new features
When you open any of the programs in the 2007 Microsoft Office suite, you’ll notice something very different in the menus at the top of the screen. First of all, there is a new feature called the Microsoft Office Ribbon. This feature, in the upper left corner of the screen, replaced the File menu. By clicking on it, you can find some of the old familiar actions such as Open, Save, Save As, Print, and Send. It’s a nice feature, but believe me, it takes some getting used to.
Another new feature that reflects similar changes made to Internet Explorer is the tabbed menu feature. Instead of having lots of dropdown menus, there are tabs at the top of the screen with menus that show up directly below them once clicked. If you’re used to the drop-down menus used in Office 2000, XP, and 2003, it will take you a long time to find some of the popular commands.
The final new feature is the hover effect. I really like this feature because it allows you to preview what something would look like before making the change. For example, if you wanted to change some text in Word or Excel from size 12 to size 20, you would highlight the text and click the size dropdown. When you hover over size 20 (before clicking), it will give you a preview by changing the actual text until you move your mouse outside of the text size. This is a really cool feature that I’m sure a lot of people will like.
Save for previous versions
To keep it really short and sweet, there are two ways to save for older versions of Microsoft Office. One way is to click on the Microsoft Office ribbon and select Save As>97-2003 Document.
The other way to do it is to set your default save method to 97-2003. To do this, click on the Microsoft Office ribbon on the program you want to use, and then select “Options _______”, where the blank space is the name of the program, ie Word, Excel.
From there, click Save and change the format it saves in to 97-2003. This will save all your documents in this format if you use the normal Save command.
It’s generally a good idea to save documents to earlier versions because users who don’t have Office 2007 won’t be able to open any of your documents unless they download a compatibility pack.
Update to 2007
There are several options to investigate here. One of which is to go to the Microsoft Office website and purchase from one of the six vendors listed. You can also purchase a copy at a local computer store (CompUSA, Best Buy, etc.). Finally, if you’re lucky and you’re a student, staff, or faculty member at a university, you can get it for free if your university has a campus license agreement for the software.