Microsoft Office Standard 2007 user reviews

Pros Pretty graphic icons everywhere

Cons Very difficult to navigate It is not yet integrated

Summary I purchased this because I was told that my Office 2003 would not work with Vista...wrong. I simply hate this program. All the navigation has changed and you have to learn how to navigate the software all over again. Its not intutive to use, Its not integrated, its not any of those thigs the business world asked for. It is very techno, graphic, icon oriented. It will require major training to use and the features for the majority of users are no better than previous versions.
Micorsoft completely blew it on this one... they had the chance to make a good product better and they made it worse.
If it were my hard earned dollars, I would suggest getting a 2003 version and sticking with that. You won't find any thing in 2007 to get excited about. And you will spend a fortune retraining your folks. This is a case where sticking to the old will get you much further than changing to the new.
If you are an avid office user you will hate this upgrade.

Pros Tabbed interface could be great

Cons But its not- so close but so far

Summary I have been a MS Office user for 12 years this latest iteration was supposed to be the best ever- AND I WANTED IT TO BE! But sadly its not
Heres why-
The Tabbed interface is a great idea, the big buttons (ala Apple) are great and its about time but really something is missing.
Microsoft has correctly gotten it right that a BUTTON is easier to find and use than a drop down- fair enough.
You tell me - in a Word document what do 100% of users do with that document? They either SAVE it, PRINT it or MAIL it but the "HOME" tab has NO BIG BUTTON TO PRINT, SAVE or EMAIL!!! ARRRGGGH I have to go to a VERY small icon to do it with a one click or resort to a drop down on the circle logo and then drag my mouse to a right column for the "sub" action- this is just frickin nuts.
Hey Microsoft- why not a tab called 'MINE" that i could POPULATE with BIG BUTTONS that I WANT and use most often? Now doesn't that make sense? In these days of personalization why cant I use this $400 app the way I WANT TO USE THE APP?! And whats with all the space in the home tab for the styles and headers etc? Almost NO ONE messes with that stuff.
A chance for greatness and ease of use was missed- maybe Office for the Mac will get it right?
Oh and it seems slower than the last version- and i have a new loaded Core 2 duo Lenovo widescreen with 2 megs of RAM.

Pros Outlook is easier to import old .pst files

Cons Incredibly difficult to customize toolbars as per the old "classic" way. Assumes way too many things about how the user wants information displayed. lacks substance and utility.

Summary I have been using Office products for more than a decade and this has to be the most counter-intuitive version yet. Developers apparently left customers out of the loop when they were making decisions on this one. They dressed it up all pretty to attract Mac customers but failed to recognize that in doing so they'd alienate many experienced users who are more accustomed to having more control over how things look and act. The Excel Macro recorder used to only be good for getting syntax and object properties. Now a "feature" is that it ignores actions taken on chart objects and it's useless. I could go on; but in short if you have Office experience STAY WITH 2003. If you're relatively new and only use Office to type a few docs and maybe send some emails, don't bother wasting your money unless you don't already have a program that can do that...unless you value flashiness over utility and don't mind getting ripped off by a price that's way too high.

Pros Some cool added features in Outlook....

Cons Unstable, unintuitive....

Summary I purchased this because I bought Office 2003 (Standard) between October 2006 and February 2007 and received Office 2007 as a free upgrade. I installed 2007 over 2003 and everything seemed to work like a champ....except for Outlook. Don't get me wrong, the upgraded Outlook has some great features I love like the ability to "preview" Office file attachments inside the preview window. But, after about four months or so, Outlook just decided not to connect to my mail server to send or receive e-mails. Several Google inquiries later I was able to find this well-documented flaw with several work-arounds, but none were able to fix my problem. I just uninstalled 2007 and installed 2003 again and everything is hunky-dory!

As for the rest of the programs (Word, Excel PP, etc) everything worked as advertised for what I was doing with them, but navigation has changed so much that it is infuriating to have to re-learn everything all over again. After four months it still took me over a minute to figure out how to rotate my Word file from portrait to landscape! It will require a lot of training to learn all of the features again and I just don't have the time. Change doesn't have to be bad, but it doesn't have to reset my Office skill level to that of a entry-level clerk!

I'm not going to say Microsoft completely blew it, but why mess around with what was working? If it were my hard earned dollars, I would suggest staying with a 2003 version and sticking with that.