Product Description

Upgrade only; previous version of Office required

Microsoft Office Small Business 2007 is the complete suite of productivity and contact management tools for accomplishing your business tasks. Manage customer and contact information in one place, while producing professional-quality communications and manage marketing campaigns in-house with a full suite of powerful tools. Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 integrates contact management directly with Outlook, for better control over your customer & prospect information, e-mail messages, phone calls, appointments and more. With Office Small Business 2007 you can save time, stay organized and spend more time with customers. Business Contact Manager in Outlook 2007 helps you manage and track your marketing activities Use Powerpoint 2007 to create more dynamic business presentations - It features an extensive library of slide layouts; new tools for charts, diagrams and tables; quick preview changes and more Distribute marketing materials in PDF format -- convert easily from Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Publisher and Access files

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #177 in Software
• Brand: Microsoft
• Model: W87-02379
• Released on: 2007-01-30
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: 1.50" h x 5.30" w x 7.40" l, .70 pounds

Features

• Upgrade version designed for those computers with Windows server 2003 or later and Windows XP SP2 and later
• Includes the 2007 versions of Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Publisher, and Outlook with Business Contact Manager
• Create professional looking documents and presentations, build powerful spreadsheets, and manage your e-mail messages, calendar, and contacts
• Intuitive look and feel, and improved tools; task-based menus and toolbars automatically display the commands and options you can use
• Instant Search function saves you time; junk mail and anti-phishing filters protect the security of your computer; new graphics capabilities help you produce publication-ready documents

Amazon.com
Microsoft Office Small Business 2007 Version Upgrade is a powerful and easy-to-use suite of productivity and contact management software with new tools to help you save time, stay organized, and deliver better customer service. Comprised of the 2007 versions of Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Publisher, and Outlook with Business Contact Manager, this software package empowers you to create professional looking documents and presentations, build powerful spreadsheets, and manage your e-mail messages, calendar, and contacts.

The new look and feel of the 2007 Microsoft Office system automatically displays the menus and toolbars you need when you need them. View larger.

Tasks are easy to follow up on because they are included on the new To-Do Bar and within Outlook reminders. You can also drag tasks onto your calendar. View larger.

You can customize the new information dashboard in Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager to display your sales pipeline. View larger.

Business Contact Manager also combines contact, customer, and project information in one place. View larger.

Create, preview, and send personalized e-mail publications with Office Publisher 2007 using new E-Mail Merge. View larger.

In addition, Outlook with Business Contact Manager integrates powerful contact management features into Outlook that allow you to access and track all customer information and communications in a central location. With improved menus and tools, enhanced graphics and formatting capabilities, new time and communication management tools, and more reliability and security, the Small Business 2007 package makes it easier and more enjoyable for you to get things done at home or at work.

This update version of Small Business 2007 is designed for use by those computers with the following operating systems: Windows server 2003 or later and Windows XP SP2 and later.

Which edition of Office is right for you? View a comparison of Microsoft Office 2007 editions.

Work More Efficiently and Effectively
The more intuitive look and feel, coupled with the improved tools, make Small Business 2007 the ideal software system to help you work faster to complete routine tasks and create more professional documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Task-based menus and toolbars automatically display the commands and options you can use, making it faster and easier to find the software features you need. Thanks to the Instant Search function to save you time, junk mail and anti-phishing filters to protect the security of your computer, and new graphics capabilities to help you produce publication-ready documents, (complete with logo, colors, fonts, and business information), this software can increase both your productivity and efficiency, while giving you more time to spend with your customers. And to help minimize time-wasting future edits, the Live Preview feature makes it easy to sample your changes before you apply them.

Office Excel 2007 makes it easy to analyze data. View larger.

Improved Time Management
When work is busy, it's sometimes difficult to stay on-top of appointments and tasks. This is why Small Business 2007 lets you schedule tasks in Outlook that will appear on your calendar, while the To-Do bar presents a consolidated view of tasks, calendar information, and e-mail messages flagged for follow-up. To help effectively manage your time, take advantage of the templates and tools in Word, all of which make it easier to reuse content, so you don't have to start from scratch whenever you create a new document. And keeping track of important information is a snap thanks to new Excel tools for filtering, sorting, and visualizing information to help you find and analyze business data more effectively.

