Microsoft Office Professional 2007 UPGRADE
by Microsoft Software
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List Price: Category: Software See more product details and other editions |
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Software Reviews of Microsoft Office Professional 2007 UPGRADE
Customer Review: TERRIBLE Product
Summary: 1 Stars
I recently bought a new laptop, and the changeover involved an "upgrade" to Office 2007. I was aware that there was a new user interface, but was not aware that Office 2007 is, in almost every respect, an INFERIOR product to any Office version that came before it!
I have used MS Office for many years, and am what could be called a "power user," especially for Word and Powerpoint, which I use weekly.
One of the great features of Office is that it has been totally customizable. For those who use office frequently, it has been easy to create your own custom toolbars so you have what you need easily available. Most tasks could be done with one or two mouse clicks... Until Office 2007!
In Office 2007, hardly anything is customizable! You have a constantly changing tool ribbon, which takes up a lot of screen real estate.
The ribbon presents a set of icons based on what it "thinks" you will need at the moment. It is rarely right! ... so you go searching through the tabs trying to find the icon that was on the ribbon a few moments earlier! There is one small "tool bar" up on the title bar that you CAN customize, but it is not convenient, and will not hold many icons. It has the option of being moved below the ribbon, which takes up even more screen real estate, but is still very limited, and cannot be docked or moved from there.
Granted, there are third party programs, such as Ribbon Customizer and Toolbar Toggle, that add back some of the ability to customize, but it is still far inferior to what Office users are used to!
Even the third party programs, however, cannot get around the fact that there are some features in earlier Office versions that are simply NOT included in the new one. In previous versions of Powerpoint, you could add a set of icons that, with one mouse click, allowed you to adjust the vertical spacing of text. That has been omitted in 2007. In the "improved" 2007 version, you must open a dialog box, and make several mouse clicks to adjust vertical spacing!
To make matters worse, Office 2007 documents are not compatible with earlier versions. After spending years establishing formats such as .doc and .ppt as industry standards, Microsoft has introduced a version of office that does not use these formats! If you want to send a document to someone who still has Office 2003 (or any other program that reads .doc files) you need to remember to save it in that format. The default 2007 format cannot be opened by earlier versions!
Office 2007 CAN open the older formats, but even in opening earlier Office formats, there are problems. For example, most users of Powerpoint have learned the trick of adding drop shadows behind the text to make the text stand out on the screen. Office 2007 has changed the way these shadows are formed. When you open a powerpoint presentation made on an earlier version, your old drop shadows WILL NOT ANIMATE with the text. When a slide appears, the shadows of the letters are already in place, and the letters animate in on top! Mircosoft's only suggestion... go through your slides and take the old shadows out, and put new shadows in! (I tried this... it takes 30-40 minutes per presentation! ...And I have hundreds of powerpoint presentations in my file!)
For someone who never used Office before, or who just uses Word to type simple letters, 2007 may be okay, but for anyone who depends on Office for detailed tasks and productivity, 2007 is a nightmare.
I have always loved Microsoft Office. It has been an industry standard for ease of use. In my opinion, that is no longer the case. I believe Microsoft tried to produce something "different" to attract new users, but in the process totally ignored the needs of those who have used their products in the past. If you have the option of staying with an earlier version, DO NOT UPGRADE to this product!
Customer Review: Returning it ASAP
Summary: 1 Stars
After I bought it but before I installed it, our hired office geek told me it's one of the worst MS Offices created. I'm glad I learned that before I installed it. Phew! Saved by the geek.Customer Review: something missing
Summary: 3 Stars
I bought this software for a relative in another state because her trial period had expired. I could not install Outlook 2007, even though I paid for it because it is grayed out on the install cd. I sent email to people regarding this and was told I should contact the place I purchased it from, but nothing has been resolved. It was not cheap and I was not pleased.Customer Review: Office Professional 2007...save your money!
Summary: 1 Stars
I have been using Office 2007 Professional on my corporate laptop running XP for a few months now and I must say it is the worst version yet. It is extremely irritating to me for companies to change so drastically the user interface to the point that you have to totally re-learn the product. I am working here...don't have time to re-learn staples such as word processors, spreadsheets, and databases. Jeesh! Give me a break Microsoft! In addition, I think it has to be the buggiest version yet. It is also a huge problem transferring important files to clients who are still on the older versions of Office...that part alone has been a disaster. If you have time to piddle around re-learning...buy it. If you have to work for a living...save yourself the money!Customer Review: I miss Office 2003; I used to be productive
Summary: 1 Stars
Along with many others, I'm a longtime user of the Office Toolsuite. I had hoped that the latest release would boost productivity and would automate common tasks. It's unfortunate that it did neither. Even with top of the line hardware, this Office Suite is incredibly clumsy. Programs like Powerpoint take over a minute to save and close out, common tasks require more hunting in the "ribbon" than anything ever took in a menu driven system. Luckily, there's still a sliver of an area where you can add customized buttons to get some functionality back. There is no way to switch back to a "non-ribbon" driven system in case you are curious.
The equation editor, a feature I use quite a bit, has been reduced to non-sense and has become nearly unusable. Gone is the ability for you to move the editor box close to your working area on the page, instead, you constantly have to scroll to the top of the page to enter the equation components. Gone is the ability to use superscript, subscripts, integrals, etc.. in the editor with a highlight and select. After selection, your cursor is placed outside the component field and you have to click to get back in. Trying to use the keyboard to move around may close the equation editor completely. Luckily, Equation editor 3 is still available if you can find the "insert object" icon in the ribbon bar.
Object Linking and Embedding has been reduced to a monster chore. You must wait forever to move objects between applications, and you have to click a dialog box to retry on top of that, and wait even more. Many of the other complaints have been well documented so I won't bother going through them. In short, this is most certainly not an upgrade. It is bloated, has worst features not better, it is painfully slow, and worst of all, not intelligently thought out in terms of automating or speeding up tasks. Unfortunately, MS Office is the standard used everywhere so switching to other toolsuites is not trivial. However, do yourself a favor and wait for a better version than 2007. This one is definitely not worth your hard earned money.