Microsoft Office 2003 vs. 2007
 

I have an opportunity to buy a copy of one of these through school. I can get 2003 Professional or 2007 Enterprise. Does anyone know what the difference is?

A new layout....Unless you absolutely 100% need it....not worth it at all.

We run '03 at the office, and 'upgraded' to '07. Within a few weeks, everyone went back to '03, as we found the newer version was not kind to some of the older computers re they ran way slower. Painfully slower.

07 sucks.

Try OpenOffice.org - it's free and works pretty darn well. I quit using word entirely. It also handles .docx which was my initial reason for downloading it.

Most of my work involves programming SQL server applications, we use all the versions of Access as frontends to big SQL server databases depending on what the client is using in his environment, it saves all kinds of licensing costs and adds an additional layer of security as well. Access 2003 has become somewhat of a corporate standard with all large companies, it is very stable and fairly easy to learn. 2007 is pretty much the exact opposite. There is really only one reason to migrate to it in the business world, 2007 offers a lot of hooks into Microsoft's Sharepoint product, which is being used a lot of places but as an app hasn't exactly set the world on fire. If you are in an environment where integration with Sharepoint isn't a consideration, I'd go with 2003, you can always upgrade later. Microsoft wants you to use 2007 because once you are using it, if you want to do any serious development in it you will be sending Microsoft more money to put a .Net development platform together, while 2003 uses the older VBA/VB 6 COM environment, all of which is built into Access and for which there is twenty years worth of free and/or cheap addins available along with all kinds of libraries that allow 2003 to be integrated into web apps and just about anything else you can think of. With 2007, all of what is functionally pretty much the same stuff is for sale for high prices.

That seems to be the same story all over the country. The only exception seems to be the hot-shot accountants, the high level numbers guys, and they want 2007 for Excel, not Access. I personally found Word 2007 a real pain, it was as if they purposefully just hid everything somewhere else in order to make it look "new". People just don't have time to jack with that stupid trick, so they junk it instead.

Microsoft Office 2003 vs. 2007...
 

About four years (bwahahahahahah)...

...like everyone already said, stay away from '07 unless you are a "hair-on-fire" accountant!

Between MS Office '07, Windows 7/Vista (yada yada), seems like Microsoft is unconsciously forcing users to take a really hard look at Apple's offerings...I mean any PC box over three years old isn't going to run their newer stuff very well. So if you have to shop for a bigger mousetrap, might as well consider defecting to Apple...I know I am!!

word 07 is ****ing stupid... they changed the default font to effing calibri, size 11.


who the hell uses calibri size 11 for term papers!!!! Standard MLA and APA formatting is Times New Roman size 12... every damn paper I have to go in and change it...its rather annoying(I havent gotten around to figuring out how to make the change stick)

Unfortunately Microsoft Word cannot open .odt files unless you first add on a third party program for this purpose. One of my clients sent an .odt to me today via email. What a pain to find and downloand the software to convert.

You can also ask your client to use the Open Office "Save As" feature and select Microsoft Word 97 .doc file.

OK. Thanks. I guess that explains why they want twice as much money for the 2003. I have OpenOffice but it has some issues. However I have not updated it since 2007. I figured since I can get this at a student price I would give it a go. So I will go with the 2003. Thanks.

I use MS Office 2007 at work and I hate it. I do a lot of Word, Excel and Access stuff and the new interfaces are crap. As for Access I have ditched it in favor of SQL Server Express and either just use the SQL Manager or I build a web front end in Visual Studio.

At home I use OpenOffice 3. It is free and powerful, and yes it will save files as MS compatible .doc, and .xls files.

I have used OpenOffice since it was StarOffice back in the 1990's I always liked it better, especially since it was Java based and could run on Windows, Unix, or Mac hardware