Upgrading Word/Excel

[Master of the Game]

I don't write professionally or anything, but I do write a lot, and I was wondering if anyone had any advice on whether or not it was worth it for a casual user to upgrade to the newest version of Office. It seems like a lot of money to spend on something I will use little outside of writing up game worlds and doing some basic spreadsheets for work, but then again, I am still using Office 2000.

Like I said, I'm a pretty casual user. I only figured out how useful things like different sections and styles could be about a month ago. Previous to that I did every tiny bit of formatting by hand.

So, is it worth the money, and more importantly, re-learning all the stuff I finally figured out?

 

[Tharian]

Instead of paying for the latest Office suite (some versions of which cost up to $700, but cheaper versions are available), have you considered the newest version of OpenOffice.org? The 2.4 version came out recently and is free. That might be more in a budget range.

 

[drothgery]

It's hard to say. Office 2007 is probably the most significant upgrade to Office since Office 97, and I like it myself, but I don't do anything that I couldn't have with Office 2003.

If you're using Outlook as your mail client, I'd definitely want to get on 2003 or 2007, if only for better spam filters and inline spell-checking on plain-text email.

FWIW, Office 2007 Home & Student is $120 (at least at Newegg) for up to 3 PCs (and is intended to be the major 'home' version of Office), though that's just Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Office Standard is $200 for an upgrade version and adds Outlook (though it's just a single license).

 

[Bad Paper]

Do not upgrade to anything past Office 2003.

The latest Office kills VBA support. No cite-as-you-write EndNote in Word, and no more macros in Excel. Read user-reviews of people who upgraded to 2007 or 2008. There are pages of complaints railing against M$ for killing their workflow. Nothing past 2003 is approved as a standard in business and scientific environments. It's gotten huge piles of hatred.

Granted, you are a casual user, so you probably don't use those things, but ... I'm not so sure the latest versions will ever be popular, so don't rush out and buy yourself an Edsel.

OpenOffice rocks, so you can go with that if you need something new, but Office 2003 is the popular stable standard, much as XP is versus Vista, which people are now avoiding like the plague (inc. yours truly).

 

[ki11erDM]

Don't upgrade to anything that is NOT 2007. Office XP and Office 2003 are basically exactly like Office 2000 with a few little things added in.

2007 is a true upgrade. Whether you think that is a good thing or a bad thing is up to your point of view of the universe but that does not change the fact that XP and 2003 are NOT worth upgrading to (unless you can get them cheap cheap).

Two things with 2007, the little round thingy in the top left corner is a button. That leads to the 2nd thing, click it and click on options and change the default save from .docx back to .doc so you don't accidently send out files that people can't figure out how to open.

Now, the real question you asked is: Is it worth upgrading? And the answer is: Probably not. If you can get it for student price, sure, upgrade. If you need million+ of columns and rows in Excel, yes, you should upgrade (yes that is a feature, and yes that is the primary reason I just had to roll it out to over 700 computers). If you want a simpler and streamlined interface, yes, upgrade.

But if you are just looking for the latest thing wait till the next version… they are currently rewriting every line of code and trying to strip out the crap that has built up over the decades.

But you can always judge for yourself and download the trial: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/HA101741481033.aspx

/bla written two pro M$ posts in a day. I need to go shower : (

 

[ki11erDM]

Read user-reviews of people who upgraded to 2007 or 2008. There are pages of complaints railing against M$ for killing their workflow.

I pity people that work in environments that have IT staff that would push out such a major upgrade on there users without proper training. We have had very negligible negative feedback. And that was with a 10 min training session. *shrug* You can’t please all the people all the time.

It really is analogous to someone getting out of a Model T and getting into a Model A and being frustrated with the new control layout. And if you don’t get that analogy you should watch more good TV: http://youtube.com/watch?v=tv9CkjxwzYE.

/grr 3 pro M$ posts. not going to read this board for a while hehehe

 

[XCorvis]

I agree with ki11erDM. Office 2007 is a good upgrade, I prefer it. In my experience, I'd say 9 out of 10 people who get some training in it or learn to use it properly prefer it to older versions. That 10th person will hate it no matter what.

For a free solution, try OpenOffice or AbiWord first. If they suck, go buy Office. It's not going anywhere...

 

[drothgery]

The latest Office kills VBA support. No cite-as-you-write EndNote in Word, and no more macros in Excel.

Err... while technically true (Office 2008/Mac has no VBA support), Office 2007 is another story. VBA works just fine Office 2007/Windows (though it's hidden by default).

VBA is gone in Office Mac because Office 2008 was almost a total rewrite, because it's the first OSX native version of Office:Mac, and the changeover broke traditional Mac development tools (and so was very, very painful for large Mac apps -- which is why it's only as the next major releases roll around that MS and Adobe are getting around to OSX native apps). So they just did scripting with the Mac's native AppleScript engine.

 

[Thanee]

I have Office 2007 Professional on my home PC and really like it better than the older versions (Word especially). Once you get used to the changes, you really see that they are an improvement over the traditional setup. Many small features make working with the program faster and easier.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Merkuri]

I just upgraded to 2007 from 2000, and while I'm happy with my decision I wouldn't recommend it for a casual user. 2007 does not do anything different than 2000 or 2003 that a casual user would notice aside from the "ribbon" they put in to replace the toolbars, and that will probably annoy most users who are used to the toolbars. You'd be paying a lot of money for improvements you probably won't use.

I upgraded for several reasons. My work had us all upgrade to 2007 there (where I use Office more often) and I fell in love with their OneNote product, which wasn't available in the version of Office I had at home and the free or cheap products I found that were similar just didn't hold up. I pondered buying OneNote's standalone product, then decided to bite the bullet and upgrade the whole thing. It was a good decision for me to upgrade because, well, when I originally got Office 2000 I was a poor college student and I got it with... less than legal methods. Now that I actually have a job, an apartment, a car, etc I thought it was time I paid M$ for the use of their products. Though aside from OneNote I could've stayed using Office 2000 with no problems.

And just to make it clear, Office 2007 DOES have VBA support. I don't know about the Mac equivalent, but the Windows version DOES have it. I use macros so often that there would be no chance I'd upgrade if they didn't have it.