Customer Reviews

Microsoft Office Professional 2007 FULL VERSION [Old Version]

5 star:		(65)
4 star:		(42)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(30)
1 star:		(123)

 

 

I feel like I really gave this version of office a fair chance. I have tried and tried to adapt to it, but I just can't get over the fact I have lost productivity based on having to relearn software I felt I was pretty good at using. I now do more hunting and clicking for features where I once knew where everything was and now the new interface is one gigantic mess. I feel that Microsoft really blew it this time; I suppose its par for the course with the rest of the lousy products they have released this year. (But that's another review). Clearly we have run out of ideas for evolving a word processor if you have to completely revamp the interface. I read an article once published by Microsoft indicating the reason for the redesign was because there were a lot of features buried in menus and dialog boxes that few people knew about. If people are not using certain features, maybe the majority just don't care and want to use a word processor for something like... oh I don't know, typing a document.
The new interface for Word and Excel I can deal with, I don't like, but if I had to keep it, I could deal with it. Access on the other hand is a complete disaster. I hate it. It appears to me that somebody got really board and went crazy with the outlook style collapsible sidebars. The interface is so convoluted; it used to be so easy to switch between forms, queries, and table with the tabbed window. I do like the new ability to save to previous versions of Access (finally).

So with that said, I must admit, I really like the new Outlook 2007. It is the only application in the suite that Microsoft actually improved the product and didn't butcher. I like the new side bars with the calendar events and to do lists. One option I wish Microsoft would implement is a way to configure all outlook folders to be the same settings when I change the settings for one folder. For example, I do not like the reading pane or the group by setting, which is the default setting for a new folder. It's a pain to have to go through each folder and set it up like my other folders.

Luckily we can have multiple versions of office installed on the same PC. I have removed Office 2007 and reinstalled Office 2003. BTW, a lesson learned: If you want both Office suites installed, install 2003 first then 2007. If you install 2007 first then 2003, bad things happen. So remove 2007 and install 2003 then 2007. I reinstalled Office 2003 on my PC and installed just Outlook 2007 and Word 2007. I wanted to keep Outlook 2007, but you will need Word as well for the spell checker (shared components) and Outlook also uses word as the email editor.
All in all, if you like Office 2003 or earlier and you want to remain productive without relearning software that you already know then I would recommend to stay away from this version. Other than Outlook, it really has nothing substantial to offer to make me want to stay with it, only misery, wasted time and headaches.
1 star for the Office Suite Applications (Word, Excel, Access) , 5 stars for Outlook 2007

Twenty minutes ago, a senior engineer with advanced degrees and 18 years experience with Microsoft office came to me and asked, "How do you draw a line in Office 2007?"

This seemed like a strange question, since I knew that this individual had been drawing lines in Office for a decade or more. I went to MIT, and have been using Office since before it was Office, starting with Word in 1986, so I was confident that between the two of us we'd figure it out.

Wrong!

The engineer wanted to draw a line between two objects. He did NOT want this line to snap to one of the connection points on these objects. In other words, he wanted a LINE, not a CONNECTOR in Office 2003 lingo. Connectors are fun little things for drawing org charts, but we wanted a plain old LINE.

We tried every variety of line or arrow we could find. Every one snapped to the connection points. After 10 minutes (at our combined billing rate, more than the cost of Microsoft Office), we resorted to the documentation.

We found the answer! The icon for LINE is not a LINE. It is a blobular shape with a right angle on the bottom and a curvy part on top, called a "Freeform". It turns out that all other line-shaped tools have been promoted to connectors, and Freeform is the only tool you can use to draw a line that is NOT a connector. This is a bit awkward, since a line has two ends, and a freeform has infinite inflection points, so you have to double click at the end of your freeform to indicate that you just want a simple two-point line.

Wow!

I am really not interested in becoming the tech support guy who has to retrain experienced, educated people that "When you want a line, choose the blobular tool called 'freeform' because that's what Bill Gates says you should do." I wonder what Microsoft could have accomplished with their development dollars if they had focused on real enhancements instead of changing lines to blobular freeform thingies. We're loyal Office users, but we won't be buying any new copies this time around. Maybe they'll get it right in Office 2010.

I've been using Office 2007 since early January 07 and am still struggling to locate Excel and Word commands that I use to be able to execute in split seconds while drinking coffee and talking on the phone. While some of the deeper functions are now more up front with this revamped format, the side affect is that the top level command interface is now significantly diluted with all the infrequently used features and functions. What really I miss in Office 2007 is no longer being able to use many of the common key-stroke commands, and being able to modify the Toolbar (now called "The Ribbon") interface from within the application. I really liked being able to customize the toolbars in previous versions of Word and Excel according to my own needs. While previous versions of "Office" had their problems, this latest version, so far, has definitely been a drag on my productivity.

I reluctantly have to say that Office 2007 is one of the worst products I've used. I'm forced to provide at least one star, but I wish I could give it ZERO stars, so how about it Amazon. Isn't it time we can give zeros??

