Office 2007- Worth the Upgrade?

Upgrading to Office 2007 costs more than $200 for most users, making it a pricey proposition. It also comes with some radically different changes, which some say causes a steep learning curve. Is it worth the hassle? Here's what's new and what's it worth to the average home and business user.

What's new?

The biggest change to Office 2007 is the interface. Menus are gone, replaced with what Microsoft is calling a ribbon. This ribbon extends across the top of the screen and contains most - but not all - of the functions the menus used to have. Each ribbon also has tabs at the top, allowing you to move to a different set of functions. For example, Word has seven different function groups, each containing at least a dozen separate features. The setup in Excel all other office programs is quite similar. There's no way to bring the menus back and no way to customize what they contain.

The other new feature to reckon with is that the file formats have changed. .DOC has become .DOCX, and .XLS has become .XLSX. This is because Microsoft has made Office files based on the XML scripting language, forcing a change in extension. This new file format cannot be opened with older versions of Office, although there is an option to save it in the old format.

Across the board, Office 2007 is more template-driven. Everything looks better and there are more options for customization. Microsoft hosts a massive library of templates free to download for any registered Office 2007 user.

In Microsoft Word, the big graphical change is the default font. Say goodbye to Times New Roman and hello to Calibri. It looks smoother and more modern, but it takes a little getting used to. Word also contains an integrated citation program that can automatically generate a bibliography or a works cited page - a godsend for the average student. There is a new tool to insert a title page with several templates. Finally, the program also includes a tool that compares two versions of a document and highlights changes.

In terms of Excel, the formula bar is resized, and the formula writing process is a lot easier and intuitive. Excel also now allows each document to contain more rows and columns, helpful for the truly epic project. The graphing feature also receives an overdue update, producing much more modern-looking charts.