Microsoft Office 2007

Well, here's an extra feature for all you MS Office fans out there!

With the release of Microsoft’s new operating system called Vista, they are also making public a new version of their Office suite, which will of course be called Microsoft Office 2007. It is still in the beta version (a test), but it is available for download. I decided to grab a copy of it so I could share some of the features with you all. The first thing I noticed is that there is a major difference between the 2007 version and previous ones. I saw major differences in the interface right away!

In Office 2007, the drop down menus have been replaced by a strip of icons, codenamed as “The Ribbon.” The Ribbon makes it easier to access features and lets you do it with fewer mouse clicks.

Another feature, which was very useful, was the themes and quick styles. This part allows you to format your data to a pre-defined, clean and consistent layout in a matter of seconds. Office 2007 also has tons of color coordinated themes, which can either make your files look elegant or just plain fun. Here's an example of some of the different things you can do with this version of Office.

There is also a mini toolbar and it appears whenever you select text. This makes it easy to access the most commonly used formatting tools.

Something else I noticed was the live preview feature. It allows you to temporarily preview what happens if you select an option, without a lot of a hassle.

A feature that particularly impressed me were the galleries, which are illustrations of formatting options that can be applied to various items, such as images, tables and text. This is where I noticed the live preview option, which made it especially easy to pick a layout. The gallery below includes several special effects that you can add to an image.

Office 2007 also comes chock full of free templates for anything you could think of. There's one for everything from an expense report to a tournament bracket.

The last thing I noticed is when I went to the save a file, the file menu no longer says “File.” It has been replaced by an orb with the Office logo on it. This gives you several more options when saving a file, such as color schemes for the interface of 2007 and more ways to share the document.

Microsoft Office 2007 also uses a new file format of OpenXML. This is the new default file format. This will compress the file up to 75 percent as compared to regular files. Office will also allow you to copy documents straight to PDF format.

If all of this and much more sounds good to you, why don’t you head on over to Microsoft’s Beta Download Site and you can download the beta version. For even more information on Microsoft Office 2007, check out this Web site. The non-beta version of Office 2007 is estimated to be released in January 2007.

Now, that's something to look forward to!

~ Neil Patel