Julien Jay September 18, 2018 at 2:320 pmIt was in 1995 that Microsoft succeeded for the first time in proposing, simultaneously with the release of a new version of its operating system, a new version of Office, its flagship office suite. Since then, and despite the successive versions of Windows (Windows 98/Me, Windows 2000, Windows XP), the scenario had not arisen. The year 2007 allowed Microsoft to do it again since, for the first time in nearly twelve years, the release of a new Microsoft operating system, in this case Windows Vista, was accompanied by a new version of the home office.Baptized without much surprise Office 2007, the new set of productivity software from Microsoft is strategic for the firm of Bill GATES, since it alone must motivate companies to abandon their aging Office 2000 and Office XP to adopt a more modern office automation platform (and consequently to migrate to Windows Vista, will say the gossips). This simple clarification immediately puts an end to the parallel with Office 95, whose new features at the time, apart from the 32-bit port, were almost non-existent compared to the 4.3 edition of Office for Windows 3.1. And Microsoft to present its latest offspring as the most significant update for a decade whose ambition is, neither more nor less, to change the world of work. You have been warned, Office 2007 would not have much in common with its predecessor, Office 2003. Office 2007 indeed introduces radical changes compared to previous editions. Changes so profound that most users will be confused to say the least as the interface of the suite has undergone upheavals. Beyond the simple interface, which we will come back to extensively, Office 2007 is also various new features including the generalization of XML, the appearance of RSS feeds in Outlook, search by indexing or the arrival of 3D graphics in Excel. And these are just some of the most significant changes in Office, changes that we propose to detail in the following pages.

Office 2007: The different editions

Like Windows Vista, Office 2007 is available in several editions, starting with the perennial Office 2007 Standard and Office 2007 Professional. We also note the arrival of a rather unexpected version, called Family and Student, which includes Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft OneNote software in 2007 versions with a license valid on the trifle of three computers! Offered at a price that could not be more attractive, Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 unfortunately does not have an email client, Outlook obviously not being part of the panoply of the perfect student according to Microsoft. Damage ! Finally, and as is the case with Windows Vista, Microsoft offers an Ultimate version of Office, a version which includes all the software in the suite with the notable exception of Project and Visio 2007. The table below summarizes the software available in each edition of Office 2007: Whichever edition of Office 2007 you choose, keep in mind that its installation will only be possible on the latest Microsoft operating systems, namely Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista. It is therefore impossible to install Office 2007 on a Windows 2000 system!< td>Microsoft Office Small Business 2007< td>

	Microsoft Office Standard 2007	Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007	Microsoft Office Professional 2007	Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007
Word 2007
Excel 2007
PowerPoint 2007
Outlook 2007
OneNote 2007
Publisher 2007< /td>
Access 2007
Groove 2007
InfoPath 2007

< h2>Office 2007: InstallationA real forced passage, the installation of Office 2007 highlights many changes compared to previous editions of the suite. Microsoft engineers have in fact simplified the procedure as much as possible through a wizard that's brightened up to say the least (no more series of gray screens to install Office). In the very likely case that an existing version of Office is present on your system, the installation module should automatically detect it and offer you either a complete update (your version of Office is replaced by Office 2007) or a parallel installation. Here you will have the choice of existing Office applications to keep and, quite logically, of Office 2007 applications to deploy. As has been the case for years, the installation wizard will offer you either a default installation or an installation personalized, the latter allowing you to choose which software to deploy (or not) and which additional components to install (or not). These choices made, the deployment of the suite should be a little long: count a good fifteen minutes. The various stages of installing Office 2007

