Product Description

Microsoft Office Standard 2007 has the key tools and features that users have wanted, to make their computing experience easier. With its improved menus and toolbars, enhanced graphics and formatting, time and e-mail management tools & enhanced security, you'll be so impressed that you'll wonder how you got along without it. Office 2007 makes it easier and more enjoyable to get things done. New calendar views and appointment tools help you organize your time and communications Simple signup to RSS feeds Outlook 2007 has a new Instant Search tool helping you find any information you need -- e-mail, calendars, tasks and more Enhanced security features protect against junk e-mail and phishing Share documents securely with Document Inspector -- detect & remove unwanted comments, hidden text & other information

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #183 in Software
• Brand: Microsoft
• Model: 021-07746
• Released on: 2007-01-30
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: 1.50" h x 5.30" w x 7.50" l, .61 pounds

Features

• Software suite offers the core Microsoft Office applications, but significantly updated for faster, better results
• Includes the 2007 versions of Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook
• Create high-quality documents and presentations, build powerful spreadsheets, and manage your e-mail messages, calendar, and contacts
• Offers improved menus and tools; enhanced graphics and formatting capabilities; new time and communication management tools; and more reliability and security
• Features the Ribbon, a new device that presents commands organized into a set of tabs, instead of traditional menus and toolbars

Amazon.com
Microsoft Office Standard 2007 offers the core Microsoft Office applications, but significantly updated for faster, better results. Comprised of Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook, this software suite empowers you to create high-quality documents and presentations, build powerful spreadsheets, and manage your e-mail messages, calendar, and contacts. With improved menus and tools, enhanced graphics and formatting capabilities, new time and communication management tools, and more reliability and security, Office Standard 2007 makes it easier and more enjoyable for you to get things done at home or work.

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.

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

Including charts in Office PowerPoint 2007 is easy. 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.

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

Improved User Interface
The Office Standard 2007 user interface makes it easier for people to use Office applications. The streamlined screen layout and dynamic results-oriented galleries let you spend more time focused on your work and less time trying to get the application to do what you need. As a result, the Office Standard 2007 interface can help deliver great looking documents, high-impact presentations, effective spreadsheets, and powerful desktop database applications.

The Ribbon
Office Standard 2007 features the Ribbon, a new device that presents commands organized into a set of tabs, instead of traditional menus and toolbars. The tabs on the Ribbon display the commands that are most relevant for each of the task areas in the applications. For example, in Word, the tabs group commands for activities such as inserting objects like pictures and tables, doing page layout, working with references, doing mailings, and reviewing. For added convenience, the Home tab provides easy access to the most frequently used commands. Excel has a similar set of tabs that make sense for spreadsheet work including tabs for working with formulas, managing data, and reviewing. These tabs make it simple to access features because they organize the commands in a way that corresponds directly to the tasks you perform in the application you're using.

The Microsoft Office Button
Many of the most valuable features in previous versions of Office were not about the document authoring experience and instead focused on all the things you can do with a document: share it, protect it, print it, publish it, and send it. Although this focus had its advantages, previous releases lacked a single central location where a user could see all of these capabilities in one place. Office Standard 2007's new interface, however, bring together the capabilities of the Office system into a single entry point: the Microsoft Office button. This button allows for two major advantages. First, it helps users find these valuable features. Second, it simplifies the authoring process by allowing the Ribbon to focus on creating great documents.

Contextual Tabs
Office Standard 2007 features contextual tabs which bring important and appropriate command options to the user's attention precisely when they're needed most. Certain sets of commands are only relevant when objects of a particular type are being edited. For example, the commands for editing a chart are not relevant until a chart appears in a spreadsheet and the user is focusing on modifying it. In current versions of Office applications, these commands can be difficult to find. In Excel, however, clicking on a chart causes a contextual tab to appear with commands used for chart editing. Contextual tabs only appear when they are needed and make it much easier to find and use the commands needed for the operation at hand.

Galleries
Galleries are at the heart of the redesigned applications, and they deliver a set of clear results to choose from when working on your documents, spreadsheets, presentations, or Access databases. By presenting a simple set of potential results, rather than a complex dialog box with numerous options, galleries can simplify the process of producing professional looking work. For those who prefer a greater degree of control over the result of the operation, the traditional dialog box interfaces are still available.

