Info

New features
User interface

The new user interface (UI), officially known as Fluent User Interface,has been implemented in the core Microsoft Office applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and in the item inspector used to create or edit individual items in Outlook. These applications have been selected for the UI overhaul because they center around document authoring. The rest of the applications in the suite will also be upgraded to the new UI in subsequent versions.The default font used in this edition is Calibri. Original prototypes of the new user interface were revealed at MIX 2008 in Las Vegas.
Office button
Office Button in Microsoft PowerPoint

The Office 2007 button, located on the top-left of the window, replaces the File menu and provides access to functionality common across all Office applications, including opening, saving, printing, and sharing a file. It can also close the application. Users can also choose color schemes for the interface.
Ribbon

The Ribbon, a panel that houses the command buttons and icons, organizes commands as a set of tabs, each grouping relevant commands. Each application has a different set of tabs which expose the functionality that application offers. For example, while Excel has a tab for the graphing capabilities, Word does not; instead it has tabs to control the formatting of a text document. Within each tab, various related options may be grouped together. The Ribbon is designed to make the features of the application more discoverable and accessible with fewer mouse clicks as compared to the menu-based UI used prior to Office 2007. However, many users feel that the existing menus should have been left alone. Moving the mouse scroll wheel while on any of the tabs on the ribbon cycles through the tabs. The Ribbon can be minimized by double clicking the active section’s title, such as the Home text in the picture below. Without third party add-ins, it is not possible to remove the Ribbon, modify it, or replace it with menus with the normal Office 2007 functions. There are third party add-ins which can be purposed that can bring menus and toolbars to Office 2007 as well as add-ins which allow users to customize the Ribbon commands. However, the upcoming Microsoft Office 2010 is expected to allow users to customize the ribbon right out of the box.
Contextual Tabs

Some tabs, called Contextual Tabs, appear only when certain objects are selected. Contextual Tabs expose functionality specific only to the object with focus. For example, selecting a picture brings up the Pictures tab, which presents options for dealing with the picture. Similarly, focusing on a table exposes table-related options in a specific tab. Contextual Tabs remain hidden except when an applicable object is selected. This can have the effect of frustrating users who fail to find functions in the ribbon due to not knowing that the object must be selected first.
Live Preview

Microsoft Office 2007 also introduces a feature called “Live Preview”, which temporarily applies formatting on the focused text or object when any formatting button is moused-over. The temporary formatting is removed when the mouse pointer is moved from the button. This allows users to have a preview of how the option would affect the appearance of the object, without actually applying it.
Mini Toolbar

The new “Mini Toolbar” is a type of context menu that is automatically shown (by default) when text is selected. The purpose of this feature is to provide easy access to the most-used formatting commands without requiring a right-mouse-button click, as was necessary in older versions of the software. Because the Mini Toolbar is automatically displayed, it remains semi-transparent until the mouse pointer is situated on the control in order to allow an almost-unobstructed view of what is beneath it. It also appears above the right-click menu when a user right-clicks on a selection of words. The Mini Toolbar is currently not customizable.
Quick Access Toolbar

The Quick Access toolbar, which sits in the title bar, serves as a repository of most used functions, regardless of which application is being used, such as save, undo/redo and print. The Quick Access toolbar is customizable, although this feature is limited compared to toolbars in previous Office versions. Any command available in the entire Office application can be added to the Quick Access toolbar, including commands not available in the Ribbon and macros. Keyboard shortcuts for any of the commands on the toolbar are also fully customizable, similar to previous Office versions.
Other UI features

* Super-tooltips, or screentips, that can house formatted text and even images, are used to provide detailed descriptions of what most buttons do.
* A zoom slider present in the bottom-right corner, allowing for dynamic and rapid magnification of documents.

SmartArt

SmartArt, found under the Insert tab in the ribbon in PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and Outlook, is a new group of editable and formatted diagrams. There are 115 preset SmartArt graphics layout templates in categories such as list, process, cycle, and hierarchy. When an instance of a SmartArt is inserted, a Text Pane appears next to it to guide the user through entering text in the hierarchical levels. Each SmartArt graphic, based on its design, maps the text outline, automatically resized for best fit, onto the graphic. There are a number of “quick styles” for each graphic that apply largely different 3D effects to the graphic, and the graphic’s shapes and text can be formatted through shape styles and WordArt styles. In addition, SmartArt graphics change their colors, fonts, and effects to match the document’s theme. File formats
Office Open XML
Main article: Office Open XML

Microsoft Office uses a new file format, called Office Open XML, as the default file format. Word documents (without macro extensions) are now saved using a .docx extension rather than the traditional .doc extension. Word 2007 can also save documents in the old format which is compatible with previous versions of Word. In addition, Microsoft has made available a free add-on known as the “Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack” that lets Office 2000-2003 editions open, edit, and save documents created under the newer 2007 format.

