Spotlight on Microsoft Office 2007
In this ‘Paperless Age’ we are all users of computers in some way, shape or form, whether our PC forms an integral part of our daily job or merely a peripheral tool, which we refer to on occasions. When it comes to our IT proficiency, we tend to classify ourselves into one of two main categories – unless of course we find ourselves in a pay-rise review/job interview situation! We either deem ourselves all-round experts or experienced in particular packages, or at the other end of the scale we place ourselves in the ‘Useless’ bracket (Please Note: this kind of talk is not allowed in my classroom!) or at the beginner end of the scale.
I have trained Microsoft software for many years, ranging from Word to the more obscure Project and FrontPage packages, and would have to put myself (without blowing my own trumpet!) at the advanced/expert end of the scale. I have learnt, from both personal experience and from my years of teaching this range of software, certain so‑called ‘professional’ tricks and tips, such as outline numbering, conditional formatting, slide masters, pivot tables and contact categorization. So‑called ‘professional’ because these features have been available for years but are only unearthed by either determined, and time consuming, self-discovery or by attending a professional training course. If some or all of these functions are new to you, you are not alone!
There are also the areas that have always fallen short of the mark, chart formats for one, or others that myself, and IT users in general, have felt have been missing in the various upgrades of Office through the years, a usable print preview in Excel has been conspicuous by its absence. These all have ‘work-arounds’ which can be time-consuming or even impossible to find without expert guidance.
Enter Microsoft Office 2007, to a great chiming of bells and well-deserved cheers!
If you are a relatively new user then you are half a step in front of us so-called experts. The new Office system is designed specifically to get people up and running quickly, in creating high quality, creative and consistently professional documents, from letters, manuals, invoices, purchase-orders and informative emails to company-wide calendars, AGM reports, yearly sales forecasts and effective sales presentations.
For the ‘expert’ users among us there will be a certain, (vast!), amount of crying and gnashing of teeth about why they have changed a system that we are, if not happy with, at least familiar with and know exactly how to deal with its various foibles and short-comings.
Believe me, I absolutely understand your reactions. As an Office user of any package and to any degree you will feel initially lost when you first encounter the new Office system. The new interface is at first bewildering and then frustrating as you find that the tasks which you could perform quickly and instinctively in the older versions become more time-consuming and leave you feeling like you have to relearn everything all over again.
I have been lucky in that I have been aware of the changes that Microsoft have been envisaging from the ‘baby’ stages. There have been forums and blogs for the self-confessed geek like myself regarding Office 12, as it was initially known, for the past few years. I have found that by understanding the history and reasoning behind the changes I have been able to keep my frustration at bay when, for example, I cannot find Print Preview or Open straight away.
When Microsoft first released Office 1.0 in 1989, Word, for example, had only two toolbars. We could make text bold and multi-coloured and we were rightly impressed. Since then Office has expanded to have thirty one toolbars, and with the release of Office XP/2002, nineteen Task Panes, all of which have the ability to be moved to any area of the screen, ‘docked’ to any side and ultimately closed. We can customise all these toolbars by adding, reorganising and removing any icon; all actions which we can perform without actually intending to. We can turn off gridlines, rulers, scrollbars and margins before we even look up from the keyboard. The end result is a screen with random toolbars appearing at the side and losing essential functions which we then and have to pick through menus to resurrect again.
Microsoft realised that the interface of Office was becoming too cluttered for the functions available, as we had to peck through a multitude of menus, sub-menus and buttons to find the options to give our documents the professional look we required. They also realised that while the ability to customise the screen was a clever and handy feature it was only ever used knowingly by a very small minority. They decided that now was the time for a major change.
They commenced a Customer Experience Improvement program to find out exactly which features were used regularly, and which were given too much prominence given their scarce use. They took a large group of users, varying in both experience and job function, and performed a number of analytical tests. Their major research project was the full recording in each software package of the use of both the keyboard and mouse, the latter by a click‑by‑click method, in this wide-ranging group of users. From this test and others they drew together a big picture of the most regularly used features and, more importantly, the great features that were under-utilised because of their ‘hidden’ nature. They combined this information together with years of requests and comments from various sources, ranging from general newsgroups to more specific “focus-groups”, which have been in place as long as Office has been available, to produce the key concepts which have formed the Office 2007 system which we have today.
- Quick learning curve for new users
- Prominence given to features previously ‘hidden’
- Upgrade of previously limited features, such as filtering and graphics
- Introduction of new features, such as SmartArt and customisable PowerPoint Masters
- New file formats giving more stable and smaller files
- Lock-down of customisation to prevent loss of usability
Overall, after a period of initial adjustment, I have found that the new version of Office is nowhere near the ‘slight tweak’ that we have become used to in previous upgrades nor is it just a face-lift for the sake of it as some reviewers have stated.
It is a much-needed change in the way we work with computer software. This version takes away the need for us to spend hours formatting and laying out our documents, instead it allows us to concentrate on the job in hand, to write the report requested, generate the figures needed or present the crucial ‘wow’ factor presentation required without wasting precious time spent hunting down those ‘extra’, hardly used features.
I for one am an absolute convert to the new Office 2007 system and I highly recommend that you at least give it the once over. Yes, it will require you to re-learn some aspects of Office in which you have previously felt comfortable, but both the upgrade of the existing functionality and the introduction of exciting new features are well worth the initial effort. At the end of the day your documents, and those of your users, will increase in consistency, usability and professionalism and what more can you ask of a software package.
