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The most helpful favorable review
The most helpful critical review
95 of 96 people found the following review helpful:
I Was Pleasantly Surprised
After spending days reviewing everything I could find about Small Business 2007... from the videos at the Microsoft site, to reviews from the private sector, chatting with Microsoft pre-sales to ask all my questions, 1-800-426-9400, (about 7 times over 3 days) and the reviews on Amazon, I decided to take the plunge.
While reviews from some folks left me...
Published on November 2, 2007 by Cheryl Laures
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79 of 82 people found the following review helpful:
MS Office Standard 2007 - Steep Price, Steep Learning Curve, Slippery Slope!!!
Microsoft's Office Standard 2007 is the version that includes the programs most people will be looking for in an office suite: Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook. While Microsoft did make some improvements, many changes have users frustrated and mad.
Pros
+ Standard version includes the 4 programs you actually want!
+ Like most new MS...
Published on February 27, 2008 by Mark
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95 of 96 people found the following review helpful:
I Was Pleasantly Surprised, November 2, 2007
After spending days reviewing everything I could find about Small Business 2007... from the videos at the Microsoft site, to reviews from the private sector, chatting with Microsoft pre-sales to ask all my questions, 1-800-426-9400, (about 7 times over 3 days) and the reviews on Amazon, I decided to take the plunge.
While reviews from some folks left me concerned about leaving Office 2003 behind after 3 years of heavy daily use, I pressed on.
I was glad for the tip about cutting through the clear tape (it's hard to see its there) around the hard plastic package in order for the red tape/tab to be pulled to open the box.
The install went great. Tip- if you have a previous version of Office on your machine, remove it from your system using the control panel-> add/remove programs. After the removal is complete, re-start your machine before installing 2007. (Some of the pre-sales folks at Microsoft told me 2007 would install over 2003.... wrongo!)
Initiating Outlook was easy. 2007 remembered all my settings from 2003 and all my folders, sub-folders, signature files and settings and installed them intact. Very nice. (I did make a .pst back-up from 2003 and didn't need to use it. I do think however, it's a good idea to have a back-up.)
I've already created some very cool graphics and training forms that I couldn't do in 2003. Probably a 'user deficit'! So I guess this bears witness to how intuitive the interface really is for me.
A lot of folks are bashing the new 'ribbon' interface and talking about it functioning slowly and it being difficult to use. This is not my experience at all.
I have only 512 MB of RAM on the XP OS and 2007 runs no differently than 2003.. no lag time or hour-glass waiting... even with changing between word - power point - and excel docs all open at one time. I guess it depends on what other programs you have running in the background- drawing off your RAM resources. I don't let anything run in the background except for my anti-virus program and printers. Everything else I open as I need it from my start menu. This is all in how you've configured your start up options as your computer boots.
The ribbon menus are very straight forward, and with mouse over tells you exactly what everything does. Also, if you're in word and want to do something you used to do in 2003 and can't figure out how, you can type this phrase into the search field inside word -> "Office 2003 Interactive" (without the quotes).
This will open a window in your internet browser that will have a view of 2003. You click on the menu selection or item you used to use in 2003, (right on your screen, this is why its called 'interactive') and it will show you what you need to do in 2007 to achieve the same task. That's pretty handy.
All in all I'm pleasantly surprised. I feel I made a good buying choice after doing my research.
My recommendation is to do your own research, and look at the videos Microsoft has available which demonstrates how 2007 is different. At least this gives you a visual.
http://www.microsoft.com/office/newday/default.mspx?WT.srch=1&WT.mc_id=DF7DDF87-E82B-4DFF-B637-7A7198470DCE
(If this link gets chopped up in the post, be sure to copy and paste the whole link into your browser.)
And:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/FX101635841033.aspx
Chat with the pre sales folks. If you have a question that is technical in nature and they can't answer it, they get you in touch with a technical expert specific to the program in office your inquiry is about, at no charge to you. Also you can always download a free trial, and if you don't like it at the end of the trial don't buy it.