Office 2007: First steps in a new environment

Among the changes introduced with Office 2007, the most important undoubtedly concerns the 'graphic interface. No, we are not talking about the new icons representing each of the applications, because here Microsoft goes well beyond the usual facelift that generally distinguishes a new version of Office from the previous one. With Office 2007, Microsoft engineers have completely redesigned the working environment of the most common office applications, with the aim of making as many commands as possible accessible and as easily as possible. As a result, a user accustomed to Word or Excel for a long time will have the greatest difficulty in recognizing his little ones as the changes in the interface are profound. Beyond the color of the interface, now available in three themes (silver, black and blue), the very concept of menu bar and toolbar has disappeared! Instead, Microsoft offers us as a central pivot: the Office ribbon. This is a sort of super toolbar grouping together all the functions offered by the program and illustrated by various icons.Three colors available under Windows XP for the Office 2007 interface Starting from the observation that Word 1.0 included a little less than a hundred commands,while there are nearly 1,500 of them in Word 2003, Microsoft's development teams realized that they had to rethink the layout of the commands. Rather than hiding them in its sub-menus, making them in fact invisible and therefore almost useless, the Office ribbon makes it possible to display commands related to the context of use. Thus, the ribbon is itself divided into a series of tabs, each tab organizing the commands available according to the task areas of each application. In addition, we can distinguish that certain groups of commands have a small arrow in the lower right border surrounding them: clicking on it will display the complete dialog box grouping together all the options available for this activity. By resizing the window of your application, you can see that the ribbon is dynamically reorganized, displaying (or hiding) certain commands.The Office ribbon in Word 2007The master word of the ribbon being to offer the right commands at the right time, and this depending on the context, we will not be surprised not to find the same arrangement of the ribbon from one Office application to another. Thus, in Word, the Office word processor, we are entitled, for example, to the following tabs: Home, Insert, Page Layout, References, Mailings, Review and Display, whereas in Excel these are the tabs: Home, Insert, Layout, Formulas, Data, Review and View. By using certain tools, such as selecting an image that has just been added to a document, new tabs may appear such as the "Format" tab. A tab that will not display the same commands depending on whether text (inside a text box) or an image is selected.Some Office ribbon reports still in Word 2007 In practice, this new arrangement of controls is clearly confusing. Yet you get used to it quickly and you even begin to consider it as finally quite successful! It must be said that the idea of ​​grouping the commands according to their effect is quite well seen, especially since Microsoft has shown, on the whole, a certain logic in their arrangement. Still, the name of the tabs is not always the most intuitive for our taste. Thus, in Word, while inserting an image via the Insert tab, it is not necessarily natural to have to click on the Home tab to find the formatting functions of its font. We also regret that only Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access software benefit from this new interface, while the other components remain on a more classic look. The new Office interface also has more subtle changes. The font used by the applications has thus been modified and Microsoft now uses Segoe, instead of the Tahoma font used for more than eight years by the Redmond giant. Segoe is presented as more receptive to ClearType technology, a technology also activated by default in Office 12 applications and which allows fonts to be smoothed in order to improve their rendering mainly on flat screens. In terms of help, Microsoft has also made significant changes, since the old task pane that was used to display help content is no longer relevant. Accessible by a blue icon in the shape of a question mark located just below the window close button, the help is displayed in a new window, over the running application. Another change: while part of the help is available as offline content, some topics are hosted on a Microsoft server: the user thus has access to a greater number of help articles than we imagine frequently updated.New presentation of Office helpFinally, we could not be complete without mentioning the brand new Office menu, which is appearing in the upper left corner of all applications with ribbon. Because if Microsoft has eradicated the main menus of Office, there is still at least one! Materialized by a ball displaying the Office logo, the menu offers access to the most basic functions with the opening of documents, saving, printing, print preview or even sending by email. It is also from this menu that you can access the preferences of the Office software of your choice, while Microsoft's ergonomists have tried to segment it a bit like a Pinnacle Studio. Thus we find in the Office menu of Word, Excel and PowerPoint three distinct sections: Prepare, Send and Publish. Here we draw a parallel with the "Capture,Edition and Creation” of Studio since Microsoft tries to clearly guide the user according to the destination of his document. Also note the presence of a mini toolbar, the Quick Access toolbar which is housed near the Office button and has three icons by default (save a document, cancel a change or restore it). If the Office ribbon cannot be personalized, the quick access toolbar can include the commands of your choice and if you are really refractory to the ribbon, you can hide it purely and simply in favor of the toolbar by question.The new Office menu, here that of Word 2007

Error handling and spelling correction

Among the trunk of new features common to the various Office applications from the 2007 vintage, let us mention a whole new error handling module. Dubbed “Microsoft Office Diagnostics,” the tool consists of a series of tests that scan the computer to determine why certain issues are occurring. The software is naturally capable of sending a report to Microsoft's servers while the various programs benefit from a document recovery function in the event of a crash, which is practical so as not to lose all your work. The Microsoft Office Diagnostics moduleAs far as the spell checker is concerned, a lot of progress has been made. First novelty, it is now shared between Office applications. In fact, when you modify a spelling correction option in Word, it is also modified in Excel. Sharing the same dictionary, Office applications now use the same dialog box for their management. Note that Office 2007 includes a recent dictionary after the French spelling reform. Finally, it is possible to create an exclusion dictionary allowing the signaling of words that you do not wish to use because of non-compliance with your style guide for example.The dictionary options... under Word< /small>

Office 2007: A new document format, OpenXML

With the previous version of Office, Office 2003, Microsoft had already initiated the beginnings of XML format support for the saving and opening documents. With Office 2007, Microsoft goes further and offers a complete overhaul of the file formats used through the main Office applications such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint. From the outset, we will wonder why software like Publisher or OneNote does not take advantage of this new format, but let's move on... Microsoft is indeed offering, and this for the first time, an open format called OpenXML. Let us recall in passing, and for the uninitiated, that XML is a standard document description language, a language that is also close to HTML. What is the interest of this new and umpteenth file format, you might say? ? First of all, it is more compact and more robust than its predecessors. But its number one interest comes of course from the resulting interoperability. Microsoft's promise with OpenXML: the possibility for third-party software, whether free or not, to read and write Office formats perfectly without any degradation. Hard to believe on the part of Microsoft and yet... Bill Gates' group transmitted the OpenXML specifications to the ECMA, a non-state European organization in charge of standardization. Used by default in the applications of the suite Office, the new file format now has a four-character extension. This, to clearly mark the difference with the old binary formats of Office (therefore the famous *.doc is one), formats still read and written by 2007 applications. Thus a Word 2007 file now bears the extension * .docx when it is in OpenXML format and *.docm when it contains macros. Same thing for Excel files which become *.xlsx and no longer *.xls. Other variations exist for file extensions and we will not list them here.Structure of an OpenXML document (excerpt from the MSDN site)Beyond the extension, the structure even files is radically different from what we could know until now. In the case of our Word 2007 file, in *.docx format, we are actually dealing with a ZIP archive, explaining in passing the 75% space saving that Microsoft sometimes claims. The fact remains that we are hardly convinced by this last advantage since, having noted the size of a PowerPoint presentation in Office 2003 format and that of the same presentation once converted to OpenXML, the gain was close to 0! At any rate,the archive is split into several files, each containing one of the components of the document. We thus find in a *.docx on one side the raw text, and on the other the style which will determine the appearance of the file on the screen or other elements. In fact, the recovery of a corrupted file is greatly facilitated since the segmented architecture makes it possible to lose only the data actually altered, all the rest being still contained in the file. There remains an annoying detail linked to the adoption of the OpenXML by Microsoft. A *.docx file cannot be read by an older version of Word, whether it is Word 2000, Word 2002 or Word 2003. Fortunately, Microsoft offers a free compatibility pack, downloadable here, which makes the old versions of its Office software compatible with OpenXML but this does not concern the oldest versions such as Office 97 while it is still not available for the Mac version of the famous office suite.

