It’s been awhile, but for what it’s worth, the time has been spent planning a great Word vNext. Stay tuned for vNext posts.

Anyway, while we have been working on vNext, we have certainly not forgotten about Word vNow (Word 2007) or Word vPast (Word 2003, XP, or 2000). In fact, during a trip I took last week to visit my family in Chicago and Columbus, OH, I spent a few hours familiarizing my mother, father, and brother with Word 2007 and was re-inspired to help ease the transition to Word 2007.

I told them was that there are two high-level things about Word 2007 that are much different than any previous version:

1.     A new user interface

2.     A new file format

And that while both of these things come with a learning curve, the learning curve can be overcome by doing three things:

1.     Understanding at a very high level the ‘paradigm’ of the new user interface

2.     Installing and using the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 interactive guides

3.     Using the compatibility tools we’ve created.

My hope is that the remainder of this post will quickly help you do all three.

The New User Interface

Here’s my ‘quick fix’ to any pain caused by the new user interface of Word 2007:

·         Commands exist within Tabs which describe a type of activity/scenario you may want to perform.

·         When you want to Insert a table, go to the Insert tab. When you want to change your View of your document, go to the View tab. Etc.

·         If none of the Tabs match what you are trying to do, use the Word 2007 guide to tell you exactly where the command is.

The New File Format

Whether you have Word 2007 or not, you likely know about the file formats new to Word 2007. If you have Word 2007 you’ve likely noticed that by default you are creating .docx files vs. .doc files (the “x” stands for XML). If you have pre-Word 2007 you’re hopefully one of the millions who have downloaded the Compatibility Pack so that you can open, edit, and save .docx files (interesting fact: the Compatibility Pack is the second most downloaded product on the Microsoft Download Center…behind Internet Explorer 7).

Either way, you have likely faced one of these two issues (below), both resulting in sadness:

·         You are a Word 2007 user and had someone that couldn’t open one of your files

·         You are not a Word 2007 user and couldn’t open a file created by someone with Word 2007.

We know about this sadness and have released a whitepaper that details all of the tools available for Word 2007, 2003, XP, and 2000 users to help ease this pain.

In sum, the whitepaper talks about the following tools:

1.     The Compatibility Pack

a.     Eases life for Word 2003, XP, and 2000 users by enabling them to open, edit, and save documents in the file formats new to Word 2007 directly from within Word 2003, XP, and 2000.

2.     The Compatibility Checker

a.     Eases life for Word 2007 users by telling them users how pre-2007 users will experience a given document

3.     The Office Migration Planning Manager (OMPM)

a.     Eases life for IT administrators planning to deploy Word 2007 by scanning documents for compatibility issues and suggesting ways to address potential issues.

4.     The Word 2007 Policy Settings: Allows Word 2007 to save in the legacy .doc format by default.

And also lays out different deployment/installation scenarios and how you can apply these tools to those scenarios.

Of course you can get more info in our previous posts on compatibility and the Compatibility Pack.

Hope this helps & hope you are enjoying the summer.

-Jonathan