Customer Reviews

Microsoft Office Professional 2007 UPGRADE [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(49)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

Normally I might wait to install a new software upgrade, but I just got a new laptop and thought it would be best to use Office 2007 with the new Vista operating system. I was wrong.

You would expect that a multi-billion dollar company like Microsoft could put out a powerful and bug-free piece of software. But after a month of using Office 2007, you get the distinct impression that this software is not ready for public release. Microsoft should be ashamed.

I don't know the root cause of my problems, but I have to stress that I am running a clean install of Office 2007 on Vista, so there shouldn't be any software conflicts or issues.

So what are my issues? The list is long:

-- My biggest concern is that MS Word constantly hangs and stalls. It can making editing a document very painful. I suspect the problem is when I put images or Visio diagrams into a document. But that is something the old MS Word was able to do without an issue. Oddly, if I have a colleague open the document and save it out in Word 2003, the problem goes away! What?! It's killing my productivity.

-- When ever I cut and paste from an old document, Word hangs for 15 to 20 seconds. And often the formatting and margins in my new document go haywire. I keep having to spend a ton of time fixing things. This never happened in the old Word. This is another time killer.

-- Every few days, Outlook 2007 starts telling me that it cannot display my email folders. Uh oh! I have to completely restart my computer to see my email again.

-- Outlook 2007 breaks many graphic emails that people send -- they look like a mess. It is because Outlook 2007 does NOT render HTML correctly since it uses the Word engine, not Internet Explorer to display email. I have no idea why Microsoft did this, but they have got to fix it.

-- Many of the issues in the old Word 2003 still haven't been fixed. If you place an image, it can often be hard to get it to appear correctly. Why can't they solve this one?

-- While most Office programs have the new ribbon interface (which I like), some programs like Visio 2007 do not. So you have to remember how to use two interfaces. Couldn't Microsoft find the time and money to update ALL its programs? Give me a break.

-- On a few occassions in Visio 2007, my files have failed to save correctly. At first I thought this must have been my fault, but it's happened to me a few times and can't be a coincidence. A few times I've gotten an error message and lost my work. Ug.

-- Word and Excel 2007 use a completely new file format. So anyone you send a document to has to have 2007 installed (which isn't likely the case). To get around this, you can save it down to a 2003 file format, but then you end up with two files on your hard drive -- one in the new format and one in the old format. What a pain! Also, there definitely seems to be an issue with Office 2007 opening older Office 2003 files. Could be the cause of many of my problems, but there is no way I can avoid using old files. They should have worked harder on compatibility.

There are good things about the new 2007. I do like the new interface design and the new features in Outlook 2007 are amazing for organizing tasks and sharing your calendar.

But I don't think it's fair that Microsoft released a product so full of serious, serious bugs that have cost me hours and hours of extra work. I didn't spend hundreds of dollars on a beta product and don't think the public should have to suffer. Surely they can afford to do better!

NEW ADDITION TO MY REVIEW:
Today I discovered that I can no longer paste Excel charts into Word like I used to. When I try, the chart goes in, but any bars/lines disappear.

I have been using the Professional version of this software for about 6 months now. The beta version had some bugs but that is why it was a beta. I became fluent in MS Access while I was working in the corporate world and took that knowledge with me when i started my own business. I wish I had had 2007 when I developed all my software tools around MS Access. It would have greatly reduced my development time. The new interface takes a little while to get used to but now it seems second nature to me. I can even confidently do mail merges between apps. That is something I have always had trouble remembering how to do since i don't do it everyday. The only reason it doesn't get a 5 star rating is that I think the upgrade price is a little steep.

I needed to get a copies of Access and Publisher for my new laptop which was running 2003 Office Standard. After Googling around a bit I determined that Office Professional would give me these plus the upgraded to 2007 Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook applications with a host of other features including Business Contact Manager for about the same cost. The install was reasonably painless and the software activated and registered without any problems - not always the case with Microsoft but this time they seemed to get it right. After using the applications for a couple of weeks I am still trying to get used to the "Ribbon Bar" which is markedly different, somewhat intuitive and decidedly more comprehensive. The applications take longer to initialize and Outlook has become painfully slower but works. I am running it on a Sony SZ230P with Intel Centrino Duo T2400 1.83 GHz running XP Pro with 2 gigs of RAM so maybe it is underpowered. I did uninstall the desktop search agent which seemed to make the system more sluggish and have now improved performance a bit. I am reasonably proficient in the Office applications but probably only use 5-10% of the functionality embedded - but I carry the overhead on the system which, I believe, bogs the system down overall. Would be nice if MS would allow the configuration of various levels of sophistication during the install process depending on the needs of the user. In summary, I will continue to use the Suite and become more proficient in using the "Ribbon Bars" and hoping that MS will issue some upgrades that speed up the system overall until I can afford to upgrade the laptop to a faster processor.