Manage Contact and Customer Information in One Place
To help you manage contact and customer information, Outlook with Business Contact Manager includes a complete contact management solution for small businesses that helps you deliver better customer service. This software enables you to organize all of your contact, prospect, and customer information, so it's easier to manage prospects, respond to customers, and manage your sales process in one place. Enhanced reporting features include over 50 reports that you can easily modify for your unique business needs, and new filtering capabilities help you forecast and close sales. You can also record all types of communications with a customer in one place-- including all e-mail, phone calls, appointments, notes, and documents-- and view a consolidated view of your sales pipeline by using a variety of flexible reports that you can easily modify for your unique business needs. You also can track and manage project tasks and even transfer tasks to coworkers. For added flexibility, you can work offline on your laptop or Pocket PC, and then synchronize data when you return to the office.

Including charts in Office PowerPoint 2007 is easy. View larger.

Produce Professional-Looking Marketing Materials and Campaigns In-House
Small Business 2007 makes it a snap to manage the entire marketing process so you save the time and expense of hiring an outside service. Create and distribute professional-looking marketing materials and campaigns for print, e-mail, and the Web by using Publisher. Then use Outlook with Business Contact Manager and Publisher together to track and manage marketing campaign activities, including compiling mailing lists, distributing materials, and tracking your results. You also can access the library of customizable templates in PowerPoint to create professional-looking presentations that enhance your business identity. If you need to merge information from multiple sources, combine and filter mailing lists and data from Excel, Outlook, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, and Access to create personalized print and e-mail materials and build customized collateral such as catalogs and datasheets.

Dynamic Presentations
One of the most effective ways to inspire both employees and customers is to impress them with a dynamic presentation. With its extensive library of customizable themes and slide layouts, PowerPoint helps you to create powerful charts, SmartArt graphics, and tables, while giving you the time-saving option of quickly previewing formatting changes so your final result is ready to go. You can also use the PDF file format for easier document distribution and high-quality printing. No matter what you need to help your business thrive, Small Business 2007 can make it possible.

From the Manufacturer
Microsoft Office Small Business 2007 offers new contact management and marketing tools to help you save time and deliver better customer service. The suite contains the following Microsoft Office programs: Word 2007; Excel 2007; PowerPoint 2007; Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager; Publisher 2007; Accounting Express 2007.

Note: This is an Office Small Business 2007 Version Upgrade.

What's New?
The 2007 edition of this product includes many new features and benefits, including the ability to create great-looking documents faster. New graphics and visual galleries help you create more dynamic documents and presentations.

In addition, the suite enables you to find commands and help with ease. An improved user interface and help system make it easy to find the tools you need to get things done. Another key improvement is that you can now work more securely and confidently. An improved Document Inspector and automatic document recovery help to protect your work. You also get the ability to work more efficiently and effectively. New tools help you work faster and create more professional documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Moreover, users can now manage customer information, including sales leads, in one place. There are also improved tools to help you create marketing materials in-house. Design and distribute professional publications for print, e-mail, and the Web.

Familiar Programs, New Features
One of the many reasons to upgrade to the 2007 version of this suite is that you can organize, communicate, and publish your information in more dynamic ways with new versions of familiar Microsoft Office programs. Here's a preview of what each of these programs has to offer:

Accounting Express 2007

• Save time and get organized by managing everyday tasks like invoicing, inventory, payroll, and reporting-all in one place.
• Sell inventory through online marketplaces like eBay and get paid faster using PayPal.

• Create custom publications and marketing materials in-house for print, e-mail, and the Web.
• Manage e-mail and print marketing campaigns using Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager.

• Control your e-mail with new Instant Search, category coloring, and junk e-mail filtering.
• Manage contact information in one place, including e-mails, phone logs, meetings, and tasks.

• Apply professional formats to your document with one click and instantly preview changes.
• Communicate more effectively with new high impact tables, charts, and SmartArt diagrams.

• Organize and analyze data with new tools, such as Conditional Formatting for sorting and visualizing information.
• Create more attractive and professional-looking charts with enhanced visual effects.

• Create dynamic business presentations faster with new themes, layouts, and styles.
• Add visual impact with new SmartArt diagrams, charts, and tables and quickly preview changes.

