MS Office 2007 Beta

ChityWest

MS Office 2007 Beta - Just wondering if anyone has used this and is it worth the effort ?

smemon

oh my dear god, not another one :cool:

Capt'n Midnight

For home users there is no point in trying it out unless you are seriosly planning to buy a copy later on., unless it has some "must have" feature that you need.

I haven't bothered to look at it, but I'd suggest you check out the default file format for saves, since it may be totally incompatible with your existing office package with the D'oh factor that involves.


OpenOffice does much of what I want for the princely sum of € 0.00 ( $0.00 ) and I know that if there are problem that are only addressed ina later version I'll be able to get those fixes and updates free too.

ChityWest

Yep - I use openoffice on linux machines - but not on windows ones.

I was just wondering if anyone here have had any actual real world experience with it re starting up times, quirks, annoying parts - excellent bits etc -

I can read the ms site bs but i would rather hear from an actual person not a corporate robot : )

JoeyJJ

I use it 8 hrs a day.. Testing it !

ChityWest

seriously ? whats the verdict ? is it faster than 2k3 or what ? Any enhancements worth mentioning ?

Basq

Is this the same beta with the horrible Aqua colour scheme?

If not, it must be the previous beta i'm that had a problem with inserting headers and footers.

Horrible amateur design to it.. i know Office needs to cater to new users also but jesus.. using it was like being held by the fecking hand to perform operations.

Gah.. really disliked it and went back to OpenOffice!

nuttz

Outlook is buggy and crashes occasionally, and keeps asking to install some desktop search feature which doesn't install for me.

Capt'n Midnight

#Elites wrote:

Well if you dont have an Office package, and cant afford one, download this one, its free for life, sure after Feb 07 you wont get updates, but it still works fine!

CBA downloading this.

Does it save in the new xml file format by default ?
Can documents be converted back to earlier doc format - by anything other than an earlier copy of word with a undated filter ?

tklemonade

If I am reading the blurb correctly it does have one new useful trick in it for excel users. Well heavy excel users...

From the MS site
"In versions of Excel earlier than Microsoft Excel 2002, the memory limit is 64 MB. In Excel 2002, the limit is increased to 128 MB. In Microsoft Office Excel 2003, the limit is increased to 1 gigabyte (GB)." Note this has nothing to do with your PC's RAM.

I upgraded to 2003 and I still have the probelm of "Excel not having enough resources" to save. I use a lot of vLookup.

I read some where on the 2007 site (buggered if I can find it now) that it is no longer going to be restricted to 1gb and also that you can have up to a million rows. Which is cool.

tklemonade

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

CBA downloading this.

Does it save in the new xml file format by default ?
Can documents be converted back to earlier doc format - by anything other than an earlier copy of word with a undated filter ?

Well I just installed it (PC is due a format anyway so i thought...fuk it why not!)

In the settings you can choose the standard save file type as... and in there is 97-2003 .xls work book.

My first impressions were.."dear god what is happening with the menus!!!!" but after 10 minutes i can see how it is actually a much better/intuitive system than the old. Which is not bad praise coming from me considering I am an xp user who still uses the "Classic view" interface I can't abide by that xp malrky!!

Gosh

nuttz wrote:

Outlook is buggy and crashes occasionally, and keeps asking to install some desktop search feature which doesn't install for me.

To remove the reminder that comes up every time you start go to Tools > Options > Other > Advanced Options and then clear the "Show prompts to download Windows Desktop Search" box (8th one down).

I had the same problem with the install - MS are aware there is a problem and there is a workround but it involves a lot of steps. I downloaded the WDS Beta 3.0 again yesterday and it installed OK so maybe they have corrected it in the last few days

Gosh

#Elites wrote:

Well if you dont have an Office package, and cant afford one, download this one, its free for life, sure after Feb 07 you wont get updates, but it still works fine!

Not quite sure that's 100% correct. On the Office 2007 beta is states

After expiration, 2007 Microsoft Office system Beta 2 will continue to work in a reduced functionality mode that limits your options and operations.

On the Office 2003 download it states

After the trial expires, the software goes into reduced functionality mode. In reduced functionality mode you can continue to view and print files, but you cannot modify existing files or create and save new ones.

So it's probable the reduced functionality of Office 2007 will be the same as Office 2003.

Capt'n Midnight

Gosh wrote:

On the Office 2003 download it states

After the trial expires, the software goes into reduced functionality mode. In reduced functionality mode you can continue to view and print files, but you cannot modify existing files or create and save new ones.

So it's probable the reduced functionality of Office 2007 will be the same as Office 2003.

No view and print means all you have is Word viewer, which is a free download anyway.

It doesn't seem to have the "Save as an earlier version" option included so you may be painting yourself into a corner.

hk797

Downloaded and installed ok on XP Pro as admin.

However everytime I sign in as a user (restricted) it has to reload and then continually loops trying to configure setup until I shut it down. :eek:

Is there some setting I need to change within admin to sort this out?

Thks