I really felt a social obligation to write about my experience to help those who are on a 'due diligence journey' as I was. Hope this has been helpful. ;->
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834 of 890 people found the following review helpful:
Major upgrade for Office, February 25, 2007
This review is from: Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 (CD-ROM)
While Office 2003 offered a refreshed look and some improvements in functionality, the basic structure remained the same. While veteran users were able to easily navigate the familiar menus, it had become increasingly difficult to locate some features (for instance, in Word, would you find "insert new rows" to a table in the "insert" or "table" menu?).
With Office 2007, Microsoft offers the "ribbon", a new and more intuitive way to access features that we used to find in the menus. While the features are basically the same, they are now grouped together according to when and how you would normally use them. These groupings are accessed by clicking on tabs, which are organized in the order you'd use them. The best way to get a better understanding of this change is to check out the screenshots, or download a free trial version of Office from Microsoft. While Office 2007 was released at the same time as Vista, you do not need Vista in order to run it. The program ran fine on my Windows XP laptop, which only had 512 MB of RAM, and it runs even better on my Vista laptop with 2 GB of RAM.
As for which version of Office to buy, this is the third time I've opted for the Home and Student version (which has had other names in previous releases, but is still being sold for $149). I need Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and this is the most cost-effective way to get those programs. I was disappointed that Microsoft dropped Outlook from the Home and Student version. In order to continue to use Outlook, I installed Outlook 2003 and haven't had any problems.
Instead of Outlook, you get OneNote, a program that uses notebooks and tabs to save and organize all sorts of files and documents. I haven't had much time to play with OneNote yet, but the more I use it, the more impressed I am with it. It looks like one of those programs that you can personalize to meet your own needs and not have to fight with it to get it to do what you want.
This is a significant upgrade and should allow all users, new and experienced, to work more efficiently and quickly.
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158 of 165 people found the following review helpful:
Let's reconcile all those good and bad reviews..., September 15, 2007
This review is from: Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 (CD-ROM)
Well, it's been a week now, and while I still have Office 2002 (virtually identical to 2003) and Office 2007 on my laptop, I've pretty much stopped using 2002. I give '07 a thumbs up.
I have used Office since 1994 for just simple letters and spreadsheets until the last year, where I started becoming a heavy user of some really odd features, like non-standard line spacing, different headers within the same document, embedded Excel sheets in a Word doc, embedding images in headers and footers, charting, tables, etc. I was worried if all these newly discovered features that I just learned would suddenly disappear in the changing ribbon that everyone was talking about.
Despite using weird features, or maybe because of it, I am a little more tolerant of looking up how to do things. But I didn't want to relearn everything, and I haven't had to. The default blank document has tabs for Home, Insert, Page Layout, References, etc, which really are not much different than the categories in the classic drop-down menus. Once clicking on these tabs, you are offered the same choices as before...charts, insert picture, bookmarks, wordart, etc., and a few new ones, like references, balloons and highlighting, footnotes, and more. It IS a different layout, but to this point, I don't think it ever took me more than 10 seconds to find something.
I'm surprised no one is talking about the ability to save documents in .pdf (what was once exclusive to Adobe). I know other software has allowed this for sometime, but the ability to make a document that will launch in Adobe Reader with all the functionality of Word or Excel is something I've been waiting for. In 2 years, we'll all wonder how we did without it. This is important to me because once in .pdf, the formatting is locked in, and won't change depending on how it's previewed or printed.
Another thing that is important is the new, modern looking charts and tables. This isn't just the 'pretty' factor, but more effective to understanding lots of data more easily. Office 2000/2002/2003 just looked old and unimpressive. It's true that Microsoft is just catching up to Apple, Adobe and others, but they've at least done it. Equally important is the ability to instantly see changes to formatting before you've committed it to the whole document. I've probably wasted a month's time over the course of the last year reformatting documents to do it a better way. If only I authored them in 2007, which was available a year ago, I would have saved so much time.
One reviewer said his Home/Student version "did not have all the features as the full version". I've tried to investigate this, and as far as I can tell, Home/Student's versions of Word/Excel/Powerpoint are no different than any other version.
I don't want to get too personal here, but all the reviewers who are angry that their saved homework or important business document was saved in .docx and therefore was not readable by anyone else really are just wanting to be victims. Office 2007 makes it abundantly clear that you will be saving in .docx, and if you don't want to, you don't have to. It tells you how and where to save it as a compatible .doc file (or .xls, etc.) and whether you want this as your default setting. I'm sorry, but if you're a student and you ignore all those messages, I think you're going to have more problems in school than using this version of Office.
