[WinPartners] Microsoft Office 2007 Release Project Underway

[Deb Bowser]

Good Afternoon,

IS&T, in collaboration with IT colleagues across campus, has officially
begun the Microsoft Office 2007 release project. This is the latest version
of the Office productivity suite for the Windows platform and includes Word,
Excel, and PowerPoint. Outlook 2007, which is part of the Office 2007 suite,
will be a separate release project that will be announced shortly.

Significant changes to the Office 2007 user interface make aspects of this
release challenging. IS&T will work with the community to identify and
document issues and workarounds relevant to the use of Office 2007 in the
MIT computing environment. Documentation and training will available to
support the transition to Office 2007.

Timeline:
------------------
IS&T anticipates availability and support for Office 2007 will be ready in
February 2007.

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 could have media in hand by February. To find out who
your Software Liaison is, please visit:

 http://web.mit.edu/ist/services/software/msca.html

In the meantime, we have reached out to DLC IT colleagues and will continue
to work with them to evaluate Office 2007 in their various computing
environments at MIT. If your Department, Lab or Center is not currently
enrolled in the Microsoft Campus Agreement at MIT and wishes to do so,
please send email to <bowser at mit.edu>.

New Features:
-------------------
Ribbon Interface:
- 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 (i.e., program options) and simplifies
the core authoring scenarios. Users will find items such as open, new, save,
save as, etc., 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.

Save as PDF or XPS:
- Microsoft Office Word 2007 offers the option of 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 the new features, please see the new Microsoft User
Interface Overview:

	http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/HA101679411033.aspx

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
re-learning will disproportionately affect the most proficient users of
previous versions of Office.  Training will be provided to help ease this
transition, but users should anticipate a learning period.

We recommend that customers using Office 2007 save their documents as a
"Word/Excel/PowerPoint 97-2003 Document" (.doc, .xls, .ppt) to ensure
documents can be shared across platforms.

To take advantage of saving files in pdf or xms format, an "add-in" needs to
be installed separately.  

More Information
------------------------------
For additional information on the Microsoft Office 2007 release project, see
the Microsoft Office 2007 project notebook:

	http://web.mit.edu/swrt/releases/office

IS&T will communicate to the MIT community throughout the release process.
If you have any questions, suggestions, or would like to participate in the
release of Microsoft Office 2007, please contact the release team at
office-release at mit.edu.


Regards,
Deb Bowser for the Office 2007 Release Team
Team Leader - Software Release Team
Client Support Services
Information Services and Technology, MIT
http://web.mit.edu/swrt/