Upgrading to Office 2007 — My First Thoughts

I've just upgraded from Microsoft Office 2003 Professional to Microsoft Office 2007 Professional, using the Upgrade package. It's taken me quite a while to do upgrade. Duh! It's the 2007 version!

My intent has always been to upgrade as soon as I found that I would be using Office 2007 at work in my "day job." All of a sudden, it's happening.

First, my wife told me that she's using Office 2007 at work and that she likes it, but wants to know more about it. So, I decided it was time to retire her Office XP Small Business Edition OEM editions and to get her a full retail Office 2007 Small Business Edition (she doesn't want or need Access). That way, when I upgrade her PC to a new motherboard and processor, I can move Office 2007 to her newly upgraded PC (or even new PC) while still complying with the End User License Agreement.

So, I ordered her a retail copy of Office 2007 SBE. I planned to work on her PC occasionally to learn a little about Office 2007.

In last week's online newsletter, I had a How To article on creating underlined fields in forms, and discussed both Office 2003 and Office 2007 — and in writing that article, I discovered that I liked the new version a lot more than I expected I would. After all, it was just an update with a new and changing ribbon interface for commands, wasn't it?

The day after I ordered my wife's Office 2007 copy, I found that we were shifting to Office 2007 at work...

Since I had a retail copy of Office 2003 Professional, I knew I could transfer it to another PC. So, I was able to save money by purchasing the Upgrade version of Office 2007 Professional instead of another retail copy. Fortunately, shipping was free.

I ordered from NewEgg.com, from whom I have purchased hardware and software for years. Their price beat that of Amazon.com at the time, although Amazon now has the same price. NewEgg's delivey beat the socks off of Amazon's typical free delivey — I ordered on Tuesday evening and received it on Thursday.

Installation was simple. There were two big decisions to make. First, did I want to upgrade my Office 2003 versions to 2007, or did I want to install Office 2007 and keep my Office 2003 installations, too. I chose to upgrade.

The other big decision was whether to install the applications on the second CD. Those two applications were the Business Contacts Manager for Outlook 2007 (which required 50 MB) and/or Microsoft Accounting for Small Businesses, which was another 800 MB. In addition, before I could even get into the CD to see what could be installed, I had to install Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0 from the CD.

I chose to install .Net, but chose not to install the Business Contacts Manager and Microsoft Accounting. I might have installed the accounting program, except the installer was nice enough to tell me that the program would use Microsoft's web services (which could be different or discontinued — so I felt that couldn't count on this program continuing to function) and that it would download and display advertisements to me.

Copyright © 2009 Terry A. Stockdale. All rights reserved.