Get With The Program With Office 2007

The Age

Tuesday June 19, 2007

Graeme Philipson

IT IS more than 20 years since I started to use Microsoft Word, on an MS-DOS computer. It's nearly as long since I shifted from a now-forgotten spreadsheet program called Quattro Pro to Excel, and from the equally extinct Harvard Graphics to PowerPoint.

Like millions of other people, I use Microsoft Office regularly. Indeed, I am a much bigger user than most people, and I use all three of the above programs extensively. I am what is called a "power user".

I write large and complex market-research reports, I analyse vast amounts of data using Excel's pivot tables and other statistical functions and I create a large number of PowerPoint presentations.

And I also run my life on Outlook - email, calendar and contacts. I run two screens off my computer (anybody who doesn't is missing out on a great productivity boon), and one is always open in Outlook.

I cannot imagine my working life without Microsoft Office. So when Microsoft released a new version recently, I leapt on it as soon as I could, lured by the promise of significant improvements.

The old Office had grown a bit tired. The basic menu structure of its chief components had not changed significantly since it moved from MS-DOS to Windows.

During that time its functionality grew significantly but its ease of use moved in the opposite direction as the old menu structure groaned under the weight of hundreds of new commands.

With Office 2007, Microsoft decided to change the menu structure completely. It also changed the file formats, so that files created with the new applications are incompatible with those created with the old. These two very significant changes have caused many people to shy away from moving. Don't be scared. The new Office is so much better than the old that I recommend you move as soon as you can.

Microsoft did itself no favours by releasing Office 2007 at the same time as its Vista operating system, leading many to believe that you need Vista to run Office 2007. You do not - it runs perfectly well on Windows XP.

Some people have said to me that they couldn't be bothered learning the new menu structure.

Office 2007 applications use a context-sensitive "ribbon" that changes as you use different functions.

It is dead easy to learn, and makes all the commands much more accessible.

The new interface has probably gone through more usability testing than any software in history. You can tell that Microsoft really did listen to users - thousands of them were used as guinea pigs - in designing the new interface.

One of the biggest improvements is the ease with which the interface can be customised. You can put your most commonly used commands on the ribbon so you rarely have to go to the second level at all. That was possible with earlier versions but it was so cumbersome that most users never bothered.

I spend hours a day using these applications - they are my tools of trade and my intellectual beasts of burden. I want the best. That is why I moved to the Macintosh from the PC last year. And that is why I have moved back to the PC - the new Office is not yet available on the Mac, and even when it is, it will not be as good, from what I hear.

(While I'm at it, the current Microsoft Office for Mac is dangerously unstable. It falls over for no reason, often taking your files with it. Avoid it if you can).

One thing that annoyed me to distraction with the old Microsoft Office was the separate graphing functions for Excel and PowerPoint. Create a chart in one, you had to start all over again to create it in the other. No more - they are integrated.

There are many other improvements, especially to the collaboration capabilities, but these can only be realised when your whole organisation makes the move and implements some of the server smarts. For many organisations they will be significant.

But what of the new file structure? This is probably the main reason people don't want to move. All the new applications use a file structure based on the Open XML standard.

This is not proprietary to Microsoft, as the earlier file formats were, and it also means files created with Office 2007 are in most cases significantly smaller than those created with earlier versions of Office.

Microsoft allows you to save Office 2007 documents as Office 2003 documents and also provides free add-on software on its website that allows Office 2003 users to a read and write Office 2007 documents. But there's no doubt it's still a bit of a hassle.

The new files all have "x" on the end - Word creates .docx files, Excel creates .xlsx files, etc. When I send these to people who haven't made the move, they say they can't read them.

I tell them to download the utility and that they better get used to it. As more and more people discover the benefits of Office 2007, those remaining on old versions will become dinosaurs. I reckon they already are.

Never has the expression "get with the program" been more apt.

graeme@philipson.info

© 2007 The Age

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