Product Description

Microsoft Office Small Business 2007 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. Easily manage your prospect and customer information in one place. Quickly create dynamic documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Develop effective marketing materials for print, e-mail, and the Web, and produce campaigns in-house. You can manage your calendar, tasks, and e-mail more efficiently, and filter out unwanted e-mail messages to help keep your computer safe and secure. And you will spend less time learning new features with improved menus that present the right tools automatically.

Find and use the features you need.
The new and more intuitive look and feel of the 2007 Microsoft Office system makes it easier and faster to find and use the software features you need when you need them. The appropriate menus and toolbars are automatically displayed based on the task you are working on.

Search, manage, and prioritize your e-mail.
Advanced search features in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager help you quickly find critical information. The Color Category feature helps you more easily sort and manage e-mail messages. And the improved junk mail and anti-phishing technologies help you filter out undesirable e-mail. Learn more about Office Outlook 2007.

Manage time and tasks more efficiently.
Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager includes a new To-Do Bar that presents a consolidated view of tasks, calendar information, and e-mail messages flagged for follow-up. Tasks scheduled appear on your calendar, and you can allocate time for tasks with drag-and-drop functionality to help you stay well organized. Learn more about Office Outlook 2007.

Manage all your customer and prospect information in one place.
Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager includes

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #124 in Software
• Brand: Microsoft
• Model: W87-02380
• Released on: 2007-01-30
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: 3.00" h x 9.01" w x 7.00" l, .90 pounds

Features

• Powerful and easy-to-use suite of productivity and contact management software features new tools to help you save time, stay organized, and deliver better customer service
• 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 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.

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.

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

I Was Pleasantly Surprised
After spending days reviewing everything I could find about Small Business 2007... from the videos at the Microsoft site, to reviews from the private sector, chatting with Microsoft pre-sales to ask all my questions, 1-800-426-9400, (about 7 times over 3 days) and the reviews on Amazon, I decided to take the plunge.

While reviews from some folks left me concerned about leaving Office 2003 behind after 3 years of heavy daily use, I pressed on.

I was glad for the tip about cutting through the clear tape (it's hard to see its there) around the hard plastic package in order for the red tape/tab to be pulled to open the box.

The install went great. Tip- if you have a previous version of Office on your machine, remove it from your system using the control panel-> add/remove programs. After the removal is complete, re-start your machine before installing 2007. (Some of the pre-sales folks at Microsoft told me 2007 would install over 2003.... wrongo!)

Initiating Outlook was easy. 2007 remembered all my settings from 2003 and all my folders, sub-folders, signature files and settings and installed them intact. Very nice. (I did make a .pst back-up from 2003 and didn't need to use it. I do think however, it's a good idea to have a back-up.)

I've already created some very cool graphics and training forms that I couldn't do in 2003. Probably a 'user deficit'! So I guess this bears witness to how intuitive the interface really is for me.

A lot of folks are bashing the new 'ribbon' interface and talking about it functioning slowly and it being difficult to use. This is not my experience at all.

I have only 512 MB of RAM on the XP OS and 2007 runs no differently than 2003.. no lag time or hour-glass waiting... even with changing between word - power point - and excel docs all open at one time. I guess it depends on what other programs you have running in the background- drawing off your RAM resources. I don't let anything run in the background except for my anti-virus program and printers. Everything else I open as I need it from my start menu. This is all in how you've configured your start up options as your computer boots.

The ribbon menus are very straight forward, and with mouse over tells you exactly what everything does. Also, if you're in word and want to do something you used to do in 2003 and can't figure out how, you can type this phrase into the search field inside word -> "Office 2003 Interactive" (without the quotes).

This will open a window in your internet browser that will have a view of 2003. You click on the menu selection or item you used to use in 2003, (right on your screen, this is why its called 'interactive') and it will show you what you need to do in 2007 to achieve the same task. That's pretty handy.

All in all I'm pleasantly surprised. I feel I made a good buying choice after doing my research.

My recommendation is to do your own research, and look at the videos Microsoft has available which demonstrates how 2007 is different. At least this gives you a visual.

http://www.microsoft.com/office/newday/default.mspx?WT.srch=1&WT.mc_id=DF7DDF87-E82B-4DFF-B637-7A7198470DCE
(If this link gets chopped up in the post, be sure to copy and paste the whole link into your browser.)

And:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/FX101635841033.aspx

Chat with the pre sales folks. If you have a question that is technical in nature and they can't answer it, they get you in touch with a technical expert specific to the program in office your inquiry is about, at no charge to you. Also you can always download a free trial, and if you don't like it at the end of the trial don't buy it.

I really felt a social obligation to write about my experience to help those who are on a 'due diligence journey' as I was. Hope this has been helpful. ;->

Functionality excellent; opening and installing a problem
I've been using the beta for a while now, so I know that I like Office 2007. PowerPoint 2007 is especially exciting and new; Word and Excel don't seem that different to me.

However, I just bought the full version and I COULDN'T OPEN IT! I felt stupid until I found out that I wasn't alone. Even with instructions that I found on the Web, I had to call Microsoft. There's a transparent label over the top that you need to remove before you can pull the red tab to open the box, but you can't remove the label without tearing the Certificate of Authenticity on top (which I might want if I ever sold it). In the end, I had to take the point of a scissors and squeeze it between the cracks on either side to slit the sides open.

Next, I put the CD in the drive and nothing happened. I've never knowingly turned off autorun (this is a Vista machine). I had to go into Windows Explorer and double-click setup.exe.

Finally, there are two disks, but no clue anywhere that I can find what the second one is for or what it contains. The installation instructions only mention one disk.

It was a frustrating beginning.

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).