Microsoft
Office 2007 (officially called 2007 Microsoft Office System) is a Windows
version of the Microsoft Office System, Microsoft's
productivity
suite. Formerly known as Office 12 in the initial stages of
its beta cycle, it was released to volume license customers on November 30, 2006
and made available to retail customers on January 30, 2007. These are,
respectively, the same dates Windows Vista
was released to volume licensing and retail customers. Office 2007 contains a
number of new features, the most notable of which is the entirely new graphical user interface called the Fluent
User Interface (initially referred to as the Ribbon User Interface), replacing the menus and
toolbars – which have been the cornerstone of Office since its inception with a
tabbed toolbar, known as the Ribbon. Office 2007 requires Windows XP
with Service Pack 2 or higher, Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 or
higher, Windows Vista or Windows 7. Office 2007 is the last version of
Microsoft Office which is officially supported on Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.
The
'Ribbon User Interface' is a task-oriented Graphical User Interface (GUI). It features a
central menu button, widely known as the 'Office Button'. The Ribbon Interface
has been improved in Microsoft Office 2010.
Office
2007 also includes new applications and server-side tools. Chief among these is
Groove,
a collaboration and communication suite for smaller businesses, which was originally
developed by Groove Networks before being acquired by
Microsoft in 2005. Also included is Office SharePoint Server 2007, a major revision to the server
platform for Office applications, which supports "Excel
Services", a client-server architecture for supporting Excel
workbooks that are shared in real time between multiple machines, and are also
viewable and editable through a web page.
Microsoft FrontPage has been removed from the
Office suite entirely. It has been replaced by Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer,
which is aimed towards development of SharePoint portals. Its
designer-oriented counterpart Microsoft Expression Web is targeted for
general web development. However, neither application has been included in
Office 2007.
Speech recognition and handwriting recognition are now part of
Windows Vista. Speech and ink components have been removed from Office 2007. Handwriting
and speech recognition work with Office 2007 only on Windows Vista or Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. However, XP
users can use an earlier version of Office to use speech recognition.
According
to Forrester Research, as of May 2010, Microsoft
Office 2007 is used in 81% of enterprises it surveyed (its sample comprising
115 North American and European enterprise and SMB decision makers).
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