Microsoft's Office 2007

Microsoft has Launched “ Office 2007 ” formerly known as office 12. The development of which is in news from mid 2005. This post features this new version of office from Microsoft. Office 2007 is a whole new software which was released in the beginning of this year.


The Ribbon of standard menus is designed to quickly access all the menu options for formatting a document. The text alignment is 2 ways, top bottom and left right. Lets see the features of each program in depth. Every application has a zooming scale in the right side corner of the application window. See the Ribbon below:



The menu is more advanced. Now, you can save the documents in the format which is compatible with earlier versions of office. Se the menu of word 2007 below:



Word



Word has become more advanced. In earlier versions, you would select the property to check whether it suits your document. But in word 2007 you can just bring the mouse pointer to that property and automatically the text will change to that property. Same is the case with the picture format. Some new format’s which has more graphical view has been introduced in this new version of office. By marking a document as final, you can make it as read only in a single click.


Power Point


Power point has become more user friendly. The major tool introduced is presenter view. This tool is used to work on power point using two monitors. In which you can do rough work (generally navigation work) in your screen while the second screen displays the presentation to the audience. You can also record your narration with just a single click



Excel


Excel has become lighter; Microsoft has put more significance to graphical user interface. Now the formulae are just a single click away. Your sheet can be more secure with the range protection password, in which you can select particular range of cells and apply permissions to different user on it. Security is at granular level.



Outlook


Outlook 2007 is intelligent enough to configure your internet mail address. Just enter your name, email address and the password. Outlook will search for the respective POP3 and SMTP server over web.

Outlook 2007 supports the mailbox hosted on Microsoft Exchange 2003. One very useful and important feature in outlook 2007 which was also available with office 2003 is the availability of RSS feeds. You can configure the RSS for your favorite bog and news websites so that you can be updated whenever that site is updated. The instance search feature provides the capability of desktop search, you just have to download this exe from Microsoft web.

You can select, the particular time at which your message should be delivered. There is a facility to insert business card in your mail. New thing is “To do bar”, in which you can track your daily tasks. Also it communicates with the share point server over web 3.0 and lists all the tasks in your account. You can also track the mail which is marked as follow-up. Overall, outlook is just same as outlook 2003 with slight modifications.

Now you can view the attachment of the mail in the same windows which you are using to view the mail. No need to open the attachmeent with a different program.



Office Publisher


With office publisher you can create, Advertisements, Award Certificates, Banners, Brochures, Business Cards, Envelops, Greeting Cards, Gift Certificates etc. You can design a whole website using office publisher.



Saving files

All the applications give you the flexibility to save the document in such a way that it has backward compatibility with previous versions of office but with some exceptions. In the save as option, you can save your document such that it can be opened with earlier versions of office.

Office 2007 has a new file format, which is based on XML. The result is the more secure and efficient office. The specialty of XML format is as follows:

1) The documents which are saved are 75% smaller than their actual size.
2) File recovery is at more granular level. Now you can recover the table from a file.
3) Document can be shared more securely with Document inspector
4) Different file extensions for easier identification (Default is .docx, .xlsx, .pptx etc…and the files which extension ends with m, contain macros.)


The Translation Issue


Translations are still a major concern for every software industry. I translated my name from English to Arabic and I got the following result.


If you know Arabic language, you would jump laughing in front of your system. This is translated from left to right but Arabic language is written from right to left.

To put it simple in front of you, it is like “nahK ilA tasariV riM”


My View about Office 2007

Overall I could say only one word, “WoW”. Enjoy the below slide which I have created in power point 2007.


Top Ten Benefits of Microsoft (Courtesy: Microsoft Corporation)

Desktop

Access 2007

Accounting Express 2007

Excel 2007

Groove 2007

Info Path 2007

OneNote 2007

Outlook 2007

Power Point 2007

Project 2007

Publisher 2007

Share Point Designer 2007

Visio 2007

Word 2007



Servers

Forms Server 2007

Groove Server 2007

Live Communication Server

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

Performance Point Server 2007

Project Server 2007

SharePoint Server 2007

SharePoint Server for Search 2007


Services

Live Meeting




Important Links

MSDN Blog


A Glimpse at New Office 2007 Features Via Word


Accessibility in Office 2007.