Good or not, office, particularly word is installed on about 90% of all desktops. Word, Excel, Outlook, and Powerpoint have become the standard.
Having said that, Office 2007 is really an excellent upgrade.
For the first time, in Word, i find the options that i need to do my job.
The "ribbon" after a day or two is a big step forward.
The graphics, and the resizing of pictures and all images are excellent.
I am now moving beyond just producing document, and now producing really good looking documents.
Office 2007 stability has been good, no significant bugs.
This is a good product upgrade. And i guess $250 after five years of Office 2003 is reasonable.
Office 2007 is even easy to install.
I like this product.

I deeply regret Microsoft Office Professional 2007 UPGRADEupgrade. The new ribbon means that I have to completely relearn commands that I have used effortlessly for years. Some users find the ribbon to be intuitive; to me it is cluttered and obscure. It has become a game in my office, when we are searching the first time for a command, to see whose guess will lead us to the hidden treasure. Unfortunately, in our intensely busy, deadline-driven office, we don't have time for this.

Especially disappointing is the lame Help, which I have finally abandoned. I've had to resort to Google-searches for the commands I need.

The only way I have been able to get any work done in Word or Excel is through the prior version's keystroke commands, which are still built in. But you have to know the entire series of keystrokes.

I feel betrayed by Microsoft. Such a sudden and dramatic change with so little support for users of prior versions has slowed my work to a crawl.

You would probably like Office 2007 if you are new to Office, if you tend to use just the basics or if you really like exploring new software. If you have invested a lot in using prior versions and just want to get your work done, be prepared to lose a lot of time. Either way, I strongly recommend downloading a trial version before buying it.

I excitedly upgraded to Office 2007....'07 Outlook is FAR slower - ties my reasonably powerful machine up in knots (110% of resources) for minutes at a time inexplicably; spell ck doesn't work consistently; HTML emails have lost functionality I used to use often with 2003 ver; Excel opens MUCH more slowly; no real gains in Excel fuctionality; various add-ins essential to my biz no longer work in Excel 2007; Access 2007 was billed as much easier to use - FALSE; Word has a couple of improvements but messes up spell ck with Outlook if you keep both Word 2003 & 2007 on yr machine; the highly touted "Ribbon" is mainly cosmetic; I believe 2007's indexing is at the heart of some of sluggisness which might be ok if it worked..but it retruns strange results....NET, NET, I am uninstalling Office 2007 and going back to 2003 with all its stupid faults....it's too bad no one at MSFT actually uses thier products to realize how defective they are.

Had a questionable office 2003 installation I had goten through an Ebay vendor and wanted to get firmly legit. It is actually cheaper to upgrade to 2007 then go and get 2003 - especially if you go the upgrade route as I did.

The upgrade on Microsoft says any old package (includeing Works 6 and forward) will qualify. Someone in India said it would not, but pre-sales in the US said yes. They were right, you simply need the qualifying application on you machine OR an old Works or other qualifying disk will do. You simply point to it during the install.

So far, it is all working good (including contact manager). Have not really tested many of the new features yet.

As other reviewers have mentioned, Word and Excel create a new file format that cannot be accessed by older versions (2003 and earlier) unless the would-be user downloads a microsoft downloaded conversion program. It is easier to just save in the old format if you are going to share the worksheet or document.

I like the changes MS has made, it is quite a bit more user friendly, the enhancements for a small business with a business process integration approach is fantastic. First time I really felt that I was working with an integrated package capitalizing on the strengths of the different programs, Word for correspondence, Publisher for marketing materials, excel for performance measurement, etc.. The new version has opened up different ways to approach using the tools efficiently.

The transition went relatively smooth albeit I did look around a bit to find the normal things I use but after a few days I was up and running pretty much like normal. As a heavy Excel user I really like the improvements made with the conditional formatting and pivot improvements and presentation/report quality has significantly improved. The improvements to Outlook are also very beneficial from a task management standpoint, improvements to flag options and task color coding along with being able to customize search folders for easy mail retrieval has decreased the amount of time I have spent coordinating activities, that alone was worth the price of the upgrade. PowerPoint seems to be about the same but I do like the template that is formatted with a 16:9 "widescreen" aspect ratio.

If you are wondering how well it works going back and forth with MS Office 2003, I have not had any issues yet, there is a compatibility mode you can work and save in to go backwards to 2003, you lose some of the enhancement functionality when you save as a 2003 file but I haven't run into any show stoppers yet but I suspect it will only be a matter of time until I receive an e-mail stating that they could not open a file. I guess as technology advances we are always going to have that problem. I hope this review was helpful and have a smooth transition if you decide to migrate to the new version.

By the way, I am not a Microsoft employee or affiliated with them in any way.

All in all I am very happy with the improvements and felt the upgrade price, fairly cheap actually, was well worth it.

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!

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.