Office 2007: PDF or XPS?

During the test phase of Office 2007, Microsoft offered native support for saving in PDF format for the first time in its office suite. Although the idea was excellent, it was obviously not to Adobe's taste, which did everything in its power to push Microsoft back. Result of the races, Office 2007 in its final version does not directly integrate a backup function to PDF format. On the other hand, Microsoft offers from the very interface of the software a link for downloading a free additional module which will activate the recording in PDF format. We will not fail to thank Adobe for this exemplary simplification of the user's life. Saving in PDF format from Office 2007 applicationsVisibly lacking in good ideas, Microsoft is integrating a saving function in XPS format for the first time in Office 2007. In-house format, the XPS or XML Paper Specification quite simply pursues the same goal as Adobe with its Acrobat, namely the portability of documents. Due to Adobe's gnashing of teeth, XPS export is not integrated by default in Office 2007 either: it is activated by downloading an additional module, the same (would it be ironic?) as for PDF . Microsoft still stands out from Adobe by making its XPS file format open and free. Knowing that Microsoft does not offer a software viewer for the XPS format, unlike Adobe and its Reader, you are probably wondering what is needed to read an XPS file? Be aware that reading these requires Internet Explorer 7.0 and... .NET FrameWork 3.0! Yes, at Microsoft we don't always keep things simple and to be read, an XPS file needs the WinFX component which is distributed with .NET FrameWork 3.0. In fact, the XPS is still far from being able to really compete with its Acrobat model... Reading a PowerPoint presentation exported in XPS formatNote to finish that the Office menu of Excel and Word software in particular offers in its Publish section, two separate commands to send the document you are working on as an attachment by email, either in PDF format or in XPS format. Well done!

Microsoft Word 2007: the revival?

With a brand new start screen, the famous word processor Word naturally adopts the new interface of Office 2007 vintage and logically gives pride of place to the famous ribbon. We still find the display of a blank page as soon as the software is launched, which, despite the disappearance of the menu bars and toolbars, should help us to feel on familiar ground, while the command of zoom, which allows you to enlarge or reduce the size of the characters, takes place in the Word status bar in the form of a slider. context toolbar appears momentarily when selecting a word or phrase. This is drawn very slightly in transparency and you have to point your mouse over it to see it appear completely. Giving quick access to the most common formatting options (bold, italic, font, color, etc.), this toolbar is devilishly effective. with the ribbon, Word 2007 inaugurates a new display of options available for a given formatting style: this is what Microsoft calls galleries. In Word,you can thus browse the available paragraph styles or the types of cover page models that can be inserted into the document and this directly from the ribbon by taking advantage of a thumbnail preview of the new page or new style . Better still, when selecting a paragraph style, Word takes advantage of the “Live Preview” function. Concretely, the text selected in your document is automatically transformed according to the new style that you hover over: in fact you instantly see what the result can give and this without any destruction since the preview disappears as soon as your mouse returns to the document (assuming of course you don't select any style in the end). Dynamic preview or Live Preview is available with a number of functions, including our favorite, the choice of positioning an image that has just been incorporated into your document. Rather than getting lost in the options of an austere dialog box to determine the best wrapping of the image by the text, it suffices to hover over an icon to see the image change its place in its document. Of course, the proposals made by these new automatisms, whether it is the dynamic preview or the gallery, remain completely customizable, the old fashioned way, via the dialog boxes.Image options: here the frame with preview snapshotWord 2007 also benefits from improvements in its embedded graphics functions. In addition to the new ease that accompanies image positioning and which we echoed previously, word processing integrates the brand new SmartArts. This is a set of tools for drawing organizational charts. As a bonus, Microsoft also offers tools for creating geometric shapes (arrows, circles, squares, stars, and so on and the best), which would not be fundamentally new there either, if the software did not now offer a lot 3D models. For a rectangle drawn, moreover freely on a Word page, I can choose a predefined shape style from the appropriate gallery but I can also choose a type of shadow or 3D effects while performing free rotations of the 3D shape. Microsoft boasts in the wake of the merits of the grapher of Word, which has been completely revisited. For the occasion, Microsoft relies on Excel 2007 and its new 3D engine, which allows you to have magnificent pie charts, histograms and other curves in your document. Note, however, that this new grapher is only accessible when you write a new document in .docx format. With an old-style Word file that you edit for compatibility reasons, in other words a .doc, you will have the unpleasant surprise of seeing the old grapher inherited from Word 6 for Windows 3.1 appear... Despite the birth of galleries, the Word 2007's Clipart function always goes through the display of a pane as initiated with Office XP, whereas the Wordart module is here... on the street! Although PowerPoint 2007 takes advantage of a new WordArt gallery with all new 3D effects to enhance your titles, Word 2007 is content with the old WordArt that we have known since Word 2000, at the very least.Flowchart created with SmartArt< /small>Another innovation with Word 2007: the arrival of building blocks. No, Word does not yet allow you to make your own 3D Lego models, but... we're getting closer! For a writer, it is common to use, from one document to another, similar elements that it is not or difficult to integrate into a document model since they may be pre-established paragraphs , equations or even watermarks. To remedy this, Microsoft offers building blocks: the user can select from a gallery the elements he wishes to insert into his text and which come up frequently. The interest being in the long term to add in the said gallery, personalized elements. Practical, the functionality however lacks scale since an image cannot for example be considered as a building block, too bad! Building blocks that go hand in hand with the new "Cover Pages" function: a gallery comprising various standard cover pages that can be inserted into your document with one click, with of course the freedom to customize them.Gallery cover pagesAlso note the arrival of a new function to facilitate the comparison of documents with a three-view display mode. First view: document A, second view: document B, third view: differences or additions between the documents.Often criticized for the information kept when writing a document without the knowledge of its author, Microsoft offers this time the document inspector. This ensures that no confidential data remains in a file that you are about to distribute (comments, last minute changes, etc.).The Office 2007 document inspector here in Word< /small>

