Tip #2658 - Microsoft Office 2007
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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drop down menus have been replaced by a strip of icons, codenamed as “The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It has been replaced by an orb with the Office logo on it.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
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