Microsoft Office is a necessary tool in both college and professional life. The majority have been exposed to this suite of software for some time and have become rather proficient with its endless menus, constant dialog boxes, and those ever-so-helpful assistants. This paradigm, however, is about to change.
To coincide with this release of Microsoft’s new operating system Windows Vista, the new Office 2007 (formerly Office 12) suite of products will be released. As could be expected, the product line-up has not changed from the usual Word, Excel, Access, and Power Point. The big changes lie in the look, feel, and usability of those tools.
The major change to the main Office products (Word, Excel, Access, and Power Point) is the default user interface. Rather than being bombarded by menus and rows of buttons, a clean, concise presentation of tools is displayed on a so-called “ribbon.” Ribbons are a new organizational device that group relevant commands into tabs for easier access.
The default tabs are Home, Insert, Page Layout, References, Mailings, Review, and View. These are replacements for their ancestor menus of like names. Further organizing their interface, Microsoft took it upon themselves to group useful features on each of the ribbons.
For example, the default Home tab has common features such as Clipboard, Font, Paragraph, Styles, and Editing. This features allows the average user to quickly make changes to how their document looks without the hassle of going through six menus as with previous versions. The tabs on the ribbons are also contextual. If, for example, you are working with a table in a document, a new tab will be displayed immediately that only relates to tables and their use. Contextual tabs and ribbons allow Microsoft to remove a lot of the unnecessary user interface options and provide a much more user-friendly experiences.
To further help users with editing documents, Microsoft has added a plethora of new tools to make it easier and more efficient. One of the new technologies is called Live Preview.
With this technology, a user can highlight text and scroll through the list of fonts to see changes immediately. In the past, a user would have to highlight, select the font, and scroll back through the list of fonts to get back to their previous position. If a user needs even faster access to font editing features, Microsoft has added a small, nearly transparent editing window that pops up when a user highlights text. The window gives immediate access to font style, face, size, and coloring along with indention and bulleted list options. The same menu appears when a user right-clicks as well.
Microsoft has taken away their dialog box choosing style and moved to a technology they call Galleries. For example, if a user wants to insert a cover page, a drop-down (rather than a dialog) of available cover sheet styles with their names, a small preview, and a short description is displayed. These gallery items provide a template for where to put the information to make it look the best.
Microsoft’s main goal in creating Office 2007 was to challenge themselves to create an easier system. In the end, the challenge has been met and with a lot of style.
The new user interface might seem daunting at first for old school users, but it takes little time to adjust.
With a slick new interface, several great enhancements, and a plethora of style, Microsoft Office 2007 will be the productivity suite of choice next year.
For more information regarding Microsoft Office 2007 or to download the beta, please visit www.microsoft.com/office/preview. To suggest future articles or give feedback on this article, please e-mail me at dallas.tester@gmail.com.

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