What Else Is New In Microsoft Office 2007?


Now that you’ve read through an introduction to the five Office 2007 programs discussed in this book (or perhaps you only skimmed the text if you were already an Office Pro before Office 2007 came out), it might help you get the big picture to learn what is new with Office 2007. Not everyone has yet to upgrade, and perhaps knowing what’s in store would help your decision. The ribbon and the Live Preview features are certainly the most obvious new features, but they are not alone in what distinguishes Office 2007 from older versions.

The big benefit is to the improved user interface is that brand-new users should be able to start using Office faster. No more wading through menus, because what you need to be able to do should be on the ribbon at the top of the screen.

Office 2007 is certainly more graphical. Anyone who has used Excel’s graphs and charts, for example, will see dramatic improvements in Excel 2007’s graphing capabilities, including the following:

• New 3-D effects

• Shadows

• Reflection

• Glows

• Surface texture