When Microsoft released the first beta of Office 12 in November, many features were promised but not ready. With 2007 Office Beta 2 released today, most of those promises are fulfilled. One thing is clear: Office’s big push is for collaboration, and SharePoint is at the core of this movement.
There are plenty of changes to the Office applications. Let’s start by looking at what an application user will see, then we’ll explain the move to SharePoint. Finally, we’ll consider several important issues IT managers need to weigh when deciding whether to upgrade.
Goodbye Menus, Hello Ribbons
Right from the start, you’ll notice the most significant change to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and many screens in Outlook 2007. Gone are the familiar toolbars and menus; they’ve been replaced by “ribbons” that house a variety of buttons, icons and graphics (see Figure 1). The ribbons have a dual purpose: to highlight features that users are likely to use most often or want most (but have trouble finding), and to promote features at the point they’re most useful.
Figure 1: Word’s “Home” ribbon contains most of the editing tools you’re likely to access most often.
