I have recently upgraded to Microsoft Office 2007.  It has changed quite a bit compared to the 2003 version that I am used to and I wasn’t a big fan at first.  I have now been using it for 3 weeks and it is growing on me more and more.  I now find some things a lot easier than they were with 2003, like making tables and moving to and from sub/superscript.

The big thing about getting to grips with 2007 is the new tabs along the top.  In 2003 the buttons were all displayed along the top of the screen with any functions that couldn’t fit hidden in the menus.  The 2007 version has all the functions as buttons to click sorted into tabs of similar functions.

When I first started this seems difficult to guess which button the tab would be under.  It took me ages to figure out how to convert some text into a table in Word.  The problem was that I was looking for the button without the text I wanted to covert being selected.  The button only appears when text is blocked.

The tabs also can be confusing sometimes as some of them only appear when you need them.  For example table design and formatting only appear when the cursor is inside a table, unlike 2003 where the table menu was always there.  This seemed a bit silly at first but now I like it because I know that everything to do with the table will appear only when I need it, when I don’t it wont get in the way.

The reason I stuck with 2007 instead of going back to 2003 is the problem with backwards compatibility.  If you save a file in Word 2007 the default format is a docx file, not the normal doc file.  Docx cannot be opened by 2003, so everyone will have to upgrade sooner or later.  I’d rather get used to it before I find out that I can not open any of the documents people are sending me.