Microsoft Outlook 2007: the tortured?

All-in-one email client of Microsoft's office suite, Outlook logically evolves with the advent of Office 2007. First surprise, we discover that the he software interface is strictly identical, apart from a few icons, to that of Outlook 2003. Indeed, the new Office ribbon is not available in the main window of the application (the one where you see the messages received ) but only in the windows for reading or composing messages: the consistency of the sequence therefore takes a serious hit! All the more serious that we will not be able to define from Outlook 2007 the theme of the Office interface (silver, blue or black): it will be imperative to make a detour by Word or Excel (in particular). After the surprise of the interface, Outlook 2007 still includes many improvements, starting with the most obvious: the “Taskbar” pane which now appears to the right of the application. Including by default a miniature calendar that will send you back to your appointment schedule, this side display permanently lists the tasks that you must accomplish (you can also see the tasks assigned to other days). The most practical function being to assign to reception of an email a marking for follow-up. An entry will then appear in the task pane reminding you that you have to deal with an email: it's quite practical even if this umpteenth pane seriously starts to encroach on the surface of the screen, especially on 17 or 19 inch monitors (it can fortunately be temporarily or permanently hidden).Microsoft Office Outlook 2007Among the new features of Outlook 2007, one of the most valuable for intensive users of electronic messaging is undoubtedly the integration now native to a search function operating by indexing. To take advantage of this, you will need to separately download Windows Desktop Search 3.0 (you will find it here) and install it on your system, the Office 2007 installer does not do it for you. Once Windows Desktop Search 3.0 is installed, search is now permanently accessible via a simple “Search” field that materializes just above the inbox. The interest of this research field comes from the instant response it delivers. While you used to have to wait long minutes to find Guillaume's latest email, it is now displayed immediately, especially since the Word Wheel technology displays results as soon as you start typing: typing "gui" enough to display the emails that meet this criterion, including the famous letters from our national Guillaume. The user also benefits from fairly flexible search criteria. This indexes calendar, attachments, contacts and tasks with Outlook 2007, since various operators are proposed and documented in the help files, in addition to the main search criteria available in a drop-down menu that appears by expanding the query builder. However, the world is not perfectly rosy, and some search operators unfortunately do not work. For example, it is impossible to find emails from the “hp.com” domain with a simple keystroke “@hp.com”: too bad, especially with Lookout (the software acquired by Microsoft and the basis of Windows Desktop Search) this operator works perfectly.Instant search function now standard in OutlookOutlook 2007 is also, and for the first time, an RSS feed manager. Imperatively requiring Internet Explorer 7.0, the RSS function takes the form of an “RSS feed” folder appearing in the list of Outlook folders. Concretely, each time you subscribe to an RSS feed from Internet Explorer 7.0, it is added to the list of Outlook feeds. The latest news from a given stream are then displayed one below and the other like emails. Navigation is therefore particularly simple and, depending on the properties of the feed, the user can read an overview of the article from the area normally devoted to reading emails. A simple click then allows you to switch to the site in question to consult the entire news item.Outlook 2007 sees its Calendar function improve significantly. The graphical presentation of this one has been largely modified and it is now possible to consult several different calendars, including the calendars shared on the corporate network by SharePoint, and this by taking advantage of a side-by-side view. The user can thus visually compare his schedule with that of his colleagues. In addition to the aesthetic improvements made to the display of the calendar, Outlook 2007 also offers in this view a display of tasks on a daily basis while an export function to OneNote is appearing. OneNote, for those who don't know it yet, is Microsoft's note-taking software. This is to export from Outlook the details of an appointment for easy note taking with OneNote. This export function is not limited to the calendar alone, it is also found for emails. The contacts module of Outlook has also been dusted off with a brand new look and new views (detailed business cards, professional business cards). Just like in Outlook 2003, it is possible to assign a photograph representing him to a contact, while the instant search function is also accessible in the zone devoted to the display of contacts. New views of the contact manager and the calendarAs for emails, which are still the heart of Outlook 2007, the software has an anti-phishing filter, or anti-phishing in French. Already available in the previous version of Outlook via the latest Service Pack, this filter is supplemented by the traditional Anti-Spam filter that Microsoft announces as improved. Unfortunately, these two protections turn out to be just as ineffective as the other in the context of the famous image spam where the image is concatenated in the body of the message. Note that Outlook 2007 is still able to disable most links it deems dangerous in an email. Microsoft takes advantage of Outlook 2007 to also review the graphical presentation of its account manager, a manager that allows you to define, among other things, email accounts, file locations or subscriptions to Internet calendars. If he is not the most aesthetic, this new manager is actually quite efficient and very professional. Attachment management has also been revised in Outlook 2007 to offer a preview in the message window. So when you receive a Word or Excel document attached to your email, you no longer need to launch another application to read it: a simple click on the preview button allows you to read it without changing window. Alas it does not work with PDF files! Too bad!View attachments without leaving OutlookAnother change made by Microsoft in terms of emails: the use of Word by default and as the only alternative for writing new messages. It is no longer possible with Outlook 2007 to use a "lite" editor to write emails: the creation of a new message therefore causes the appearance of a window with the Office ribbon and in all respects similar to that of word processing. It is not clear why Microsoft no longer offers the user the freedom to choose between Word and the old Outlook editor, and it is even more difficult to understand the following change which holds this time to the rendering engine of received emails. With previous versions of Outlook, the display of an email received in HTML format went through the rendering engine of Internet Explorer, which also offered great freedom to the creators of mailing lists. With Outlook 2007, the rendering engine is... Word! Problem, Word is anything but a web page viewer, its engine does not support the many HTML functions yet used extensively by newsletters. Result: it happens that some advertising emails have a presentation that is simply broken (clickable links that are not clickable, too large spaces, line break problems, etc.). Rendering of an HTML email: on the left in Outlook 2007, on the right in Outlook Express

