Microsoft Office Standard 2007 user reviews

Pros I like nothing about it because the drastically re-configured user interface is a mess. I'm a long-time user of XP and 2003. I assume 2007 will function just fine, but I won't keep it long enough to find out.

Cons The new menu and toolbar configuration of 2007 is an insult to anyone who has been using previous versions of Office for basic business, personal and academic purposes.

Summary I recently purchased a new Dell computer. The only version of Office they offered was 2007. I have XP on my other home computer and 2003 on my office computer. I am not sure if I could purchase an additional license to install XP on the new computer.

I don't have elaborate word processing or spreadsheet needs. I have become very proficient at using the keyboard instead of the mouse to navigate through worksheets and documents, select items, etc. I rarely touch the mouse, and my productivity and efficiency have gone up substantially as a result.

Now, with the 2007 interface in Office, any menus and toolbars with which I was familiar are nowhere to be found. Microsoft has offered no option of retaining the toolbars of XP or 2003 and has pretty much told experienced users that they have no option but to re-learn an enormous amount of what they probably spent years refining in their daily use.

I've found an add-in that's supposed to enable those who are stuck with Office 2007 to implement the "classic" toolbars and menu functions. Since it's not yet been reviewed by CNet, I won't name the product. They offer a 60-day trial, so I'm going to give it a go and see if it works the way they claim it does. If it doesn't, I'll be looking to buy an in-the-box 2003 Office version and I'll uninstall 2007. I hate it that much. This is the last time I'll buy a Microsoft product if there is any way to avoid it. I consider 2007 a slap in the face and a sign of arrogance. It's one thing to make a new version that supposedly has some dramatic increase in capabilities, but I'm not looking to spend substantial amounts of my time learning something that has no potential to improve my own performance.

Sorry, that's my take on it.

Pros Faster for making basic documents pretty.

Cons Most keyboard commands are missing. Many previous power features hidden or missing. Help less helpful.

Summary Office 2007 looks pretty, and the colorful new ribbon and Live Preview feature combine to make it easy to preview and select fonts, graphics and layout options. But if you have used previous versions of Office the new ribbon interface will cause you immediate and lasting frustration.

One big problem is that nearly all of your familiar ALT- keyboard commands are gone, which will slow you down in ever Office application you are even moderately familiar with.

Another annoyance is the way fine control has been stripped from the user in some cases. For example, Word footers give you a range of semi-cute, pre-formatted choices, but I haven't found a way to just insert a file name into a footer. Yes, I do know how to use Help.

PowerPoint benefits the most from the new and easy-to-use graphics and layout tools. Creating good-looking presentations is significantly easier and faster with Outlook 2007 than with Outlook 2003.

Word is the worst, especially if you use the application's functions regularly while creating a document (instead of, say, just typing a lot of words and not worrying about formatting). I really miss Word 2003's keyboard commands - everything seems to take longer even after10 weeks of intensive use. And since I use Word most frequently, its badness easily overwhelms the fun of the new PowerPoint.

Outlook 2007 has retained the classic menu and toolbar structure in the main application, though individual email and appointment/task/contact windows have ribbon interfaces. For these smaller items the ribbon seems to work well. Outlook 2007's problem is that it is bloated and slow (much slower than 2003), yielding frustrating delays on even a 1-year-old dual-core Pentium system with plenty of memory. With a faster system, I'd give a slight edge to the new Outlook.

Excel seems fine (though I use it for pretty basic spreadsheets - power users may feel differently). Absence of keyboard commands can be frustrating, but right-clicking will get you to the most frequently used basic commands. Let's call it a tie.

Most UI experts will tell you that users resent change and will fight even good new designs at first, then come to love them later. 20 years of training on a menu-based UI can probably make for some hard-to-break preferences. Still, after 10 weeks with Office 2007 I have hit a plateau with a constant level of frustration.

Office 2007's powerful new features (for file sharing/collaboration and publishing)may be reason enough for some to buy the package, but I would rather use Office 2003 and some file converters than Office 2007.

Pros RSS feeds, categorized toolbars, better interaction between programs

Cons It Look's Like Odie Puked on My Screen!

Summary The first thing I always do when I get a new installation of Windows XP is switch to classic view. I detest the XP look. Office 2007 looks better than XP, but it still looks horrible. It looks like a 12-year-old designed it and a 6-year-old colored it. And we only have three colors to choose from! Why can't we get at the very least a "classic" color scheme. I mean, I really, REALLY don't like this new look. At all.

Don't get me wrong, Office 2007 has some nice features, but honestly, if it weren't for the RSS reader in Outlook I would uninstall the whole thing. I just can't stand looking at it. And it doesn't help that the very first time I used Excel I had to hunt for a very basic command: Print. PRINT!!! All I want is what I had: a single icon to click on to print a document, and I had to hunt for it!

Why does Microsoft think that it's customers will love their new creations? If I wanted a program that looked like it was designed by a Lord of the Flies think tank I'd get a Mac. C'mon Microsoft, make new friends, but don't forget the old.

Pros All the buttons are very pretty

Cons Who moved my cheese? My format toolbar? How to print? For that matter, I can't find anything!

Summary I've never seen a product so thoroughly burn it's bridges behind it. Nothing I knew after nearly 15 years of using some Office product or another, on either Windows or Mac, provided any clue whatsoever as to how the new product functioned. It now takes me twice as long to edit Word documents, about the same or more for complex spread sheets, and up to 5 times longer to construct decent-looking PPT slides.

I keep hearing that, if I stick with it and get over the "steep learning curve", I'll eventually like it. I don't believe I'm overstating things by saying that, up to now, I've considered myself a "power user" of these applications. However, after 4 months, the learning curve doesn't seem to leveingl, and I'm finding that simpler (less interesting) documents are becoming the norm just to meet my deadlines.