Will Microsoft Office 2007 System
updates be easier to deploy to users?
Yes. In previous Office versions, you
kept local installations current by updating
the source files in the administrative installation point and triggering a reinstallation
of Office on each user's computer. Or you
configured Office 2000 Setup to chain
software updates with new installations of Office. Keeping all installations synchronized was difficult.
Now, you create a network installation
point that you never have to update, so
that client computers never become out of
sync with the installation source. Keeping
new installations current is as simple as
copying updates to a folder on the network installation point. There's no need to
configure complex, chained deployments or modify the original installation files.
New installations will chain the updates in
sequence, and you can specify different
locations for updates by using a config.xml
file. (For more information about deployment mechanisms, see the Microsoft
article "Deploy the 2007 Office system
with limited network capacity" at http://technet2.microsoft.com/office/en-us/
library/1f721083-6d58-4a53-94c1-1bbfc36a249b1033.mspx.)
For organizations that subscribe to
Windows Server Update Services (WSUS),
I highly recommend that you install Office
2007 with cached installation files and distribute updates by using WSUS.
What can I really expect from Office
2007?
Your users are definitely in for an
adjustment as they experience the new UI. Be proactive in training and preparing them. In my experience with clients,
organizations that have introduced users
to the new UI, with as little as a 30-minute
introduction, have found the transition to
be significantly smoother than those that
haven't prepared end users. Microsoft
provides several Office 2007 resources(e.g., training and command-reference
guides) at http://office.microsoft.com,
which you can incorporate into your enduser training.
Once the adjustment is made, the
experience of Office 2007 early adopters
confirms that the new UI enables users to
be significantly more productive. In addition, the new file formats and deployment
processes are easier for IT administrators
to manage. Most importantly, the power
of Office 2007, which includes Windows
SharePoint Services and support for
technologies such as information rights
management (IRM), means that collaboration, knowledge management, business
intelligence, and security will add real
business value. This isn't just Microsoft
hype; I've seen it firsthand. And as Office
2007 rolls onto desktops, we'll all begin to gather real-world experience with the
good, the bad, and the ugly in the newest
overhauled Office version.
Has the number of rows and columns supported by Microsoft Office
Excel 2007 changed?
The long-standing limitation of 256 columns (A to ZZ) and 16,384 rows has been
expanded to include worksheets up to 16,384
columns (A to ZZZ) and 1,048,576 rows.
Will my computer have enough
horsepower to run Office 2007?
Most likely, yes, if you're using a computer purchased within the last year or two.
However, Microsoft has changed how it
states an application's hardware prerequisites, and Microsoft's numbers sometimes
assume that you're running nothing but
Office 2007. Check out Table 1 to see
Microsoft's stated system requirements for
Office 2007 versus what I think are probably
more realistic requirement guidelines.
Excel 2007's conditional formatting
has additional settings; what are they?
Figure 1 shows examples of the three
new settings for Conditional Formatting:
Color Scales, Icon Sets, and Data Bars.
Color Scales color the background of a
group of cells with different colors according to the values of the various cells. For
example, in the Serial column in Figure 1,
the color of the successive cells gradually
changes from yellow to red as the cell values increase. Icon Sets precede the text
in a cell with an icon that represents some
aspect of the cell's value with respect to
other values in a group of cells. In Figure
1, cells are marked as belonging to a specific group by a colored flag that precedes
the integer in the Serial field. Data Bars
show a gradient bar in a cell's background
and can display information that might not
be explicitly stated (i.e., with a numerical
value) in the field.
I'm a little confused about differentiating themes, templates, and Quick
Styles. Can you clarify what each of
these features does, or at least point me in the
right direction?
Your confusion is understandable, especially about
themes, which are
an entirely new feature,
although older
versions of Office had a (different) feature called "themes." An
Office 2007 theme is a new, standalone
file type (.thmx) that defines colors, fonts,
and effects to create a distinctive, visually
cohesive look for all Office 2007 documents. Default themes include Office,
Urban, and Opulent. You can find them
in the themes gallery in each application: on the Design tab in Microsoft
Office PowerPoint 2007 and on the Page
Layout tab in Microsoft Office Word 2007,
Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 email messages, and Excel 2007.
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