Microsoft Office 2007 - wah so different!

I took delivery of my new computer for home and for work a couple of days ago. I was really good and got legal software even for my home use! For work, it goes without saying, as I don’t want to be caught and fined and what-not. In any event, it doesn’t cost very much for software anymore.

I opted for Microsoft XP for the Operating System (OS) as I wasn’t sure about Vista (RM295). For the wordprocessing bit, I went for Microsoft Office (Basic Edition) (RM500+) for the office and for the home, Microsoft Home and Student Edition (RM410). This is enough for me as I don’t need Powerpoint which seems to be the only other addition in the professional set. So, all you out there, don’t email me pps/powerpoint files ok? Cute and all, but I cannot view la…

Anyway, I used to pride myself on being really up to date with technology stuff, but lately I’ve been slacking. And this slack has never been more evident than my face when I opened up Microsoft Word on which I work most of the time. WAHLAU!! WTF is that?!

Um… yeah. I wasn’t aware of the launch of Microsoft Office 2007. The interface is totally different from the Word I’d been used to. Everything has nicely rounded corners and the toolbar has all the functions you’d ever need set out in tab form. This tab thing is really getting around isn’t it? First IE7, now Word!

Anyway, it takes a lot of getting used to. I was having trouble finding lots of shortcuts and commands I was used to. Fortunately, the keyboard shortcuts to the commands remain more or less the same, and as I use a lot of keyboard commands, I found most of what I was looking for.

Excel too has had a facelift.

And that’s not all. I had an error message from trying to save an Excel 97-2003 version because apparently, Excel 2007 is now bigger and better and certain functions are improved so its not compatible with older versions. I’m not very good with Excel but it sure looks better!

There is a snag though, as there always is. The Microsoft Office 2007 file extensions are different. Excel in 2007 saves as a .xlsx file as opposed to the traditional .xls. Word saves as a .docx file as opposed to .doc. What this means is that older versions will not recognise this document. You can opt to save it as a 97-2003 file which makes it compatible with other computers, but I’m not sure how stable that is.

On the plus side, they have colour themes, so my layout is now a cool silver/grey colour, which is very different from the traditional blue tones and which gives me a very Mac computer feel. Not that I’ve ever used Mac! LOL…. but I like being a little out of the ordinary, so this grey theme thing is fun!

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