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Office 2007 represents some very significant changes for Office users.
Most notably is the ribbon menu presentation. Using this new feature is pretty frustrating at first, not because it’s not better, because you have to unlearn the programs a bit. In the end, I like the changes, they put more power at your fingertips and offer a lot of new tools.
One of my favorite finds is in PowerPoint. PowerPoint has a new tool called SmartArt. SmartArt gives you the ability to create eye-catching graphics that present relationships, matrixs, cycles, pyramids, hierarchy and processes by simply typing your core words and selecting some simple formating. The end product makes for some very nice graphics that aid in the telling of your story (The image above is the Duct Tape Marketing Customer Life-Cycle brought to life. - click the image to get the full impact). What I like about it most though is that you can take the created graphic and save it as one of a number of very web friendly formats. This feature allows you to very easily create smart images for web pages.
There are lots of ways to create graphics like these, but I like easy!
Care to share some of your marketing and productivity related finds in this massive upgrade?
Comments
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at Apr 03, 08 | 9:38 am and is filed under Microsoft, Tools I Use. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Hopefully your 2007 Office package came with Publisher. While it may not be as sophisticated as Photoshop or other Adobe programs, it is an invaluable tool for the small business. Those who are already familiar with Office should have no problem navigating their way through the program. With mostly just point and clicks you can create email campaigns, brocures, flyers, business cards, and just about any other type of published product the small business might need. There are templates to get you started, but once you get the hang of its easy to create your own original materials.
I find the auto summaries in Excel 2007 very useful. If you highlight some figures it gives you values such as average, sum and count in the bottom toolbar. Formula construction is now a piece of cake. The tables and graphs Excel 2007 creates also look fantastic.
I love the new suite and it really saves me a lot of time and frustration! I keep finding more ways to maximize my time with Outlook, and Word has never been better!
I do agree with the first commentor on this one! So many of my clients don’t want to go through the hassle of learning photoshop or some other graphics program.. they want something reliable, that they can kind of “guess” their way around based on MS’s previous apps.
I do also like the idea of SmartArt! Wonderful!
It’s great if you can afford to upgrade or purchase MS Office. But for us on a limited budget the best out there is OpenOffice.org! Not only is it FREE! You can also save the document in MS Office formats, not 2007 (yet).
I especially like the new ribbon design. Once I learn how to use it, I can create professional document very quickly and create custom colors that suit my company.
Seth: It comes with Publishers 2007, depends on your suit but you can purchase it separately.
Also notice that the new format is now actually a zip format consists of XML and other support files. The old formats can be opened as well, but now displayed as *Compatibility mode*
A UK government agency reported earlier this year that schools should review the benefits of Vista and Office 2007 for interoperability and money issue.
The upgrade may or may not be beneficial compared to the money spent.
-Hendry
frustrating? so much so, that I uninstalled 07 and reloaded OfficeXP - those tools I know and can use and don’t face any learning curve at all!
Jim - Learning new, more powerful ways to do things can be frustrating but worth it.
How about One Note? If your package came with this you are in luck. This is a great tool for collecting and organizing all your data that is collected in the research phase. You can cut and paste materials right into the notebooks you create for each project and it shows the web address you took it from. It also has a screenshot feature which is great for capturing images from the internet. You can also share these notebooks with other members of your team and collaborate on files at the same time without having to sinc them up later. All my projects start out in One Note till I can organize the materials into a comprehensive report.
I am one of the group that likes both Office 2007 and Vista. There have been some new things to learn and some old software that didn’t work so well. On another hand, I have a great piece of graphic software from 1998 or earlier that works just fine.
I use OneNote extensively. I use EverNote as well in other applications, but I do like that OneNote! My package didn’t include Publisher, but I kept it on an old laptop because, yes, it is a favorite. Although I can remember how it seemed rather like the new upgrades in 2000, very sharp learning curve.
We need to be ready to embrace new things and keep up. This is the only way not to be left behind.
Not new to 2007 but a definite improvement is Business Contact Manager for Outlook. This is a great tool for small businesses that don’t want to invest large dollars into CRM software and are already using Outlook as their main email program anyway. It doesn’t come installed automatically. It’s a separate CD with Office Small Biz and Office Pro.
Yes, I got the new 2007 and am quite disappointed that I had to relearn the menus.
The program enhancements could have easily been made without the wholesale change in look and feel.
It is almost like learning a new program. I wish MS would have allowed an option or preference setting to retain the “classic” menu.
This has not been a positive experience for me. And lo, look at this, the MS Publisher barely changed. What’s up with that?
And don’t forget, Apple-style bottom reflecting graphics are super easy in PowerPoint.
While I agree it’s very frustrating to have to unlearn a skill, in the long run this new office is worth it. Spend a couple hours on the weekend learning it. You won’t regret it!
I originally started using Open Office as I was trying to save monies, there where bugs, and now they have been sorted. Have you tried it out its really worth a try.
What Office 2007 has done is added the X extension to the end of the files which does not allow Open Office users from opening these files. Its there way to fight back.
Open Office is definitely a worthy alternative to a very expensive product. Open source software is where the future lies. Microsoft must be sweating the success of linux….
SmartArt? The Office killer feature that I would not stop to promote, promote, and promote if I was in a Microsoft marketing position: http://www.felgner.ch/2007/11/office_killer_features.html.
I’ve been a word user for probably as long as its been around, but Word 7 is plain frustrating. Simple things like using a bullet (when I click the bullet, my whole page gets bullets whether I want it to or not), or trying to bold a word or two (the whole document bolds). Trying to print labels is plain maddening. Using the Mailings/Mail Merge function is useless. If I cut & paste an address to a label, I may have the name in bold & the address in a regular font prior to cutting, but when I paste, it is either all in bold, or the bold is reversed. Plus I can’t seem to save any defaults no matter how many things I try. I don’t want to have to set up a letter everytime I use Word. What is with all the double spacing that I can’t seem to get rid of. This program came with my new computer with no instructions. All I can say is that I hate it!