Live Preview
Office Standard 2007 features Live Preview, a fresh and innovative technology that shows the results of applying an editing or formatting change as you move the pointer over the results presented in a gallery. This dynamic capability streamlines the process of laying out, editing, and formatting so you can create excellent results with less time and effort.

Customer Reviews

MS Office Standard 2007 - Steep Price, Steep Learning Curve, Slippery Slope!!!
Microsoft's Office Standard 2007 is the version that includes the programs most people will be looking for in an office suite: Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook. While Microsoft did make some improvements, many changes have users frustrated and mad.

Pros

+ Standard version includes the 4 programs you actually want!
+ Like most new MS suites, allows for easier transfer between machines
+ Allows you to use on your home desktop AND your laptop!! Huge plus!!
+ New open document format based on xml - good for techies
+ Alternatively, you can still use the doc format you know and love
+ Excel now supports larger documents with more fields!
+ Cool new Powerpoint extras
+ Once you do overcome the learning curve, design has some plusse
+ Preloaded with Vista OEM computers, so install is MUCH faster than old version

Cons

- A list price of $400 means many will forgo Outlook and buy Home & Student suite for MUCH LESS
- The ribbon puts things in WEIRD places
- Microsoft disabled classic menus so you can't find stuff ... ARGH!!!
- Startup times seem a little slower ... why????
- Strangely slow performance with Word

The general hatred for the ribbon is well known. Microsoft Word and Excel have drawn the most heat. It took everybody years to learn those nested menus and hard to find functions. Now they are all moved!!!!

Actually, the ribbon wouldn't be so bad if you could have your regular old classic menus above it. Once you learn the ribbon, there's some logic to the way things have been relocated. Still, this was a huge blunder and I wonder if MS will back track on that.

This guy also includes Outlook, which is a MUST for me since I have to use Outlook on my work PC. I tried using the exported files in the new vista calendar apps, and none of them really worked that well. The professional Microsoft Office Professional 2007 FULL VERSION and ultimate Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 FULL VERSION [DVD] suite versions also include outlook.

Yet why the list price of $400? The Home and Student Office 2007 suite Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 is $150 and includes everything here except for Outlook. Is Outlook worth $250 now? To be fair, there are cheaper upgrade versions. Still, I may be switching to a new email / calendar / productivity program all-together.

The new XML doc format is Microsoft's way of getting away from the proprietary .doc format. This will aggravate some people too, but you can just save everything in the 2003 format. I like the new format and I think it will catch on with time.

Despite the short comings, once you get past the learning curve the programs themselves are improved.

Enjoy!!!

License allows an additional laptop install
The product requires activation, which includes sending machine identification information to Microsoft.

The good news is that the Office Standard license allows installation on both a desktop system and a laptop. It also allows you to transfer the license to new systems, over time.

From the license: "Before you use the software under a license, you must assign that license to one device. ... You may install another copy on a portable device for use by the single primary user of the licensed device. ... You may reassign the license to a different device any number of times, but not more than one time every 90 days."

Waste of money? Um, yeah.
It appears what happened was someone sitting around the old Microsoft Offices said "Hey, I got a great idea! Let's make Office look really pretty! We may have to take away some of the functionality, but hey, it will look great!" My problem is I need tools such as a workhorse spreadsheet program, a powerful word processor, a flexible database, and stunning presentation program to successfully complete my job. Upon purchasing Office 2007, I was expecting expanded features and functions to assist me in doing so, just like every update had previously provided me. Instead I found myself with a redesigned interface (which takes time to learn) and an actual reduction of features from Office 2003 (which Microsoft freely admits occurred, because they couldn't fit a few of the features into the new interface). So what you are in fact spending your hard earned money on is a group of programs designed to look really good (with neato 3D graphics, wow!), but at the expense of taking away your tools rather than expanding them.

Waste of money? Um, yeah.

I recommend waiting until Microsoft finally comes to the realization that how the software looks is truly the least of my concerns because I have work to do.