I've been using Word for over 20 years and have used Excel, Access, and Powerpoint heavily for the past 10-15 years. I'm an advanced user of the tools and MS Office suites (including Project, Visio, Outlook,, et. al). If you have experience with any previous Office suite, run away now. If you've never used any previous versions of Office, you won't realize how bad this is so try it at your own risk, but I'd still say skip it.

MS's "ribbon" has got to be one of the worst ideas any company has ever forced on its customers. It is not a productivity feature, instead it's an untenable waste of real productivity and time. It is however, a testament to MS's ignorance and that of their "test users" and researchers. While that may sound rough, read the other reviews here; the same negative theme gets repeated and there's a good reason. The tools we've all used for so long are simply gone, the ability to accomplish simple tasks are gone, and the worst thing is there's no quick way to get them back. This product is not evolutionary, it's a genetic dead end and simply unrelated to anything meaningful...

I'm not going to go into every problem as I'm sure there's a limit on how much I can type here and how much you may want to read, but I will tell you that after spending more time than it's worth to accomplish simple tasks like opening templates (or even seeing them), I've decided to uninstall this application and go back to Office 2003 on all our PCs. I tried this software for several months and I can't stand it. MS should find a new product manager for the Office suite because the current one either deliberately wanted to alienate existing customers or didn't consider them. Either reason is cause for dismissal...

The negative reviews here should warn you; there's are serious and fatal problems with Office 2007. If you have any doubt as to what to do, I'll say it clearly; DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT! NOT RECOMMENDED!!!!

Microsoft has a problem. Their celebrated Office programs have been around a while, and every so often a new version comes out. But once a program has been around a while and fully meets the requirements of that particular type of program (word processor, etc), there is little room for natural development and evolution. And this is Microsoft's problem. How can they get users to continue buying their software if the basic fundamental aspects of the program have remained largely unchanged for a while? They they need, the Microsoft brains decided, was something radically new.

And thus Office 2007 was born. The interface is indeed radically new - I feel like I am using a new program despite the fact that I have heavily used most of the Office programs since 1996. It is so new that simple tasks like track changes and small cap font turn into an Easter Egg hunt that wastes my time. The ribbon is unnecessarily large and useless. The ribbon is touted to bring to the fore all the commonly needed commands for the user - in actuality, I hardly use any of them, leaving 75% of the ribbon as wasted space. And it wastes LOTS of space - it's huge. As of yet, I have not found a way to customize every part of the ribbon so it displays what I want - perhaps you cannot.

There are a host of other concerns, but one that struck me just before writing this review is that the new .docx file format is compressed with the zip formula that makes the resulting file 75% smaller. Now... why do we need that? In this day of 500 gigabyte hardrives, a 250K file isn't going to make me much happier than a 1000K file. Moreover, with high speed internet, the time savings of emailing such a file are rated in the seconds... again, nothing to write home about. BUT... what happens to a compressed .docx file when a part of it becomes corrupted? With an uncompressed .doc file, any program can view the contents and extract any information you can. Once you cram the data down with a compression formula, a damaged file is gone. Toast. Most likely irrecoverable. And that's the risk we now bear because Microsoft thought us, the user, would like saving a few K of file space on our huge hard drives.

So, my conclusion is that not only are the UI changes in this version of Office unnecessarily radical, other features like the .docx format are pointless, but pose a significant threat of data loss should a part of the file become corrupted.

So for me, I'm uninstalling this and putting Office 2003 back on.

I happen to like Microsoft as a company. I go back to the very beginnings of the "microcomputer" revolution and remember all too well the frustrations of dealing with monstrosities like CP/M, which most computer users today aren't familiar with and may be thankful that they are not.

Microsoft brought and then forced standardization on the industry and that is a good thing, a very good thing.

Microsoft's products, however, have ranged from the spectacularly and revolutionary great like Visual Basic to some real dogs. People tend to forget that Microsoft has not - and still does not - dominate every category of softwre.

Office has, by and large, been pretty good. There have been a couple of releases that were terrible.

Office 2000 and 2003, I thought, were excellent.

Office 2007 is, in my opinion, something of a dog.

Unfortunately, my business requires me to be intimately familiar with all the new releases of major products, so I don't have much of a choice except to use Office 2007 on a daily basis.

So far my experience of a few days has been largely negative.

I'm running it under Windows XP SP 2 on a 2.17 Ghz Core 2 Duo computer with 2 GB of fast RAM. Outlook 2007 loads like molasses in a very cold January. The search function in Outlook has been crippled. What used to be a simple search for the literal expression "[Chicago]" is now apparently impossible or I have simply been unable to find directions on how to accomplish. The search function is vastly faster and more flexible, but they seem to have dropped simple capabilities.

In Word, Excel and Access, the new ribbon tool bar is jarring departure from Office's former GUI. Common functions, such as Undo are no longer immediately apparent. Many common functions, in fact, have been relegated to right-click menus or elsewhere.

I have no complaints yet about the stability of the programs, but as I said, I've only been using them a few days.

