Microsoft Office 2007

[Lollypop]

FYI - from the MS Office for Mac website:


Q. When will the next version of Office for Mac be available?

A. The next version of Office for Mac is under development, and we typically release a new version every two to three years. {continued}
---
My commentary:
"Runs well": Yeah, right. Emulate *this* Bill Gates. (appropriate hand gesture)
"Two to Three Years": So a new version is under development now, which we can assume is Office '07, right? Maybe the Mac version of Office will be released four or five months after the PC/Vista version.

I came to the same comclusion, the next version of office for mac will be very close to office 2007, if MS keeps to their words then both will be out in 2007.

 

[nadyne]

Nadyne, will the next version of Office for the Mac sport the Ribbon interface?

It's still pretty early in our development cycle, so I can't talk about specifics about the next version of Office:Mac yet. Watch Mactopia for all of our press releases and product announcements:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/

Regards,
Nadyne.

--
Nadyne Mielke | user experience researcher
Microsoft Corporation | Macintosh Business Unit
http://blogs.msdn.com/nadyne/

 

[Project]

It's still pretty early in our development cycle, so I can't talk about specifics about the next version of Office:Mac yet. Watch Mactopia for all of our press releases and product announcements:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/

Regards,
Nadyne.
[/url]

damn those corporate responses!

 

[MacDonaldsd]

damn those corporate responses!

Indeed

 

[G99]

I agree. It does look horrible. But, I'm sure Windows users will love it! M$' Vista strategy is pretty simple: Amaze gullible customers with "glass" (Aero UI), to cover up other problems. You guys know Windows users. They get really excited with graphical stuff like this. They love screenshots. There's a friend of mine who, I can imagine will go "Oooh! Aaah!", with this screenshot. They don't care about practicality, and OS stability. All they care about is "glass". Lol

 

[Dillenger]

I have Microsoft Office 2007 for Windows XP and you can change the color scheme to blue rather than black. It looks very cool, and when you hover over the buttons, it has a fading highlight effect. It is eye-candy all the way.

All Office programs use that new layout.

It pays to have developer connections.

Will OneNote, specifically for Mac be a part of the 2007 package?

 

[reffr]

Office 2007 beta mac?

I just bought a macbook pro and love it. I do not want to run XP on it! I need to buy office as my trial runs out in 26 days. Does anyone know if there will be a beta release for Office 2007 for mac? Any suggestions? Should I buy Office 2004 or wait for a beta to hold me over until release?

Thanks....

 

[clayj]

I just bought a macbook pro and love it. I do not want to run XP on it! I need to buy office as my trial runs out in 26 days. Does anyone know if there will be a beta release for Office 2007 for mac? Any suggestions? Should I buy Office 2004 or wait for a beta to hold me over until release?

Thanks....

Reffr, there's not going to be "Microsoft Office 2007 for the Macintosh". The Windows version of Office will come out FIRST, and it's not due out until early next year (around the same time Vista is released). And any beta program for Microsoft Office is not likely going to be widely available, so you'd end up waiting until the next Mac Office (Office 2008?) finally hits store shelves.

So you oughta just get yourself a copy of Office 2004. It works really well.

 

[celebrian23]

I think it looks pretty awesome personally. As a student, not having office makes things a lot more difficult. I'm looking forward to this release.

 

[ingenious]

Oh, by the way, the codename for the next Office for Windows was Office 12; it will, however, be officially called "Office 2007"

Office 12 sounds better, IMO, although 2007 isn't bad...

It's supposed to be the first release achieving feature parity between the Mac and Windows versions.

That will be awesome.... Now we just need Access and all of the rest of the applications at least released for OS X, whether or not they're feature-complete with the Windows version (which would be awesome). We at least need a converter application so we can use other applications (i.e. Access>FileMaker, Publisher>Indesign/Pages/Quark, etc.)


edit: typo.

 

[ingenious]

My biggest problem with 2004 is PowerPoint's create package option. It simply does not work. At all. Caused a headache at State Competition.

 

[pincho]

ive got the Beta and must say it is growing on me, and the user interface will be easier for lesser-PC savvy people. One wish (or two or three ) from Office 2007:

1) same release date for PC and Mac version with seemless compatibility
2) M$ Publisher for Mac, o please!!!!

 

[sk1985]

That looks really distracting. Yuck. Word really should just be plain and simple. Thats the truth.

 

[wordmunger]

The biggest problem is the vertical screen real estate it takes up. If those control panels could be moved to the side so my text can use the entire vertical expanse of the screen, it looks fine to me.

OTOH, I'm really liking Pages, so I doubt I'll be buying this, whenever it comes out.

 

[Project]

Wow. The UI dudes need firing.

 

[macrlz9]

You can download the beta for free here:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/overview.mspx

 

[skibob1027]

Found some bugs...

I've been using Office 2007 for a few days now, and I'm actually really starting to like it. I have run into several bugs, though (thus it being a beta) - namely margin alignment doesn't change when page formatting changes (i.e. when switching from normal to landscape page layout, it doesn't switch the margins and cuts you off half-page).

Overall, though, I think Microsoft is on the right track with Office 2007s UI. It still needs substantial work, but it's a huge step up from Office 2003 and the endless menus to do simple tasks.

