INTERFACE AND FILE FORMATS EVOKE MIXED REACTIONS.
the first thing that
strikes you about Offi ce 2007
is the startling new look and
feel. These applications
replace most drop-down
menus and toolbars with a
context-sensitive “ribbon”, an
interactive strip across the top
of the screen that displays the
various functions relevant to
the currently selected tab.
(Outlook retains the previous
interface, except when you
compose e-mail.)
Microsoft reasons that by
placing the functions on a
single, changeable ribbon, it
has made them more visible
and more likely to be used.
Anybody who uses existing
versions of Offi ce will be confused
initially by the relocation
of their favorite features,
but before long they’ll be won
over by how easy the ribbon
makes accessing needed functions.
Likewise, they’ll be
wowed by the live preview
function, which lets them see
in advance how their document
will look when they
hover the cursor over any of
the ribbon’s design elements.
The new beta adds some context-
sensitive menus not
found in the previous release.
For example, highlighting text
in Word or cells in Excel and
then right-clicking brings up
a shadow menu that comes
“alive” only when you drag
your cursor into it.
Another improvement in
this beta is the inclusion of a
View tab, whose ribbon provides
single-click access to
screen views (Web, outline,
and others), split screens, multiple-
page views, and instant
switching between multiple
open documents. In the previous
Office 2007 beta, these
functions required menu
hunting, arcane key combinations,
and multiple steps.
All the talk about Office
2007’s new interface and
enhanced support for XML
doesn’t mean much for users
unless the individual programs
in the suite are big
improvements over their predecessors.
Well, Microsoft has
improved the applications.
And some of those improvements
actually fall into the “Wow, I’ve got to have that!”
category. Other enhancements
in the new apps merit
a shrug or a yawn.
Here’s a sampling of what’s
improved—and not really
improved—in Word, Excel,
PowerPoint, and Outlook.
WORD’S WINNING
NEW VIEW
microsoft’s venerable
word processor is so packed
with features that it’s hard to
think of something useful
that’s missing (apart from
WordPerfect’s Reveal Codes
for precise format control).
Word 2007 adds a great
multipane view that makes
comparing different versions
of the same document easy.
For example, you can simultaneously
view the original version,
the edited fi le, and a version
that combines both and
shows the revisions (see Figure
1). When you scroll
through one of the three
panes, you scroll through the
other two also. You can even
open another pane on the left
side of the screen that lists
only the revisions—oddly,
however, this one doesn’t
scroll along with the others.
We may dislike Offi ce’s new
ribbon that shows all your
options at the top of each
screen, but we have to admit
that it makes styles much
easier to work with. Large
boxes within the ribbon show
frequently used styles; point
to a style, and the text in your
document displays that style’s
formatting until you move the
mouse away (see Figure 2).
The new contextual spelling
checker is another nice addition.
When tried, it caught
about two out of every three
such errors. Building Blocks,
another new Word feature,
sounds interesting, but this
tool for inserting formatted
boilerplate is clumsy and diffi
cult to be practical.
MINOR EXCEL
ENHANCEMENTS
there’s nothing overwhelmingly
wonderful in
Excel 2007, although Microsoft
did add several nice new
touches. Some of the new features
need a little more work
in the interface department.
The extremely common
task of entering formulas is
improved via the new Formulae
AutoComplete. When you
type ‘a’ into a cell, for example,
you see a drop-down list
of every function that starts
with the letter ‘a’. Type ‘v’ after
the a, and the list shrinks to
all functions beginning with
that combination of letters.
This is a real time-saver, but
unfortunately it isn’t well
thought-out. Picking a function
on the resulting list
requires a mouse click—an
annoying shortcoming since
your hands at that point are
on the keyboard.
If you have a hard time spotting
trends in your worksheets
and catching warning signs
hidden in your data, the new
Conditional Formatting feature
could be a job-saver (see
Figure 3). You can, for
instance, set a range of values
so that the highest is red, the
lowest is blue, and those in
between are graded hues
between those two extremes.
