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Office
2007 Release Project Notebook |
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Overview
IS&T, in collaboration with IT colleagues across campus, has officially begun the Microsoft Office 2007 release project. Microsoft Office 2007, is the latest version of the Office productivity suite from Microsoft for the Windows platform and includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Outlook 2007 which is part of the Office 2007 suite, is a separate release project and will be released during February 2007.
Interesting Office 2007 facts at MIT
MIT Vista and Office 2007 Fast Facts
Timeline
IS&T plans to release and announce support for Office 2007 in February 2007.
News
Collaborating with previous versions of Office and other programs:
Microsoft Office Excel 2007, Microsoft Office Word 2007, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 contain features to ensure compatibility with previous versions of Office. You can use the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack to allow backward compatibility, so that previous versions of Office can open and save files in the new file format. In addition, the openness of the new file format makes it more compatible with non-Office programs. For more information on the compatibility pack, please read the article: Collaborating with previous versions of Office and other programs.
How to obtain
Office 2007 media will be made available as soon as possible to the Software Liaisons within Departments, Labs and Centers. The current estimate from Microsoft is that we should have media in hand sometime in February. To find out who your Software Liaison is, please visit:
http://web.mit.edu/ist/services/software/msca-officeliaisons.html
Office 2007 is available through the Microsoft Campus Agreement at MIT. To see if your Department, Lab or Center is currently enrolled, please see the software liaison list. For Departments, Labs and Centers not funded through this agreement and would like additional information, please send email to: liaison-opt@mit.edu. For those not eligible for departmental funding, Office 2007 can be purchased directly from GovConnection through the MIT Select Agreement.
| GovConnection # |
License |
MIT Pricing |
| 7250521 |
Office 2007 Professional Plus (All languages) License Only (Does not include installation CD) |
$54.97 |
7419293
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Office 2007 Professional Plus (Installation CD) |
$21.87 |
| 7248439 |
Office 2007 Standard License Only (Does not include installation CD) |
$44.61 |
| 7283488 |
Office 2007 Standard (Installation CD) |
$21.87 |
| 7321114 |
Office 2007 Professional Plus Academic (for personal use) |
$155.42 |
Please note that you must purchase both a license and a copy of the media (i.e. Installation CD) if you do not already have a copy of the media/installation CD. The license does not include an installation CD/media. On the other hand, if you already have a copy of the media/installation CD, then you only need to purchase a license. In other words, you need a license for each distinct installation, but you can use one copy of the media to perform all the installations. Please also note that both of these items are special order (i.e. not actively stocked), so you can expect to wait an additonal 7 business days for delivery.
Announcements
MIT Vista and Office 2007 Fast Facts - January 29, 2007
Office 2007 Release Project Underway - December 28, 2006
Key Decisions
IS&T will not support the following applications packaged with Office 2007:
- Access
- Communicator
- Groove
- InfoPath
- OneNote
For additonal information on other applications packaged with Office, please visit the "What's included" section of the Office 2007 page.
Notable Features
- Ribbon interface: In order to make the full Office feature set easier to use, the entire user interface has been significantly changed. In place of the familiar toolbars and pull down menus, Office 2007 uses a context-aware ribbon to give quick access to the features most likely to be used in any given situation.
- The Microsoft Office Button: Helps users find valuable features including program options and simplifies the core authoring scenarios. Users will now find items such as open, new, save, save as, etc contained within the Microsoft Office Button. In past versions, these functions resided within the "file" menu.
- Contextual Formatting Palette: Selecting an area of text or an object will bring up a floating mini-palette with context-related formatting options.
- New file name extensions: Microsoft Office has new file types and extensions based on the new XML file formats in the 2007 Microsoft Office system. The new file name extensions are based on the previous extensions, with the addition of a character to differentiate between macro-enabled and macro-free files. Read more on XML formatting. Also, see Overview of the file formats in the 2007 Office system.