Like you all, though, I am very much looking forward to the next Mac version, as I just bought an Intel iMac and would like to run Office natively.

 

[Lixivial]

Preliminary findings (after a few hours of cursory "toying around;" I had a whole rant, but I have condensed it):

Cons:

- Ribbons being hidden when resizing the window to less than the width of the ribbon or to a height that is less than the "arbitrary height." This offers no way to access any of the menus at all. This is a problem in server-based computing and low screen res situations as it leaves the user with no access to any menu items. Very bad. Ribbons also take up too much screen real-estate, and are very stiff in terms of configurable options (much like IE7.)

- No way to "enable Classic menus." This is a staple feature of other Vista upgrades such as IE7 and WMP11. And Vista's Explorer has this as well.

- Items in the title bar. Apple, Netscape and Microsoft need to be put out to dry for this abomination. 'Tis worse than drawers in OS X.

- Consistency broken: Excel uses the traditional multiple doc windows inside the main app window, Word uses multiple windows, Access uses multiple windows and a new tabbed interface, PowerPoint just has the updated GUI and Outlook has a piecemeal update. I assume it will be updated in the final version.

- Memory usage -- inserting some text upped the WINWORD.EXE process to a nice, healthy memory chunk of 50 megabytes. Worse than O 2.0, problematic in server-based computing ala Citrix, etc.

- Slow. Upon inserting a clip art image and applying one of those "oh-so-cool" effects, text insertion slowed to a crawl on a P4 2.4 GHz, 512 DDR RAM machine. Ridiculous.

Pros:

- The ribbon interface, for all its terrible implementations, is actually a much cleaner and intuitive UI than previous versions. They needed to do something about the menu options and now they have, and it works well.

- Add-in management seems to be cleaner, and exporting to PDF is nice. I want to see ODF support, though.

- Consistency of logos; though broken in XP (due to XP's old start menu look). The orb in the upper right hand corner mirrors vista's start menu icon. The reason this is nice is that it offers a consistent look and the file menu look similar to the start menu. Nice, though the menu is far too large.

- Contextual descriptions. Many items have a nice little description of what they do when you look at them. This is very nice.

- Word's side-by-side simultaneous scrolling is a great new feature that makes comparing documents VERY easy. Love it.

Yes, that is the condensed version.

EDIT: Whoops, a bit of a typo there. Menu bar should have been title bar.

 

[mkrishnan]

- Word's side-by-side simultaneous scrolling is a great new feature that makes comparing documents VERY easy. Love it.

This sounds really great, when you have the monitor space to read both documents. I'd love this on my iMac.

 

[calyxman]

Excel is NOT a "data processing application". It's a spreadsheet application. If you want data processing, get Access, FoxPro, or SQL Server, or some other database application (like Oracle).

I agree only to a certain extent. It has its uses when generating pivot table reports, which are derived from raw, unorganized data.

 

[Nermal]

Will OneNote, specifically for Mac be a part of the 2007 package?

What does OneNote do? A friend showed it to me the other day, showing how can can "draw" into his documents. I showed him Word 2004's notebook mode, and he agreed that it's essentially the same thing. What am I missing?

 

[srobert]

I hope there is a way to move that ribbon thing to the side of the page (vertically). Almost a third of the vertical space is lost to the menus and OS while there is a lot of useless blank space on the sides. It will be even worst on a widescreen display. Vertical real estate is very useful in a word processor.

I think they still need to improve the look of the interface. There are some very cryptic buttons up there (not to mention, hard to see on that dark background):

…
- MS helpdesk: Click on the arrow
- Helpless dude: <squinting> Which one?

- MS: The one at the top.
- HD: Which one?!

- MS: The blue one.
- HD: WHICH ONE!!??

- MS: The counter clockwise one.
- HD: WHICH ******* ONE???!!!


On a sidenote:

Link

There's no word better than "ultimate" to convey the impression that you're getting nothing but the best. However, when it comes to Microsoft's new software, whatever you end up getting is going to cost you heaps.

A quick glance at the word processor component of Office 2007 indicates that it promises to be a pretty slick piece of software. It will take some getting used to with that ribbon instead of menus across the top, but it's slick. With Office 2007 Ultimate, users will be able to buy every piece of office productivity software that Microsoft makes in one package. We always thought that was the idea of having an office suite but anyway, with Office 2007 Ultimate, you get pretty much the same packages you got with Office 2003 plus one or two or other applications such as Groove collaboration software.

And all those bits and bytes can be yours for just US$679, the price of a fairly handy desktop computer.

 

[ReanimationLP]

It only looks good on Aero Glass in Vista.

 

[bigandy]

brilliant. it actually looks uglier than the first few builds i got from MSDN...

i'll have to install it at work on my vista box and have a laugh.

 

[absurdio]

That looks really distracting. Yuck. Word really should just be plain and simple. Thats the truth.

For sure, man. For sure. Just like most of Aero, this Office UI just looks like uglied-up Aqua. C'mon, MS, if you're gonna plagiarize so blatantly, you could at least do it right.

Edit: in fact, I think I'm making that my new signature.