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Computing

Office 2007 Help and Configuration Information

"A guide to getting started with Office 2007."

This page describes the Freeman School's implementation of Microsoft Office 2007.  Topics include:

  • Document format differences
  • File compatibility strategy
  • Help in Office 2007
  • Tools to ease the transition to Office 2007
  • Save to PDF add-in

(The original Office 2007 announcement with timelines and strategies can be found here.)

Office 2007 user interface

Changes to the user interface are the most visible differences to Office 2007. Menu items have changed and a new Ribbon Bar shows common commands grouped by task.

File compatibility

New default file formats for Office 2007 differ from previous versions of Office.  New file extensions are:
Word (.docx)
Excel (.xlsx)
PowerPoint (.pptx)

We recommend that you set your default file save format in each of the programs to "Office 97-2003".  This will ensure backward compatibility with students and colleagues using Office 2003 or other programs.

Office 2003 users should install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack to gain the ability to open and create Office 2007 documents. You can download and install the Office Compatibility Pack from Microsoft's Office web site:
click here to visit the Microsoft Office web site for the Office Compatibility Pack.

Freeman School file compatibility strategy

The Freeman School's notebook computer requirement will present a challenge to file compatibility for at least the next year:

  • New student computers will have Office 2007
  • Existing student computers will have Office 2003

File compatibility among these machines can be achieved in year 1 (and beyond) as follows:

  • Office 2007 users: set default save as "Office 97-2003"
  • Office 2003 users (existing students): install the Office Compatibility Pack

Help in Office 2007

Help is available as it has been in all versions of Office.  Office 2007 offers some additional tools to help ease the transition to the new interface.

The "Get Started" tab add-in provides easy access to content on Microsoft's Office Online web site. This site has training courses, video demos, and other content to help you transition to the new programs. A nice feature of the "Get Started" tab is the Interactive Command Mapping Tool which shows you where to find Word and Excel 2003 buttons and commands in Word and Excel 2007.

The "Get Started" tab add-in is available for both Word and Excel from the Microsoft Office web site:

Word:
click here to visit the Microsoft Office web site for the Word Get Started tab.

Excel:
click here to visit the Microsoft Office web site for the Excel Get Started tab.

Save as PDF or XPS add-in

An extremely useful add-in allows you to save documents in PDF or XPS format right from the "Save As" command.
The "Save as PDF or XPS" add-in is available from the Microsoft Office web site:
click here to visit the Microsoft Office web site for the Save as PDF or XPS add-in.

Last Updated 11/19/08
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