- Save as PDF or XPS1: Office Word 2007 offers a choice for sharing documents with other people. Users can convert Word documents to Portable Document Format (PDF) or XML Paper Specification (XPS) format. Note, a separate "Save word documents to PDF" add-in needs to be installed to use this functionality.To read more about new features, please see the new Microsoft User Interface Overview:
1 You can save as a PDF or XPS file from a 2007 Microsoft Office system program only after you install an add-in. For more information, see Install and use a PDF or XPS add-in .
To review these new features in more detail, or for additional information, please visit the Office 2007 page.
System Requirements
Vendor System Requirements:
Computer and processor |
500 megahertz (MHz) processor or higher
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Memory |
256 megabyte (MB) RAM or higher, 2
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Hard disk |
2 gigabyte (GB); a portion of this disk space will be freed after installation if the original download package is removed from the hard drive.
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Drive |
CD-ROM or DVD drive
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Display |
1024x768 or higher resolution monitor
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Operating system |
Microsoft Windows(R) XP with Service Pack (SP) 2, Windows Server(R) 2003 with SP1, or later operating system
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Other |
Certain inking features require running Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition or later. Speech recognition functionality requires a close-talk microphone and audio output device. Information Rights Management features require access to a Windows 2003 Server with SP1 or later running Windows Rights Management Services.
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Additional info 2 |
512 MB RAM or higher recommended for Outlook Instant Search . Grammar and contextual spelling in Word is not turned on unless the machine has 1 GB memory. |
For additional system requirements, please visit the Microsoft Office 2007 systems requirements page.
Testing
A test plan will be created and followed during this phase of the project.
Known Issues
- The changes to the user interface, while making the suite easier to user overall, will require users to change old habits and dedicate some time to learning the new interface. Paradoxically, because the new interface is focused on making Office features more accessible to the average user, this relearning will disproportionaly affect the most proficient users or previous versions of Office. Training will be provided to help ease this transition, but users should anticipate a learning period.
- Docx-converter offers a portable solution for your compatability needs. It will convert Microsoft Office .docx files into a simple html file. It strips out some of the formatting, but now supports bold, italic, and underlined text. Left, right, center, and justified alignment. Unicode characters. Tables. And more!
- Due to Office 2007's new XML-based file format, files saved in the format can't be opened by Office 2004 on a Macintosh. Similarly, these files can't be read by previous versions of Office for Windows, unless a converter is installed. Beta versions of these converters do exist for Windows.
- When you open a Word 2003 document in Office Word 2007, Compatibility Mode is turned on, and you see Compatibility Mode in the title bar of the document window. In Compatibility Mode, you can open, edit, and save Word 2003 documents but you won't be able to use any of the new Office Word 2007 features. Read more on how to Convert an Office 2003 document to Office 2007
- We recommend that customers using Office 2007 save their documents as a “Word/Excel/PowerPoint 97-2003 Document” (.doc, .xls, .ppt) to ensure the documents can be shared across platforms. To save documents in the 97-2003 format, please see changing the default "save as" file format.
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Documentation
Existing
or Planned Documentation:
| Documentation Name |
Exists |
Draft Ready |
Ready |
Assigned To |
| Office
Product Front Door |
No |
No |
No |
Esther |
Office
Product Page |
No |
No |
No |
Esther |
Release Team
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Alex Kozlov - SWRT |
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Product Release Coordinator |
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Deb Bowser - SWRT |
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Quality Assurance Coordinator |
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Esther Yanow- TWS |
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Documentation Writer |
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April Barton - Help Desk |
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Help Desk Liaison |
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Bronwen Heuer - Training |
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- Word |
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John Fothergill - Training |
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- Excel |
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Lee Ridgway - Training |
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- Powerpoint |
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Alice Downing - Sloan School |
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Sloan Representative |
If you would like to contact the team, please send email to office-release@mit.edu.
Meeting Minutes
November 21, 2006
December 5, 2006
December 19, 2006
January 2, 2007
January 9, 2007
January 16, 2007
Support
IS&T will fully support Office 2007 once released to the MIT community in Feburary 2007.
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