Microsoft Excel 2007: Heading for 3D!

The spreadsheet software of the Office suite benefits from significant improvements with the arrival of Office 2007, improvements that go beyond the new look of the interface and its Office ribbon. First fundamental change, Excel 2007 is now able to take advantage of dual-core processors and HyperThreading processors. The neophyte user will probably not notice it,but anyone whose spreadsheets come perilously close to the new cell (1 million) and column (16,000) limit will no doubt welcome the news. Compared to Excel 2003, the increase in the maximum number of cells is established at 1500% and that of the number of columns at 6300% (just that!). The Office ribbon allows Excel to offer a whole new comfort when it's about formatting your data since the user can now easily choose a table style in a dedicated gallery and Microsoft even offers a "Cell Style" gallery to quickly change the appearance of a data cell. Small flat, if the cell styles gallery benefits from the dynamic preview, it is not the same for the table formatting gallery. Note that with Excel 2007, formatting the cells as a table, when you activate the headers, keeps them always visible even when you scroll the scrollbar (be careful, it will be imperative to create a array entity to take advantage of it). Excel 2007 also takes over the SmartArt functionality inaugurated by Word and allowing you to insert pyramids, graphs and other flowcharts into your spreadsheets. /small>But the other great novelty of this twelfth Excel of the name is of course the module allowing to create graphs. This has been extensively redesigned and benefits from a brand new engine that makes the graphics more beautiful, more attractive with the added bonus of real 3D effects thanks to color gradients on several levels (and no longer on 256 colors as previously), transparency effects and even soft shadows! Completely revised, the graphic tool takes advantage of the new Office interface with three fairly simple tabs that materialize in the ribbon: Creation, Layout and Formatting. The first tab allows you to very quickly select the style of the graph from an existing gallery, while the second allows you to define a number of options relating to the graph itself (name of axes, grid, legend, data labels, etc.) . The last tab will be useful if you want to change certain formatting attributes such as the color of the font, the color of one of the bars of your histogram via the "shape style" gallery, or even the application of a style Wordart to caption your chart. Wordart styles take advantage of dynamic previewing, and you'll see your caption change as you hover over a new style. On the other hand, once your chart has been created, the dynamic preview does not work for chart styles: you cannot see what your chart would look like if you select a new style. Damage ! Let's finish our overview of the functions of the grapher by specifying that the Microsoft development teams have also reviewed the layout of most of the property dialog boxes. The accustomed Excel user will also be quite confused because access to certain functions (minimum scale of the axis for example) may require some acrobatics while it will be necessary to get used to the new formatting commands. a chart.The chart module of Excel 2007The functions of Excel for group work are also enriched with, in addition to the review tools, the possibility of publishing a workbook on a company-internal document server. Naturally this function requires the presence of Office SharePoint Server on the network, which in fact reduces its scope depending on the size of your structure. Excel 2007 does not stop in such a good way and offers a somewhat redesigned conditional formatting tool. Applied to your data, this function gives your tables a voice, in a way, by highlighting the values ​​corresponding to certain criteria that you will determine yourself. The simplest formatting is to highlight cells whose value is greater than, between, or less than a variable you define yourself. Basically, the cells affected by the formatting turn red and the software also offers to automatically highlight the 10 highest values ​​of the selection or the 10 lowest values. But that's not all, since to make the tables even easier to read, Excel can display a data bar in each cell that corresponds to the size of the value in relation to the series. You can also choose an icon-based display or a swatch-based display (green for suitable cells,orange for median values, red for lowest values). Also note a new display mode called "page mode", which allows you to create a spreadsheet without losing sight of the considerations relating to printing. Conditional formatting in Excel 2007