The Grammar check seems to be improved, catching problems that my Office 2002 did not. Hot keys like Ctrl K for hyperlinks or Ctrl C to copy all still work. I'm not sure if they removed others as some reviewers have said, but so far it has not affected me. The concept of Add-Ins (plugins) is a little bit annoying, as to get certain features like the ability to save .pdf requires you go online and install the add-in. Then again, this gives Microsoft the ability to add features from time to time (hopefully they'll use it that way - I think a big reason for add-ins is to give Microsoft a way of periodically checking your software to ensure it's legal). I also like the always-on word count, something that Amazon probably wishes I would use in my reviews.
I'm at day 7 and counting, and I don't feel much reason to ever open my Office 2002 again.
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79 of 82 people found the following review helpful:
MS Office Standard 2007 - Steep Price, Steep Learning Curve, Slippery Slope!!!, February 27, 2008
Microsoft's Office Standard 2007 is the version that includes the programs most people will be looking for in an office suite: Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook. While Microsoft did make some improvements, many changes have users frustrated and mad.
Pros
+ Standard version includes the 4 programs you actually want!
+ Like most new MS suites, allows for easier transfer between machines
+ Allows you to use on your home desktop AND your laptop!! Huge plus!!
+ New open document format based on xml - good for techies
+ Alternatively, you can still use the doc format you know and love
+ Excel now supports larger documents with more fields!
+ Cool new Powerpoint extras
+ Once you do overcome the learning curve, design has some plusse
+ Preloaded with Vista OEM computers, so install is MUCH faster than old version
Cons
- A list price of $400 means many will forgo Outlook and buy Home & Student suite for MUCH LESS
- The ribbon puts things in WEIRD places
- Microsoft disabled classic menus so you can't find stuff ... ARGH!!!
- Startup times seem a little slower ... why????
- Strangely slow performance with Word
The general hatred for the ribbon is well known. Microsoft Word and Excel have drawn the most heat. It took everybody years to learn those nested menus and hard to find functions. Now they are all moved!!!!
Actually, the ribbon wouldn't be so bad if you could have your regular old classic menus above it. Once you learn the ribbon, there's some logic to the way things have been relocated. Still, this was a huge blunder and I wonder if MS will back track on that.
This guy also includes Outlook, which is a MUST for me since I have to use Outlook on my work PC. I tried using the exported files in the new vista calendar apps, and none of them really worked that well. The professional Microsoft Office Professional 2007 FULL VERSION and ultimate Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 FULL VERSION [DVD] suite versions also include outlook.
Yet why the list price of $400? The Home and Student Office 2007 suite Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 is $150 and includes everything here except for Outlook. Is Outlook worth $250 now? To be fair, there are cheaper upgrade versions. Still, I may be switching to a new email / calendar / productivity program all-together.
The new XML doc format is Microsoft's way of getting away from the proprietary .doc format. This will aggravate some people too, but you can just save everything in the 2003 format. I like the new format and I think it will catch on with time.
Despite the short comings, once you get past the learning curve the programs themselves are improved.
Enjoy!!!
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280 of 309 people found the following review helpful:
Microsoft has hit new low in ease (difficulty) of use, December 18, 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.
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129 of 140 people found the following review helpful:
Experienced users - Do NOT buy this product...., March 17, 2008
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!!!!
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52 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
Lost Production = Lousy Product, October 17, 2007
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
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158 of 175 people found the following review helpful:
No productivity boost for me., February 28, 2007
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.
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111 of 122 people found the following review helpful:
License allows an additional laptop install, May 14, 2007
The product requires activation, which includes sending machine identification information to Microsoft.
The good news is that the Office Standard license allows installation on both a desktop system and a laptop. It also allows you to transfer the license to new systems, over time.
From the license: "Before you use the software under a license, you must assign that license to one device. ... You may install another copy on a portable device for use by the single primary user of the licensed device. ... You may reassign the license to a different device any number of times, but not more than one time every 90 days."
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97 of 106 people found the following review helpful:
Unnecessarily and radically hard to use, July 11, 2007
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.
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