If you’re still using Office 2003, you’re not alone. Like Windows Vista, Office 2007 wasn’t popular. Many businesses didn’t bother to upgrade, partly because of its new file formats and half-implemented Ribbon interface, and decided to stick with the more familiar Office 2003. However, like Windows 7, the new Office 2010 promises to be a much more popular and customisable suite, making upgrading much more attractive.
One of the biggest changes in Microsoft Office 2007 was the new Ribbon interface, but it didn’t work with all the suite’s applications. In Office 2010, it does. Now if you upgrade, you’ll get a standard look across all your key applications and, while there’s still a bit of a learning curve, Office 2010 is definitely easier to use than the 2007 version.
Office 2007 included a poorly designed Office button that most people thought was just a logo. In Office 2010 this has been replaced with a File tab, which leads you to the new Office Backstage area. Tools here include saving, opening and printing files. All are more accessible and easier to use than those in Office 2007.
In Office 2007 you couldn’t customise the Ribbon – all you could do was add buttons to the quick access toolbar. In Office 2010 the Ribbon is fully customisable, so you can add your own groups and add buttons to them, making it easy for advanced users to configure a program to be more functional.
Graphics
In Office 2007, Excel and PowerPoint got powerful new graphics features such as WordArt. However, Word and Publisher, which could have made the most use of WordArt, missed out completely. Now the new graphics engine and WordArt are accessible across the suite. Another addition is the screenshot tool on the Insert tab, which lets you capture screenshots and put them into your documents – a really handy feature if you produce user manuals, for example.
PowerPoint is a key business tool, but it has lacked functional video features – until now. The 2010 version lets you embed and play more video formats inside your slides than earlier versions, including YouTube content. It also has a video editing tool. You can even broadcast PowerPoint presentations across the web.
If you create business documents you’ll like the SmartArt business graphics, which first appeared in Office 2007. Combined with the new PowerPoint layouts and Themes, these make it easy to create great-looking reports. Themes are used consistently across applications, so a chart created in Excel and copied into Word will be automatically formatted with the look applied to the Word document.
Overall, anything involving graphics, including charts and PowerPoint slide designs, looked much better in Office 2007 than earlier versions. Most features that were only partially implemented in the Office 2007 suite have now been fully covered in Office 2010.
Although Outlook 2007 didn’t include a fully implemented Ribbon, it was a redesigned application, so the screen was laid out better and the space available was used more effectively. In Outlook 2010, the changes – apart from the Ribbon – extend to features that make it easier to control ongoing email conversations and a quick-step feature that lets you create one-click links to perform multistep tasks. As Outlook doesn’t have a macro recorder, this is a simple way to automate tasks.
OneNote, which was included in some editions and left out of others in the past, will now be included in all Office editions. This application is a handy research and note-taking tool.
Go online...
Some of the changes in Office 2010 will occur online and on your mobile. For the first time, for example, cut-down versions of OneNote, Excel, Word and PowerPoint will be available online. The online versions will preview your documents as they were designed to look and offer basic editing features. This will allow you to, for example, create a document and save it online to either a SharePoint site or to Skydrive (skydrive.live.com) so that others can access and change the document.
Some people didn’t upgrade to Office 2007 because the Ribbon was unfamiliar and meant they had to relearn aspects of the program. Now, Ribbon-like interfaces are being used by other developers and appearing in a wide range of software, so it’s more familiar. This will make it easier to use the Microsoft Office Ribbon.
There is one really compelling reason to upgrade. Many new computers will now be shipped out with a free Starter Edition of Office 2010, including cut-down, advertising-supported versions of Word and Excel, so you’ll get a taste of the new applications. And, in time, people you share documents with will upgrade and their new document formats won’t be compatible with older versions of Office. While you can get add-ins that’ll let you edit these documents, you’ll be locked out of many of the more advanced features if your Office version doesn’t support them.
If you didn’t upgrade to Office 2007, there’s a lot to like about Office 2010. If you did, you may find that Office 2010 is all that Office 2007 should have been…
Plus points for the new version…
- The much-maligned Ribbon now works with all applications in the suite, including Publisher, Outlook and OneNote, making it easier to use. And it can be customised, too.
- The ‘button’ has been replaced with a File tab leading into the new Office Backstage area.
- The graphics are much better and more easy to use.
- Cut-down versions of OneNote, Excel, Word and PowerPoint are now available online so you can share documents with others.