Microsoft PowerPoint 2007

The PowerPoint slide show software is also back in version 12 and like Word and Excel, it take advantage of the new Office interface. We therefore find the famous ribbon, instead of the traditional menu bars and other toolbars, ribbon divided here into eight tabs (Home, Insert, Creation, Animations, Slideshow, Review, Display, Add-ons). PowerPoint makes good use of galleries whether it's choosing a theme for the slide, a type of animation or even a slide template to insert into the current presentation. Like previous versions of PowerPoint, the application screen is divided into three main parts: a left side pane displays a thumbnail of all the slides in the presentation, the center of the screen is occupied by the current slide while a zone displayed at the bottom of the window can accommodate any comments from the presenter. As in Excel and Word, there is a slider in the status bar allowing you to change the zoom level, while a new transparent toolbar is revealed when you select a line of text; allowing you to quickly change its formatting. A little more sympathetic, when inserting a new slide, we discover in the center of it and in slight transparency, six small buttons allowing you to quickly add content (images, graphs, tables, etc.). A PowerPoint that changes... a lot!For this new version, the bulk of the changes come from the functionalities allowing to brighten up presentations. This is how PowerPoint embeds the new SmartArt module that can be found in Word and Excel in particular and which offers, among other features, the possibility of transforming a list into an organization chart with a single click. You are then free to choose the type of organization chart from a gallery. The 3D effects offered by Excel for graphics and by Word for some of its drawing tools are also included in PowerPoint with the possibility of transforming a text frame into a finely modeled and rather aesthetic 3D form or even the possibility of add many geometric shapes via the "Shapes" gallery before applying a 3D style to it via the "Quick Styles" gallery. It goes without saying that WordArt, the Office suite's typeface generator, is available in PowerPoint 2007, although here it undergoes profound changes since it offers all the next-generation 3D options to create quite attractive titles. small>The 2007 vintage of WordArt: a PowerPoint exclusiveLike the building blocks available in Word, PowerPoint 2007 has a library of slides. The aim pursued is identical since it is a question of allowing the user to reuse an already existing content. However, Microsoft goes further by storing the slides in question on an external Office SharePoint Server. In the same company, users can thus all have access to the same reusable slides while the changes made to the slide stored on the server are automatically synchronized with their presentations. However, for the average user, the function has no interest since it is not possible to create a local library. Too bad! PowerPoint 2007 also inherits the functionality called “Photo album” but because of the tabs, it is now much more visible and therefore accessible. It allows you to create a PowerPoint slideshow from scratch from your photographs. Fairly spartan, the photo album creation interface allows you to add the images of your choice, quickly modify their orientation as well as the contrast and brightness values ​​(a black & white function is also available) before validating the whole thing. PowerPoint then automatically creates a presentation with one slide per photograph. In a completely different genre, PowerPoint supports dual-screen configurations with the possibility of projecting the presentation on a wall via an overhead projector while keeping an eye on its smooth running on your laptop, as long as the PC manages two displays. Microsoft has redesigned some of the options here to improve them while making them easier to access thanks to the Office ribbon.PowerPoint 2007 and its new presentation optionsRelatively consistent with Word and Excel, PowerPoint 2007 also has the document inspector. This function will, remember, analyze your presentation in search of notes, invisible content, and other personal information that you would like to delete before broadcasting it. And like Word, PowerPoint 2007 provides users with the new 3D graph module inherited from Excel 2007. Clearly, you can insert a 3D graph from an Excel sheet into your presentations in a very simple way. , by clicking on the "Chart" button of the "Insert" tab. Note also the presence of new themes or templates designed to give your presentations a professional look while the export functions are identical to those of Word. You can save your presentation in XPS format or in PDF format without forgetting the usual export options on CD, in particular.

Microsoft OneNote 2007: One for all?

