Review by ConsumerAdvocate (dakotad555) at (gmail) dot (com)

I’m a constant user of both office 2003 and office 2007 since I have the 2007 edition at work but have not upgraded at home. Those who are ripping this software as ‘terrible’ or ‘unusable’ as being overly harsh. Does it have some frustrating issues? Sure. Is it worthless and unusable? Not at all.

Word, which is the application I spent about half my work hours using, is in many cases easier to use in the 2007 version. While I’m not a huge fan of the ribbon, I don’t have issues locating what I need nor do I have problems customizing it to include the features I use most often. Overall I can find exactly what I need when I need it. I think most of the complaints that I read about the ribbon have more to do with users unable to adapt than with a real design flaw inherent to the system of organization. The new DocX file format creates smaller file sizes than the old standard, but at the expense of versatility, as un-patched versions of Microsoft Word will not open them.

Excel is fantastic. The 2007 version is impressively fast compared to 2003. I can use tilt tables with 200 variables without a second delay. Also, the ability to create very high quality charts and graphs that seamlessly integrate with Power Point and Word is fantastic. I’ve been able to make nicer looking reports in less time than ever before. Excel is the biggest overall improvement from 2003 especially in the visual department. The addition of a wide variety of visual styles for reports is welcome and very useful.

Another great change to Excel is the detailed descriptions for each command that are available in the help section. There is still some streamlining that is missing; too much of the program is still dependent on old macro commands that no one but long time users of things like Lotus Notes have a vocabulary for.

Power Point is also a nice improvement. Adding images and then tweaking them is easier than ever. As I mentioned previously, taking charts and graphs from Excel to PP is very easy. You can use cut-and-paste, or import them directly. The resulting PP files are also smaller than the previous format, which is great for e-mailing them to people.

The much maligned DocX format was initially a real gaffe for Microsoft; not making it immediately usable by Office 2003 users was simply moronic. Although they’ve released several patches that do allow full implementation between 2003 and 2007 versions of Office, these updates are large (over 50mb) and while businesses most certainly have updated, it’s far less likely that your friend, brother, etc., has. Sending a DocX file to those without the patch can create a bit of chaos.

Overall Office 2007 is an improvement over 2003, even if you hate the ribbon. The speed increases, added features, and integration of excel, word, and PP in a way that lets them all play together nicely is well worth the upgrade.