Things to Know about Office 2007
If you’re planning to install Office 2007 Beta 2 when it becomes available later this month, here are a few things to know that may save you time and headaches later.
NOTE: This information only applies to Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook. I’ll discuss some of the issues and options for server-side installation of MOSS and other components later.
First, regarding side-by-side installation, the good news is that this works fine for Word, Excel and Powerpoint. You can, for example, have the Office 2003 versions of these programs still installed and working fine alongside the Office 2007 Beta 2 versions. Outlook, however, requires that you make a choice: you can only have one version of Outlook installed. My advice is to take the plunge and go with Outlook 2007: it’s stable, reasonably fast, and has many cool new features.
Speaking of Outlook, here’s an issue that some people (including myself) have struggled with when installing the beta versions of Outlook 2007: email profiles. If you install Outlook 2007 and have any problems with Outlook, the first thing to do is to delete your email profile (under Control Panel / Mail). Then, the next time you start up Outlook, it will step you through re-creating the profile. This isn’t always necessary; I had to do it when going from Beta 1 to Beta 1 Tech Refresh, but not when going to Beta 2. Your mileage may vary.
Another thing to know is to un-install all previous versions of Office 2007 that you’ve installed (if any). This is important, and it’s clearly explained in the installation instructions, but some people still try to skip this step. Don’t — you’ll regret it.
If you’ve created any Open XML documents with previous versions of the Office 2007 beta, save them in the binary formats before you un-install the previous beta versions. This is especially important if you have Beta 1 installed — the schemas have changed since then, and Beta 2 will NOT read DOCX, PPTX, or XLSX documents created with Beta 1. If you fail to do this and get in a bind where you have Beta 1 documents that you can’t open any longer, I may be able to convert them for you if you’re not in a hurry and it’s just a few documents. And if you ask nice.
I’ve mentioned before that there will be converters to allow previous versions of Office to read the new file formats. The converters for Office XP and Office 2003 will be available when Beta 2 becomes publicly available, and they’ll be a free download. Keep this in mind when planning your strategy for migrating to the new file formats.
Here’s something I have found very annoying, but it is what it is: in order to have the cool search functionality within Outlook (which really rocks in Office 2007), you must upgrade your Windows desktop search to a new beta version. this was not true in the previous beta versions. Instructions on dealing with this issue are provided during installation.
Beta 2 will be available in English, Japanese, German, French and Spanish versions. If you need another version … how are you reading this?
That should be enough to get you started. Getting excited yet? I just did the upgrade to Beta 2 today (we get it a little sooner than the rest of the world :-)), and I love it.
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 11th, 2006 at 7:10 pm. You can subscribe to comments on this post through its RSS feed.
on May 12, 2006 at 8:21 am Doug wrote:
Here’s one other cool thing to add to the list: Word now has some functionality for writing blog posts. Check out Joe Friend’s writeup at http://blogs.msdn.com/joe_friend/archive/2006/05/12/595963.aspx.
If you’ve ever spent hours cleaning up Word-generated HTML for posting on, say, a Community Server blog (as I have many times for the OpenXmlDeveloper site), this feature is worth looking into.
on May 14, 2006 at 7:12 am Tom wrote:
Hey there - there’s a shining-as-can-be-expected review* of this feature here, too. And the Slashdot comments about it here - it starts with a slightly funny little Clippy joke.
* the arstechnica.com article is complimentary in its own way, but as you would expect from a snotty geek site, many of the compliments are along the lines of Annette Bening in American Beauty: “Honey, I’m so proud of you. I watched you very closely, and you didn’t screw up once!”
on May 14, 2006 at 11:33 pm Neal wrote:
Those of us who use Outlook as a small business CRM are waiting for the latest version of OL with Business Contact Manager. Patiently…They can’t release Beta2 soon enough…I’ve heard as late as June, but more likely May 27th. Stay tuned.
I’m curious to see if development teams are still splitting the contacts databases between BCM and OL.
on May 18, 2006 at 5:43 am Hermione wrote:
Do you know where I can get an .xlsx converted back to .xls? Alternatively can I get a trial of Office 2007 so that I can open the document myself?
Thanks
on May 18, 2006 at 6:50 am Doug wrote:
Hermione,
You can register for the Office 2007 beta here: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview. It will be available very soon; let’s just say before June.
Alternatively, if you have a single document, you could email it to me (dmahugh at microsoft dot com) and I’ll convert it and send back to you.
- Doug
on May 24, 2006 at 8:43 am Doug wrote:
Hermione, note that you can also install the Compatibility Pack and read that xlsx from Office XP or Office 2003 now. See my work blog for the details: http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh
on May 25, 2006 at 2:36 pm Paul wrote:
Can I run the Beta side-by-side with Office 2000 Pro? including Access?
on May 25, 2006 at 2:39 pm Paul wrote:
Did you know that your site gets flagged as a suspected phishing site by IE 7.0 Beta?
on May 26, 2006 at 9:19 am Doug wrote:
Yes, Paul, you should be able to run it side-by-side with any prior version of Office, with the exception of Outlook as mentioned above. Note that the version you installed last is the one that gets the file-type association, though. So if you want Access 2000 to launch when you double-click an MDB file, you should “repair” that installation after installing Access 2007. (Part of the repair process is setting that file-type association.)
Hey, I used IE 7.0 but I haven’t seen a warning about this site being a phishing site. Can you describe where I should look to see that?
Thanks, Doug
on May 26, 2006 at 12:39 pm Paul wrote:
Tools/ Phishing Filter/ Turn ON Automatic website checking
on May 26, 2006 at 8:08 pm Paul wrote:
Doug, I put in 2007. The problem I have now is Outlook insists on taking over any RSS links I click on. I want them in IE7.0 - not Outlook. Know how to turn Outlook RSS off?
on May 26, 2006 at 10:58 pm Gopal wrote:
I had installed Office pro 2007 with outlook 2007. When I tried to open outlook 2007 offline, it requested me to sync first and then try opening it. However, when the system was rebooted, outlook 2007 just disappeared. when tried reinstalling the entire suite, outlook 2007 is supprssed for installation. Any soul to help me out?
on June 6, 2006 at 2:07 pm Doug Carmichael wrote:
I want outlook and onenote on my tablet. But attempts to install outlook requires apparently also downloading client manager, and then says can’t instal manager without installing outlook first. But how?
on June 6, 2006 at 4:03 pm tomax7 wrote:
…well Outlook 2007 has crashed and can’t be fixed. Started with a “searchindex.exe” error. Then Windows Desktop Sort error and now goes in a loop, opening, error correcting, locking up, force shut down.
Not too impressed, albeit Beta2, but the memory required to run this puppy is sad. 256MB or 512MB with Contact Manager. Crap, Windows XP Pro runs on less RAM.
on August 19, 2006 at 7:36 am James wrote:
Ok, I have a huge problem, that I’m curious if anyone else has experienced. I installed the beta 2 version of Office 2007, choosing to UPDATE rather than install a totally fresh version. After it finished the installation, I opened Outlook, and everything seemed fine until an error message came up saying Business Contact Manager failed to open, and after I closed that window, everything closed. Now I’m stuck and can’t open Outlook!! I’m glad I backed everything up, however I don’t know what to do now. Is this a common issue??
on August 19, 2006 at 10:40 am Doug wrote:
James, I’m not familiar with that issue, but in going from Beta 1 to B1TR to Beta 2 I’ve always un-installed the prior version and then done a complete install. I’d recommend doing that — un-install everything, then try doing a complete install.