Inaugurated with Office 2003, OneNote is the note-taking application from Microsoft. Designed to run on touch screen Tablet PCs, the software also runs on desktop computers and other laptop PCs with a slightly more conventional input mode since you will have to swap the stylus and handwriting recognition for the keyboard and mouse. With OneNote 2007, Microsoft continues the efforts it had begun during the development of OneNote 2003 Service Pack 1, an update that was ultimately to prove major. Surprise, if the application launches quickly, we will be disappointed to find a very Office 2003 interface, the Office ribbon having unfortunately not integrated OneNote 2007, at least for the moment. But don't be fooled by the absence of a ribbon, OneNote is really evolving with this 2007 version. Thus, Outlook's instant search function also integrates OneNote with a search box permanently displayed on the screen: practical for searching for a note that you entered some time ago but cannot find! All the more practical as the result is instantaneous and all notepads are affected by the search.Microsoft OneNote 2007: an interface that hardly evolves!Another quite obvious change, the appearance on the left side of the OneNote window with a navigation bar, similar to that of Outlook and minimized by default. It gives quick access to various OneNote notebooks or unclassified notes. And, great news, OneNote 2007 finally allows you to work on several notepads and no longer just one as with the previous edition! However, it is not yet possible to lock a notebook. On the other hand, we will console ourselves with improved export or sharing functions. In addition to the possibility common to Office 2007 applications to export notes in XPS or PDF format, which is a relief given that with OneNote 2003 the export options were almost non-existent (simple Word export), OneNote 2007 acquires enhanced sharing features. You can now synchronize a notebook through an Office server to try to keep an identical version of the notes taken on your workstation and on your laptop, for example. This should logically promote the popularity of the software in companies, especially since synchronization with Windows Mobile terminals is also on the program. And no longer in one direction as with OneNote 2003, but in both directions since Microsoft delivers OneNote 2007 Mobile, an application to be installed on your telephone or PDA to take notes and include them in your notepad each time you synchronize with your PC . Problem, or rather regret, the notes that you will enter on your Windows Mobile terminal cannot be handwritten: you will therefore have to use the keyboard of your telephone / PDA which, for taking notes, is particularly restrictive and therefore makes the application almost useless in our eyes.Microsoft OneNote 2007: synchronization progressesOneNote also benefits from other small refinements, with the possibility of adding hypertext links allowing to pass from one note to another. other or to directly access a Web site, while the previous and next buttons of the toolbar allow, as in an Internet browser, to navigate between the notes already consulted. We find moreover the possibility of adding a table in a note, table moreover particularly summary, while the software inaugurates a new full-page display mode which hides the toolbars and other menu bars. Strangely,the button to activate the function is located at the right end of the main menu bar, an uncommon choice. Reinforced integration with the other applications of the Office suite is also materialized in OneNote since a note entered in a notepad can have the value of a task in Outlook: a simple click on the task button allows the note to appear automatically in the Outlook 2007 taskbar. Among the subtle changes, we will also note the presence by default of a greater number of task indicators.OneNote and its full-page display mode< h2>Microsoft Access 2007: towards simplicity?The database software of the Office suite, Access, or rather the RDBMS (Relational Database Management System), also benefits from a new version . Unlike OneNote 2007, Access 2007 is equipped with the new Office interface and therefore offers the famous ribbon. This is not the only impact of the new interface on this software since, from its launch, Access offers, through a screen called "Getting Started", the choice to start an empty database and therefore to create from scratch or use one of the brand new models, reputed to be of high quality if we are to believe Microsoft's documentation. It should be noted that the templates are not available locally on the hard drive since they are automatically downloaded via your network connection and the Microsoft Office Online service (few templates by default).An unrecognizable Access... !Complex by nature, Access takes advantage of the Office ribbon which tends to streamline the interface with only four tabs displayed by default: Home, Create, External Data and Database Tools. Better, we note as in OneNote the presence of a left sidebar which gives access to the various elements of your database, whether tables, forms or reports, a bit like a project explorer. Microsoft did not stop there, since the multi-document interface of Access now offers a tab-based system. Rather than opening windows after windows, the forms and other views of your databases each open in a different tab: the work environment is thus clearer and cleaner!The new automatic sorting in Access 2007< /small>Totally integrated into the Office suite, Access 2007 can now create forms using Microsoft's InfoPath 2007 software or HTML language. The forms thus obtained can, within the framework of a teamwork, be sent by email to your colleagues while their answers will be used to automatically generate an Access 2007 table. In the same spirit, Access 2007 integrates with Office SharePoint Server 2007 and then becomes a client for analyzing and creating reports from SharePoint lists. Lists that can be retrieved offline and synchronized with the server when you reconnect to the network.The date fields now offer a calendarAlong with features aimed at improving, or at the very least simplifying, the work of group, Access 2007 has new field properties. Concretely, it is now possible to attach any type of document (whether it is an image, a graphic or other) in a database field. As a bonus, the fields can also contain several values ​​which makes it possible, for example in the context of project management, to assign a task to several people. Better still, if I define a field as being able to receive date/time type data, an interactive calendar will be automatically offered to the user when entering the form. Another significant change regarding the fields and the data they can accommodate: support for rich text. Thus you have formatting options, the choice of fonts or even the color to store text in your database and this via the use of the memo field. To remember also, the sorting functions of Access which have been improved to offer in particular an automatic filtering. We can thus sort the values ​​using a contextual menu which offers a rather explicit legend with options which change according to the type of data: Sort from A to Z, Sort from the oldest to the most recent, etc. Access now lets datasheets, reports and other forms support two background colors, while a new layout view lets you edit a form's design while viewing data.The Access 2007 memo field

