eWEEK Labs Walk-Through: Office 2007

Office 2007 will officially launch on Nov. 30. eWEEK Labs tested pre-RTM Build 1011 of the Enterprise edition of Office 2007.

Here, Office 2007 prompts us for the product key.

Here is a full-page look at the ribbon interface-probably the biggest change to the Office suite.

Users can choose to work with a minimized ribbon, increasing their workspace when working on documents.

When working with documents created or saved in Office 2003 or earlier, Office 2007 automatically grays out capabilities that are not available.

Office 2007’s Document Inspector feature can be used to inspect documents for revisions, comments and personal information that a user may not want to share.

We could convert a document created using the binary file formats found in Office 2003 and earlier to Office 2007’s XML file formats.

The big change in Outlook is the To-Do bar (at right). The To-Do bar provides a list of upcoming events, tasks and e-mail messages marked for follow-up.

Users can now drag files from Microsoft Windows onto an Office OneNote 2007 page. Users also can export Web pages to OneNote, but only when using Internet Explorer.

PowerPoint Slide Libraries allow users to leverage existing PowerPoint slides in their presentations.

Clicking on the Office home button pulls up the Prepare menu, which allows users to check compatibility and restrict permissions (among other things) before sending out a document.

After installing a plug-in, we were able to save documents in PDF and XPS file formats.

Users can now publish directly to Office servers to share documents from within applications such as Excel.

Publisher now allows the use of company brands in documents.

SmartArt allows users—even those without technical expertise—to turn something such as a chart or a bulleted list into a snazzy graphic.

Enterprises that purchase Office Ultimate 2007, Office Professional Plus 2007 or Office Enterprise 2007 also will have access to InfoPath, which allows users to create electronic forms.