Customer Reviews

Give it time and it will grow on you
My response to Office 2007 is similar to how I feel about Vista. We all grow accustomed over time to using software and operating systems a certain way and when a really significant new version comes along that changes things, it creates some initial discomfort and even frustration. But if you give the new version a real chance, even to the point of actually doing some reading on how to use it, and then apply what you have learned, there is the eventual realization that someone did put a lot of thought into this and it actually does work better. I am coming to this point now with both Vista and Office 2007. Both are worth the upgrade, but only if you are willing to devote the time and energy it takes to really take advantage of what they offer. Office 2007 may seem more difficult at first, but with familiarity you will come to appreciate the advance it actually represents. There is less need for the degree of personal customization of the interface that most of us required for previous versions of Office because of the much more effective system of ribbons, tabs, groups, and galleries developed for Office 2007.

Warning! Avoid at All Costs!
I recently bought a new laptop, and the changeover involved an "upgrade" to Office 2007. I was aware that there was a new user interface, but was not aware that Office 2007 is, in almost every respect, an INFERIOR product to any Office version that came before it!
I have used MS Office for many years, and am what could be called a "power user," especially for Word and Powerpoint, which I use weekly.
One of the great features of Office is that it has been totally customizable. For those who use office frequently, it has been easy to create your own custom toolbars so you have what you need easily available. Most tasks could be done with one or two mouse clicks... Until Office 2007!
In Office 2007, hardly anything is customizable! You have a constantly changing tool ribbon, which takes up a lot of screen real estate.
The ribbon presents a set of icons based on what it "thinks" you will need at the moment. It is rarely right! ... so you go searching through the tabs trying to find the icon that was on the ribbon a few moments earlier! There is one small "tool bar" up on the title bar that you CAN customize, but it is not convenient, and will not hold many icons. It has the option of being moved below the ribbon, which takes up even more screen real estate, but is still very limited, and cannot be docked or moved from there.
Granted, there are third party programs, such as Ribbon Customizer and Toolbar Toggle, that add back some of the ability to customize, but it is still far inferior to what Office users are used to!
Even the third party programs, however, cannot get around the fact that there are some features in earlier Office versions that are simply NOT included in the new one. In previous versions of Powerpoint, you could add a set of icons that, with one mouse click, allowed you to adjust the vertical spacing of text. That has been omitted in 2007. In the "improved" 2007 version, you must open a dialog box, and make several mouse clicks to adjust vertical spacing!
To make matters worse, Office 2007 documents are not compatible with earlier versions. After spending years establishing formats such as .doc and .ppt as industry standards, Microsoft has introduced a version of office that does not use these formats! If you want to send a document to someone who still has Office 2003 (or any other program that reads .doc files) you need to remember to save it in that format. The default 2007 format cannot be opened by earlier versions!
Office 2007 CAN open the older formats, but even in opening earlier Office formats, there are problems. For example, most users of Powerpoint have learned the trick of adding drop shadows behind the text to make the text stand out on the screen. Office 2007 has changed the way these shadows are formed. When you open a powerpoint presentation made on an earlier version, your old drop shadows WILL NOT ANIMATE with the text. When a slide appears, the shadows of the letters are already in place, and the letters animate in on top! Mircosoft's only suggestion... go through your slides and take the old shadows out, and put new shadows in! (I tried this... it takes 30-40 minutes per presentation! ...And I have hundreds of powerpoint presentations in my file!)
For someone who never used Office before, or who just uses Word to type simple letters, 2007 may be okay, but for anyone who depends on Office for detailed tasks and productivity, 2007 is a nightmare.
I have always loved Microsoft Office. It has been an industry standard for ease of use. In my opinion, that is no longer the case. I believe Microsoft tried to produce something "different" to attract new users, but in the process totally ignored the needs of those who have used their products in the past. If you have the option of staying with an earlier version, DO NOT UPGRADE to this product!

Dumbed down and harder to use
The new ribbon design is supposed to make it easier to learn and use. It may be for some new users but for experienced users, it isn't. This version takes away some critical nuts & bolts customization features and many tasks now take longer to perform. This is not due to the learning curve, it is the inherent nature of the way the ribbon works. Once you are familiar with the program, nothing is faster than the old menu structure. If Microsoft added an option to allow users to choose between menus and ribbons, it would be the best of both worlds, satisfying the needs of both new and experienced users. The new version does not run macros as fast however. My recommedation for existing users: keep Office 2003 for as long as you can and consider going to Open Office when Microsoft no longer supports 2003 (unless they restore the functionality in a newer release of 2007).