Microsoft has announced that they will be releasing their latest Microsoft Office 2007 applications in January 2007, around the same time as Windows Vista is being shipped. Some have questioned the wisdom of releasing two of their biggest income producing products at the same time. However, after spending some time with both Vista and MS Office 2007, it makes sense to me, as they need each other to provide the maximum benefit of their capabilities. (Note: I'm focusing here on the personal workstation side of the Office product line, there are also several related server products, but that is outside the scope of this article.)
Many current users of MS Office 2003, if it is currently meeting their needs, will have little incentive to upgrade. However, if you purchase a new computer systems with Vista installed or want to take advantage of the updated menu/toolbar interface ("Ribbon") and new features, especially the extensive collaboration capabilities, then Office 2007 may be a no-brainer for you.
Some other Office features include a Live Preview, Zoom Slider, option Galleries, and an Office add-on that allows you to save your documents as a PDF or an XPF file. (Not available for all Office applications.)
Office 2007 has changes made to its main suit of applications, as well as to the supporting programs that interact with it. There are 7 different official Office 2007 Suites, which vary according to the applications that are included, based on their intended users.
Here are the list of the applications that will make up the various Office 2007 Suites (and a few of the new highlights for each application):
Word - Improved menus, ability to publish and maintain blogs directly from Word, Building Blocks (allowing boilerplating from pre-existing content), Tri-Pane review (compare and track changes to two versions of a document).
Excel - Improved menus, handles up to 1M x 16,0000 rows, builds charts with fewer clicks, and when scrolling large tables it keeps its headings in view.
Outlook - Improved Instant Search, integrated To-Do bar, advanced calendar sharing, improved junk e-mail filtering and e-mail tasking; read and manage RSS feeds and blogs. Optional: Business Contact Manager.
Powerpoint - Better integration with Sharepoint Server; create hierarchy, workflow and relationship diagrams; create digital signatures, ability to mark documents as "Final" to protect it from changes, Slide Library for saving and reusing slides.
Access - Automatic data type detection, new field types for attachments and multiple field values, better reports preview, better audit trails and viewing of audit trails with roll-back of edits.
Publisher - Convert from one document type to another, frequently used content can be saved for reuse in Content Store, templates automatically filled in with company data where appropriate.
Infopath - Collect and manage data with forms now useable from a browser, email forms and have them filled out in Outlook, auto conversion of Word and Excel forms, built-in data validation, Template Parts for grouping controls for later use.
Project - Create custom templates, analyze changes before committing, improved cost resource management and analysis for reporting, date can be used by Visio and Excel to create charts and diagrams, project schedule can be managed as a 3D Gantt chart.
Visio - PivotDiagrams to visualize data, groups and relationships; link shapes and data to shapes, dynamic objects link to external data, new shapes, new theme behavior.
OneNote - Supports multiple notebooks and sharing across multiple computers, tasks synchronized with Outlook, OCR performed on images to to capture any text for searching, audio and video can also be tagged, indexed and searched, diagram drawing tools, can "print" to OneNote, hyperlinks between notes and from outside OneNote.
Groove - "Work together and share information with team members - anywhere, anytime, with anyone." This is a new application for communication and collaboration between small groups (peer-to-peer) or enterprise teams using a relay server. A user creates a "Workspace" and then invite others to share in it via an encrypted link.
Communicator - "For anyone who needs to communicate with other people in real time, using a variety of different communication methods including instant messaging (IM), voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), and video."
SharePoint Designer - A web site development application for enterprises incorporating Sharepoint technology. Support for creating workflows and data reports, from external data sources; allows XML data to be displayed using XSLT; easily make or undo changes across Sharepoint sites; create workflows to automate business processes.
Frontpage Is No Longer Part of Office
Frontpage - is no longer part of the Office suite of applications and has been replaced. It's replacement, Expression Web, is now part of the Microsoft Expression product group -- together with Expression Graphic (for graphic design) and Expression Interactive (for app design) -- of web site development applications:
Expression Web - Expression Web was designed to create code based on CSS and XML. It is the new replacement for Frontpage. It features an enhanced interface, XML and XSLT support, and improved, efficient Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) support. (While it is currently known as "Expression Web", it was previously called "Expresssion Web Designer" and you will still see references using it's previous name.)
See also:
Wikipedia - Office 2007,
Wikipedia - Office Groove,
PC Magazine - Microsoft Expression,
Wikipedia - XSLT,
Wikipedia - CSS,
CSS Tutorial
Update Note: See also Microsoft Windows Vista and Office 2007
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FYI: According to recent news reports, Microsoft is working on the Apple Mac version of Office 2007, which will be called Office 2008. It is planned for release in the last half of 2007.