You can also use data bars and
icon sets to improve your view
of the data. Other new Excel
features aren’t particularly
exciting: The new Tables function,
for example, should be
called “The Feature For-merly Known as Lists.” The
data fi ltering provides a step
up from what is offered, but it
doesn’t justify name change.
POWERPOINT
GETS ARTY
despite some nice new
features, PowerPoint 2007
isn’t much of a step up from
the previous release.
However, the new SmartArt
feature is a major improvement
on PowerPoint 2003’s
diagrams. When you rightclick
a bulleted list and select
Convert to SmartArt, you get
your choice of fancier-looking
lists, process graphics, pyramids,
and other ways to present
your data (see FIGURE 4).
Of course, these graphics
leave less room for words
than a conventional bulleted
list would, so the text may
become illegibly small.
Once you’ve converted the
list, the Design Tab on Power-
Point 2007’s ribbon makes
changing the graphic’s look
easy. As with Word’s Styles,
you can glide the mouse over
the various color-scheme
choices and 3D effects, and
see immediately how your
graphic will look.
Speaking of changing looks,
the new Custom Slide Layouts
feature lets you quickly apply
global changes to the style of
your presentation. Unfortunately,
this function is tricky
to fi gure out.
Another nice new touch in
PowerPoint 2007 is the ability
to select discontinuous text by
holding the Ctrl key as you
choose it, just in Word.
SAME OLD OUTLOOK?
the first thing you notice
is that Outlook 2007 doesn’t
look like the other new Offi ce
apps. In fact, it looks just like
previous Outlook versions:
the same menus and dropdowns,
and no ribbon. Despite
the lack of an interface-lift,
Outlook 2007 is the most
improved app of the four.
First, there’s the new To-Do
Bar. Similar to the old Outlook
Today page (which still exists),
the To-Do Bar shows your
appointments and tasks for
the day, but it takes up considerably
less screen space than
Outlook Today does. It includes
a monthly calendar, and it lists
tasks sorted by due date. You
can rearrange the task order,
putting your higher-priority
jobs at the top. We only wish it
allowed you to resize the space
devoted to the calendar,
appointments, and tasks.
Outlook’s tools integrate
with one another in some new
ways. For instance, you can
assign a date to an e-mail and
turn it into a task, and you can
drag and drop tasks into the
calendar to turn them into
appointments. Another nice
addition: e-mail attachments
are now viewable within Outlook
itself. This feature doesn’t
support every file type, of
course, but we were surprised
that it couldn’t display HTML
files without opening them
in a browser.
For some time now, Outlook
data has been annoyingly
diffi cult to share, but not now.
Outlook 2007 can share your
calendar data with people who
don’t even have Outlook.
Microsoft claims that you can
e-mail your calendar as an
HTML fi le, although this feature
didn’t work in the beta.
THE BAD PARTS?
the price you pay for the ribbon’s
fast access to features is
a more cramped work area.
You can’t resize the ribbon,
although it disappears when
you shrink the window beyond
a size. Still, anyone working
on a screen measuring 17
inches or smaller will want to
think about an upgrade.
However, the screen-size
issues are dwarfed by concerns
surrounding the new
programs’ compatibility with
previous Offi ce versions, primarily
due to the switch to
XML file formats as the
defaults in Word, Excel, and
PowerPoint. Office 2007
apps can open and work on
files created in previous
releases back to Office 97,
and you can create fi les in all
existing Office formats.
However, to take full advantage
of the smaller fi le sizes
and other benefi ts of Offi ce
2007, you must use its new
XML formats: .docx in Word,
.xlsx in Excel, and .pptx in
PowerPoint. In fact, saving
fi les in older Offi ce formats
isn’t possible in the ‘Save as’
dialog box. Instead, you
choose Convert from the
new Offi ce button, and Convert
appears only when a
non-XML fi le is open.
A revamped interface and
new default XML fi le formats
make Microsoft Offi ce 2007,
the most dramatic reworking
of the best-selling productivity
suite in more than a
decade. Until Microsoft
releases the Offi ce 2007 compatibility
pack, there’s simply
no way to know whether the
new version will work well
with its predecessors.
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