noticeably slower compared to Outlook 2003. Hopefully it'll be improved in service packs.

losmeme · #51 Post by **losmeme** » Mon Nov 05, 2007 2:33 pm

Office 2007 wouldn't have been all that bad had they REALLY put some innovation into it. (OK, OneNote, but that's it.)

Otherwise it is just a repackaged Office, with a "new" interface that they can charge you tons of money for and make you believe that you have a new and improved tool. In real life, a duck dressed as anything other than a duck, is still a duck. 95% of the users that I encounter could be using Office v7, and still not miss anything.

Office 2000 is my choice, but like others, I do find myself using OpenOffice more and more.

Core Share · #52 Post by **Core Share** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 5:45 pm

I've just finally finished kitting out my new X60s.

So I decided to install Office 1997, 2003 and 2007 on it just for comparison purposes. I am mainly a Word user.

Word 2007 looks splendid visually, but I fail to take to the ribbon interface, perhaps a creature of habit, but I do not like learning curves being forced onto me.

It's a bit like Office XP/2002 versus 2003, they could have easily allowed an option to dynamically revert to the XP interface style if the candy, blended gradients theme of 2003 was painful on the eye.

Similarly with 2007, they could have provided an option to revert to the old-school toolbars.

This product does allow some comfort though:

http://www.addintools.com/english/menuoffice/

I've installed a RAMdisk on my X60s to contain my working documents and have reverted back to Word 97 (as I usually do).

A RAMdisk and Word 97 just flies!

When ThinkPad Ultra-portables, finally ship with Novell/SUSE GNU/Linux Enterprise and have a comparable battery life, then I'll use Open Office - or still use Office 97 with CodeWeavers CrossOver-Linux.

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxoffice/

pianowizard · #53 Post by **pianowizard** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 8:43 am

Guys, if you haven't done so already, I strongly recommend you to install the Office 2007 Service Pack 1. Before installing it, Excel 2007 took forever to load several huge files that I had (17MB or bigger), and didn't let me edit plots in those files (as soon as I right-clicked on a trace, the program froze). Both issues have been fixed in Service Pack 1, which was released December 8th.

bhurley · #54 Post by **bhurley** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 10:27 pm

So, I did a (really) stupid thing:

My ThinkCentre desktop came with Vista and a trial version of Office 2007 Professional. I bought the license for the trial and copied down the serial number. But then after a month or two I discovered that Vista wasn't going to work for me and I ordered the downgrade disks to XP from Lenovo. I then installed XP which of course wiped Office 2007 off my hard drive.

What do I do now? Knowing Microsoft, I kinda doubt I could just download a new trial version from their website and then put in my serial number, that seems too simple.

Ryan_C · #55 Post by **Ryan_C** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 12:22 pm

Office 2003, please. I hate ribbons, and I hate programs that are dumbed down for most people.

pianowizard · #56 Post by **pianowizard** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 12:31 pm

bhurley wrote:Knowing Microsoft, I kinda doubt I could just download a new trial version from their website and then put in my serial number, that seems too simple.

But it's just a trial version, so Microsoft might not care. You should try it and see what happens.

bhurley · #57 Post by **bhurley** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 5:15 pm

pianowizard wrote:
bhurley wrote:Knowing Microsoft, I kinda doubt I could just download a new trial version from their website and then put in my serial number, that seems too simple.
But it's just a trial version, so Microsoft might not care. You should try it and see what happens.

This turned into one of those Savage Nightmare Journeys.

To recap what happened, my Lenovo ThinkCentre A61e came with Vista and with a trial version of Office 2007 Professional. I purchased the full version during the activation of the trial, but then a few weeks later downgraded my computer from Vista to XP. In that process, of course, Office was removed from my hard disk. So once I had the computer set up again with Windows XP, I tried downloading a new trial version of Office 2007 Professional (all 700+ megabytes of it), but I didn't have the Product Key, only the Product ID, which is different. So I couldn't convert it to the full version.

I tried using Microsoft's online email support, in which you go to a website and enter the Product ID along with a bunch of other information and a description of the problem, and then click a "submit" button. When I did that I got a message in the Web browser saying "an unknown error has occurred, please try again in a few minutes." I tried that three or four more times during the course of the day, then gave up and called Microsoft's support phone number. After being bounced around a bit, I talked to a woman in the replacement software division who said I should send an email to digitalriver, asking them to send me a replacement CD so I could load the software back onto my computer.

I sent that email to digitalriver and got a reply saying that no replacement CD was available and that I should download a new trial version; they gave me my product key and said I should enter that during activation. When I did that, though, I got an error message saying that the product key was incorrect.

I sent them another message asking them to verify that the product key was correct. A few hours later I got an email saying "thank you for your refund request" (I had never requested a refund). It said a separate email with a refund form would be coming my way in 30 minutes with a refund form, but that never arrived. However, since the "thank you for your refund request" email included a refund form, I filled it out and sent it back to them, following their instructions. A few minutes after that email, I got yet another email from them verifying that the product key they had given me was correct.

We'll see what happens next. Hopefully my refund will come through; if it does I will then go out to a store and purchase a boxed version of Office 2007 so I have the CDs. Lesson learned!

bhurley · #58 Post by **bhurley** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 4:16 pm

Just to finish this story: it got worse.

A month went by and I had not received my refund from Microsoft (see my previous post above), so I wrote back to the support person who had sent me the refund form and asked what's up. He wrote back to say, sorry, they couldn't give me a refund as the 30-day refund period had expired, but instead they would allow me to download yet another 700 megabyte trial version of Office 2007 Professional and would give me a new product key. He gave me a link to go to and to sign in with my regular MS user name and password. When I did that, I got an error message. Try as I might, I couldn't get in. But even if I could have gotten in, I wasn't sure I wanted to go this route as eventually I might need to restore my computer back to Vista and then I'd be stuck in the same situation with no physical media and a product key that won't work. So I gave Microsoft $600 for Office 2007 Professional and I have nothing to show for it. Eventually when I get the energy I'll write them a complaint letter, attaching all the emails I received from them, and see if that works.

Do you prefer MS Office 2007 or previous versions?

Do you prefer MS Office 2007 or previous versions?

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