Microsoft Office 2007 review: first look

 

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Posted on 29 Nov 2006 at 18:14

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

Author: Simon Jones