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Four years in the making, Office 2007 is nothing short of a revolution in the way we interact with software. The main applications all have a radical new look and new file formats. And, while the changes to the minor applications may be less obvious, they've all been updated with new features and capabilities. Here at PC Pro, we've been testing all the components of Office 2007, both client and server, for nearly a year. And we're very impressed.

User interface
The most obvious change, which hits you as soon as you start Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Access, is the revolution in the UI. Out go all the menus and toolbars and in comes "The Ribbon".

From usability testing, watching real people do their jobs and from the data collected by the Customer Experience Improvement Programme, Microsoft noticed that people's experience using Office degraded over time. Toolbars popped up to let you do something but were never dismissed, taskPanes sprouted all over the place. Users could unintentionally drag the main menu off an application and then not know how to put it back.

It also noticed that a lot of requests for features to be included in Office actually concerned things it could already do - people just couldn't find how to do them.

The Ribbon aims to be the one place you look for commands to do things to your documents. It takes up the top part of the application's window and all the commands for the application are logically arranged in different tabs, grouped according to their function. Each application has its own set of standard tabs which are available all the time and several context-sensitive tabs which appear when you select particular types of objects. For example, if you select a picture in a Word document, you see an extra tab of tools which let you format that picture.

One change which may cause more hair-tearing in the first few days of using Office 2007 is the loss of the "File" menu which has been replaced by a big round "Office Button" in the top left corner of the window. This is the home for all the commands for doing things with your document. Save, Print, Send by Email and so on are all here,

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as are New, Open, Publish and Close. The Office button also gives access to the recent files list and the application options.

File Formats
The file formats used by Word, PowerPoint and Excel haven't changed substantially since 1997 when computers were constrained by lack of memory and people needed their documents to save quickly to floppy disks. The new formats for these applications store the document text and formatting in XML files which are then compressed, using standard ZIP compression. Embedded files such as images are included in the ZIP package with no conversion, so they don't degrade. The resulting files are 25-75% smaller than the equivalent files in the previous format.

Older versions of Office (2003, XP & 2000) will be able to open and save files in the new 2007 format via a free compatibility pack. This is available to be downloaded and installed now and will be pushed to all users of these versions via the Office Update /Microsoft Update websites and the corporate Windows Server Update Services (WSUS).

Themes
Word, PowerPoint and Excel now also include the concepts of Themes. These are collections of fonts, colours and effects which work well together. Changing a document from one theme to another changes all these settings at once so you can easily change the look of a document with just a couple of clicks. Even when copying a chart from Excel to Word, the chart will take on the look of the document because it will automatically follow the theme of the destination document.

Graphics
Office has also had a complete overhaul of the graphics engine. Excel gets much better looking charts and all three applications share what is called SmartArt. This quickly turns a boring bullet point list into smart graphics of arrows, blocks, circles, cogs, etc. These diagrams blend with the theme of a document, picking up the fonts, colours and effects to make great looking graphics with the minimum of effort. Pick the type of diagram you want from a large gallery of options and then type or paste a list of points into the dialog. The diagram creates and arranges all the shapes you need and colours them according to the current document Theme.

Conclusion
The new user interface is bold and exciting and, because all the commands which are relevant are visible to you, it is much easier to get the job done rather than playing hunt the command. Control-freaks and stick-in-the-muds may not immediately enjoy it so much, but if you spend a little time getting used to it, it is really easy to make good looking documents quickly.

The full 12-page review can be found in the next issue of PC Pro, on sale the 14th of December