On the whole, if I didn't have to have total familiarity with Office 2007, I'd strip it off my machine immediately and reinstall Office 2003. Maybe over time, I will come to view the appearance changes as helpful. Right now I don't. Perhaps over time I will stop noticing how slow the programs are in comparison to Office 2000 and 2003 versions. At the moment however, I could read a chapter in a book by the time Outlook opens.

Speaking of reading, Microsoft has once again changed the online Help format (which you can access if you find a terribly small button way on the right hand side of the window.) Help is less helpful than in previous versions mainly because it is too encompassing.

Overall I think Microsoft has taken not necessarily a step backwards with Office 2007, but rather a misstep. If you can avoid using Office 2007, I would suggest you do so and wait for the next release, which I suspect will go back to looking more like Office 2003.

Jerry

Office 2007 is nearly unusable. All the useful commands are spread out over mutiple ribbons making every task a challenge. There is no customizablity at all. You are stuck using the ribbons exactly as Microsoft created them. It is plain that they are so arrogant that they think they know what you need more then you do. They have also filled the software with frilly useless features that have no place in the professional world. They make it nearly impossible to create macros and if you do succeded at making one you can't place on any of the ribbons. This is without a dought the worst version the company has ever produced. It is quite clear the negative effect of no competion. Don't upgrade until you have absolutely no choice. The headache is not worth it. For every improvement in this program there are 10 negatives.

Microsoft has taken a huge step backwards in usability of this product. I have used many versions of Office over the years, and rate this one as the worst. Why? It is very hard to use. The poor usability of this product makes even Office 2000 a much better choice for anyone who actually has to do work.

The senseless and massive usability changes are bound to waste the time of tens of millions of Office users, but the problem is worse than that. As others have stated, the features in this program are hard to find. In addition the help is poorly done in this version; instead of correctly arranged help files that guide you quickly to the information you need, the help is sprinkled with videos you must patiently watch, some of which are located online and will not play.

The horrible "ribbon" is a huge waste of time and space. Gone are many customization features that actually made Office a useful tool.

It is obvious why Microsoft has made so many terrible choices: as someone else here stated, Microsoft believes that they must reinvent this product at any cost, to convince people to buy something that they likely already own in an older version. This is similar to the useless XML features they introduced in earlier versions, or the useless "office server" concept. News flash, Microsoft: a word processor does not need to be tightly bound to other programs, function as an XML server, or make your coffee. IT HAS TO PROCESS TEXT IN AN EASY-TO-USE AND STABLE MANNER.

My wife received a copy of Office 2007 and gave up in disgust after trying in vain to use it for a week. I tried it as well, with the same results. Your best bet is to find an old copy of Office or even the free and capable OpenOffice, which reads and writes Office files (or WordPerfect, which has its own set of flaws).

I bought and installed this product because I had a new computer and I required the tools to access and manage various work documents. I figured it would be a moderately useful upgrade on previous office products. However I was mistaken.

This version of Microsoft Office takes the concept of "bloatware" to new heights ... it seems the folk at Microsoft have been distracted by their own interface trinkets and have forgotten to address even basic useability issues. The result is a program that is sluggish, counter-intuitive and presents a whole new learning curve, even for those who are/were familiar with previous versions of Office.

If you have a lot of time on your hands to learn a "new" way of doing things that different without being better (frequently worse) - and you have no desire to work efficiently with your computer, then perhaps there would be nothing to complain about with this new version. Otherwise, I really can't recommend it.

While I personally use WordPerfect Suite 8, the best office suite ever programmed, for reports and writing projects, I keep a version of Microsoft Office to be compatible with my clients, and for Outlook and PowerPoint (both of which are decent programs). I decided with my new computers to move up from Office 2000 to the current version. I wish now I had bought Office 2003. Each component of Office 2007 is slow to load, slow to respond, just plain slow to do anything. The interface in not intuitive and I have to search for the old familiar functions. I am using XP Pro, so that may be an issue regarding startup speed, and yes, the computer hardware in a few years will improve to the point even this dog will appear fast.

Being a user of WordPerfect since 1985 and WordPerfect Office since its beginning I have encountered "improved" suites for both Word and WordPerfect office that actually were less functional and more buggy than the predecessor. The new programmers, using the latest and greatest programming language and methods, think that they have produced the be all and end all version, with latest jazzy snazzy interface. (This applies to WordPerfect office as well, which is why I use the Win95 era Version 8 rather than the latest.) But often they produce abominations, such as Office 2007.

So buyer beware, it is indeed a dog, at least when using XP Pro, and an ugly dog at that (considering the interface). If I hadn't already spent the money, I would give OpenOffice another try. The "user experience" surely cannot be worse, and may even be better ... and it is certainly not overpriced.

Last, I really have to wonder ... do the people that develop and oversee these software projects actually use their own product ... I mean rigorously use the software. If so, how could they let such products ship? Or does Microsoft simply not care, since they virtually own the market.

If this is useful to anyone I will be surprised, but at least I feel better. Now to a cup of coffee while I wait for Excel to load.