Microsoft Publisher 2007

DTP software (desktop publishing) geared towards the general public, Publisher has been an integral part of the Office suite for several years now. It is therefore naturally found in certain versions of the 2007 suite such as the professional edition or the integral edition. Although Publisher also goes to version 12.0, its interface unfortunately remains unchanged and the Office ribbon is therefore absent subscribers. Starting the application causes the display of a largely redesigned getting started panel, where the user can choose a document template according to three steps: first, a type of composition is chosen (announcement, bulletin, card greetings, calendar, menu, etc.), then a model among the thumbnails illustrating them and finally we select a font set as well as a color scheme and even in some cases a page size. Note that compositions you've recently worked on also appear on the start page with a thumbnail illustrating their contents. Unlike other Office applications, the various templates are physically present on disk, although Microsoft provides a link to its Office Online service for additional templates. Alas, the models offered are no longer very young and they lack a bit of cachet or impact. The new Publisher 2007 start screenUnchanged, the Publisher interface still consists of a menu bar, toolbars but also a pane inherited from Office XP. The central part of the screen represents your composition in the form of a blank sheet surrounded by two rulers that can be moved to ensure precise placement of objects. Here, and contrary to Office 2007 applications, the adjustment of the zoom level is not done from the status bar but from the main toolbar. And since we are pointing out the inconsistencies or inconsistencies of Office 2007, you should know that the Word SmartArts are not available here any more than the 3D effects for the geometric shapes that you can create. As for the titler, Wordart, it is here as well obsolete since it does not benefit from the new look & feel inaugurated by PowerPoint and let's not talk about galleries that simply don't exist in Publisher. Among the new features offered by Publisher 2007, we note the arrival of composition tasks. This is a pane with tips and shortcuts to tools for creating marketing campaigns using comps. Clearly, Microsoft guides the user, taking him by the hand, for the creation of a direct mail. Direct mail which can now be done from various sources such as Excel, Outlook or Access. Like Word, Publisher now allows you to store content that you will need to reuse, while it is possible to create a model of professional information that will be reused through various document models. In terms of significant changes, note the arrival of a Pantone tab in the color dialog box to allow you to select a color whose match will be exact and perfect when sending your composition to a printer. Arrival of Pantone colors in Publisher 2007Saving in PDF or XPS formats is offered here, while the print preview has been improved to be more faithful. It is also possible to merge texts and images from a database into a Publisher composition, the software here supporting import from Excel and Access. Finally, the take-out wizard has been revised and improved to now be displayed in the form of an Office pane. Remember that this aims to flush out errors before exporting a composition to entrust it to a printer. Exporting can now be done as a single smaller compressed file.

Conclusion

Succeeding Office 2003 and a long series of Office updates that are generally as odorless as without flavor, Office 2007 finally manages to surprise us and in a good way! No more consensus or conformism with Office 2007 since Microsoft is radically changing the visual and ergonomic aspect of its major office programs, even if it means giving up on an almost century-old interface concept: farewell to menus and toolbars. In fact, those who considered Office 2000 as the last major version of the suite will be able to revise their judgment because if Office 2007 is not revolutionary, we are far very far from an Office 2003 which was satisfied with a new cosmetic.Of course we must not lie: the new interface is so different from what we knew until then that it will necessarily require an adaptation phase to take control of this new Office. Those resistant to change will probably be irritated by an Office 2007 where all their benchmarks have changed. However, it must be recognized that after a few days of use you get used to the Office ribbon, its tabs and the various galleries with instant preview that give access to the most useful commands at the right time. On the other hand, we regret the not always explicit name of certain tabs or even, and this is much more serious, the flagrant lack of homogeneity of the suite which means that certain applications such as Word, Excel, Access or PowerPoint take advantage of the new look & ; feel Office 2007 while OneNote, Outlook and Publisher keep the old fashionable Office 2003 graphical interface. which allows you to obtain 3D graphics in Excel but also shapes (circles, rectangles, squares, etc.) much more aesthetic than before. This is a major step forward because the two main Office applications, Word and Excel, are finally able to produce content different from that to which we have been accustomed since the era of Windows 3.1, particularly in terms of graphics. Beyond these changes, Microsoft made, with Office 2007, a significant step towards an opening of file formats. Thus Microsoft proposes a new format based on XML, opened and documented which is activated by default and this as well under Word as under Excel in particular. As a bonus, the availability of a PDF export function is a real plus, even if Adobe's bad grace made it optional since the user will have to download a small module to activate it. aside, Outlook 2007 irritates us and we won't hide it. If the new functions such as the preview of attachments, the reader of RSS feeds or the instant search are appreciable, even frankly essential, the abandonment of Internet Explorer in favor of Word for the rendering of received emails is inexcusable. Whatever the reasons (security, etc.), the fact is that this is a real step backwards which makes some emails difficult to read. Same comment for the fact that Word is now the one and only email editor available for writing electronic letters. entries, support for attachments), just like OneNote 2007, PowerPoint 2007 is evolving much more modestly, while Publisher 2007 is practically treading water. And since we're talking about things that annoy, we can't ignore the subject of the too many variations of Office 2007 and their prices! While Microsoft is making a remarkable and unprecedented effort with the Family and Student version of Office 2007, which is sold for approximately 169 euros including tax, the full version of the suite, that is to say the integral edition, is offered at more than 900 euros including tax! And there the user has the right to install it on only one computer against three for the family version. And don't think that the price for updating to Office 2007 Ultimate is frankly attractive since it is more than 700 euros including tax: it's expensive, very expensive,

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