Office Open XML is based on XML and uses the ZIP file container. According to Microsoft, documents created in this format are up to 75% smaller than the same documents saved with previous Microsoft Office file formats, owing to data compression.Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office PowerPoint also use the new OOXML file formats. Word files containing macros are saved with the extension .docm.
PDF

Initially, Microsoft promised to support exporting to Portable Document Format (PDF) in Office 2007. However, due to legal objections from Adobe Systems, Office 2007 does not offer PDF support out of the box, but rather as a separate free download. Service Pack 2 allows users to natively export PDF files.
XPS

Office 2007 documents can also be exported as XPS documents, via another free plug-in that is also a separate download.
OpenDocument

Microsoft backs an open-source effort to support OpenDocument in Office 2007, as well as earlier versions (up to Office 2000), through a converter add-in for Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and also a command-line utility. As of 2008, the project supports conversion between ODF and Office Open XML file formats for all three applications. According to ODF Alliance this support falls short and substantial improvements are still needed for interoperability in real-world situations. Third-party plugins able to read, edit and save to the ISO-standard Open Document Format (ODF) are available as a separate download.
User assistance system

In Microsoft Office 2007, the Office Assistants have been eliminated in favour of a new online help system. One of its features is the extensive use of Super Tooltips, which explain in about one paragraph what each function performs. Some of them also use diagrams or pictures. These appear and disappear like normal tooltips, and replace normal tooltips in many areas. The Help content also directly integrates searching and viewing Office Online articles. Collaboration features
SharePoint

Microsoft Office 2007 includes features geared towards collaboration and data sharing. As such, Microsoft Office 2007 features server components for applications such as Excel, which work in conjunction with SharePoint Services, to provide a collaboration platform. SharePoint works with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, which is used to host a SharePoint site, and uses IIS and ASP.NET 2.0. Excel server exposes Excel Services, which allows any worksheet to be created, edited and maintained via web browsers. It features Excel Web Access, the client-side component which is used to render the worksheet on a browser, Excel Calculation Service which is the server side component which populates the worksheet with data and perform calculations, and Excel Web Services that extends Excel functionalities into individual web services. SharePoint can also be used to host Word documents for collaborative editing, by sharing a document. SharePoint can also be used to hold PowerPoint slides in a Slide Library, from which the slides can be used as a formatting template. It will also notify users of a slide automatically in case the source slide is modified. Also by using SharePoint, PowerPoint can manage shared review of presentations. Any SharePoint hosted document can be accessed from the application which created the document or from other applications such as a browser or Microsoft Office Outlook.
Groove

Microsoft Office 2007 also includes Groove, which brings collaborative features to a peer-to-peer paradigm. Groove can host documents, including presentations, workbooks and others, created in Microsoft Office 2007 application in a shared workspace, which can then be used in collaborative editing of documents. Groove can also be used in managing workspace sessions, including access control of the workspace. To collaborate on one or more documents, a Workspace has to be created, and then those who are to work on it have to be invited. Any file shared on the workspace are automatically shared among all participants. The application also provides real-time messaging, including one-to-one as well as group messaging, and presence features, as well as monitoring workspace activities with alerts, which are raised when pre-defined set of activities are detected. Groove also provides features for conflict resolution for conflicting edits. Schedules for a collaboration can also be decided by using a built-in shared calendar, which can also be used to keep track of the progress of a project. However, the calendar is not compatible with Microsoft Outlook.
Themes and Quick Styles

Microsoft Office 2007 places more emphasis on Document Themes and Quick Styles. The Document Theme defines the colors, fonts and graphic effects for a document. Almost everything that can be inserted into a document is automatically styled to match the overall document theme creating a consistent document design. The new Office Theme file format (.THMX) is shared between Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook email messages. Similar themes are also available for data reports in Access and Project or shapes in Visio.

Quick Styles are galleries with a range of styles based on the current theme. There are quick styles galleries for text, tables, charts, SmartArt, WordArt and more. The style range goes from simple/light to more graphical/darker.
Application-specific changes
Word 2007 introduced many new image edititing abilities that change the shape, borders and colours of an image.

Microsoft Office Word 2007

* New style sheets (quick styles) and ability to switch easily among them.
* Word count listed by default in the status bar. The word count dynamically updates as you type.
* New contextual spell checker, signified by a wavy blue underline analogous to the traditional wavy red underline for misspellings and wavy green underline for grammar errors, sometimes catches incorrect usage of correctly spelled words, such as in “I think we will loose this battle”.
* Translation tool tip option available for English (U.S.), French (France), and Spanish (International Sort). When selected, hovering the mouse cursor over a word will display its translation in the particular language. Non-English versions have different sets of languages. Other languages can be added by using a separate multilingual pack.
* Automated generation of citations and bibliographies according to defined style rules, including APA, Chicago, and MLA. Changing style updates all references automatically. Connect to web services to access online reference databases.
* Rearchitected native mathematical equation support with TeX-like linear input/edit language or GUI interface. Also supports the Unicode Plain Text Encoding of Mathematics.
* Preset gallery of cover pages with fields for Author, Title, Date, Abstract, etc. Cover pages follow the theme of the document (found under the Page Layout tab).
* Document comparison engine updated to support moves, differences in tables, and also easy to follow tri-pane view of original document, new document, and differences.
* Full screen reading layout that shows two pages at a time with maximal screen usage, plus a few critical tools for reviewing.
* Document Inspector which strips Word documents of information such as author name and comments and other “metadata”.
* Building Blocks, which lets one save frequently used content, so that they are easily accessible for further use. Building blocks can have data mapped controls in them to allow for form building or structured document authoring.
* The ability to save multiple versions of a document (which had existed since Word 97) has been removed.
* Blog entries can be authored in Word itself and uploaded directly to a blog. Supported blogging sites include Windows Live Spaces, WordPress, SharePoint, Blogger, Telligent Community etc.
* Drops function for Insert/Picture/From Scanner or Camera. Can be added manually.

MS Word 2007-with Serial

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