Upgrade Office 2007 to Office 2010 For Free

If you purchased Office 2007 after March 5 and before September 30 2010 you are probably eligible to upgrade to Office 2010 at no charge.  But you only have until October 31, 2010 to request your free upgrade.  You can find the details here.

Office 2010 adds many new features especially in Outlook.  However, there are a few menu changes that can be frustrating at first.  File formats between the 2007 and 2010 versions are the same.  We would suggest Clients that are eligible go ahead and upgrade.

Office 2007 SP1 Released

Microsoft released the SP1 update for Office 2007 a couple of weeks ago. We have installed the update on several machines and have had no problems.

SP1 addresses issues in all the Office modules. One of the most significant is a fix for an Excel issue that was causing erroneous calculations.

If you are using Office 2007, I would suggest you install this update. You can download the update here.

MS Office 2003 No Longer Available

Microsoft released Office 2007 in January of this year. They indicated that Office 2003 would be available until June. It's now November and we are finally no longer able to find Office 2003 in the distribution channel. This means that from this point forward Office 2007 is the only version of Office that we are selling.

Although the Office 2007 interface is quite a bit different than previous versions of Office, most users should be able to use it without much difficulty, other than a search for the location of certain functions that might have moved.

Office 2007 file formats have changed as well. The new file format is much better but it does cause compatibly issues with older versions of documents. This will cause problems for employees or outside people that share your documents. However, there is a switch that can be turned on to save files in the older format. This will impede some of the new features of Office 2007 but will insure your documents can be read and updated by all users.

We can provide an overview of the Office 2007 changes for our Clients. We have also been posting Office 2007 tips on our Answers website. This should not be a major issue for most users. We have been using Office 2007 since the beta versions and find it to be a very good upgrade. It's time to move forward!

CCH ProFx Vista Compatibility

CCH has posted this document which describes its roadmap for Vista compatibility for its products. It looks like by the end of 2007 its products should be compatible with Vista and Office 2007. Note that Vista Home versions will not be supported. The document describes several Office 2007 issues that you should be aware of.

I would suggest that accounting firms do not attempt a Vista or Office 2007 migration until after the upcoming tax season. Tax season is not the best time to see if something will work or not!

Office 2007 Versions

Just as there are several versions of Windows Vista, Office 2007 has several versions to choose from, actually 8. Similar to Vista, our Clients really only need to consider a couple of versions. The 8 versions are as follows: (Click on any item for more information)

Basic
Home and Student
Standard
Small Business
Professional
Ultimate
Professional Plus
Enterprise

This document describes what is included in each version. I will present an overview of each of the Office products as this blog series continues. For most of our Clients either Standard or Professional will be the suite of choice.

In addition to these Office versions, there are several Microsoft Office Server products. These server products are intended to help organizations that share Office files: (Click on any item for more information)

Forms Server
Groove Server
Live Communications Server
PerformancePoint Server
Project Portfolio Server
Project Server
SharePoint Server
SharePoint Server For Search

Most of the server based products are for larger organizations although some smaller organizations may find Forms Server, Groove Server, and SharePoint Server useful.

I know this seems like a lot to digest, but it really isn't. You will generally choose one Office suite and for most Clients no Office Server products.

Next, we will start looking into what makes Vista tick. You'll even get a chance to give it a test drive!

What Is Windows Vista?

Over the past week I have had several conversations with Clients regarding some confusion over Windows Vista and Office 2007, so I thought I would try to clear up some of the confusion.

Windows Vista is a computer operating system. It replaces Windows XP. A computer operating system is the brains of the computer. It is software that makes the box of hardware into a computer. It communicates with all of the hardware components to make them do the functions they were designed to do. For instance, it is the operating system that makes characters and graphics appear on your video monitor, saves data and reads data to/from your hard drive, keeps track of the date and time, handles system security, etc, etc, etc. When a programmer writes a program to run on the computer he does not have to worry about how to do these things as they are taken care of by the operating system. For instance, the programmer can just say "save this file" and the operating system does all the dirty work of formatting and writing all those 1s and 0s to the hard drive, CD, DVD, etc.

Office 2007 is a computer application. Office 2003 is an application, Misys is an application, Internet Explorer is an application. Applications are computer programs that accomplish tasks for you. These tasks can be simple or very complex.

The relationship between the operating system and an application is crucial. When a programmer writes an application he/she takes advantage of the operating system's "brains". The application becomes dependent on the methods that the operating system uses to perform technical functions like saving files, etc. When new operating systems are created new functions are included (Vista has lots of new DVD stuff, whereas XP was not aware of DVDs as they were not mainstream when it came out), and existing functions may be changed to take advantage of new technologies or to address security issues.

What does all this mean? Basically, programs are written and are dependent on certain operating systems. Some programs are generic enough to be able to run on several operating systems and some are very dependent on a certain operating system version.

Office 2007 will run in Windows XP and Windows Vista, although it is optimized for Vista in some areas. Office 2003 will run in Windows XP and Windows Vista although, it is more comfortable in XP. Currently Misys runs in Windows XP but not Windows Vista.

You can migrate to Windows Vista and still use Office 2003. (Other office versions will be problematic). You can can install Office 2007 on Windows XP workstations.

Migrating to a new operating system is much more challenging than simply upgrading to a new version of a program. I think brain surgery is more complicated than trying a new diet!

Next, we will look at the different versions of Windows Vista that are available.

It's Time To Think About Windows Vista and Office 2007

At the end of January 2007 Microsoft released Windows Vista, the replacement for Windows XP, and Office 2007, the newest Office Family release. As is always the case, we have been advising Clients that they should not jump out and purchase new releases of software as soon as they become available. In the case of Windows Vista, there are several issues that need to be evaluated before a plan is put into place to upgrade to the new operating system.

However, this does not mean that Clients should not plan on doing the updates at some point, and the time to develop that plan is now. I'm not saying to start buying computers with Windows Vista on them or buying Office 2007. I am saying that you need to start evaluating these two products now so that you will be ready to migrate when the time comes. The issue is that you will no longer be able to purchase Office 2003 after June 30, 2007 and you will not be able to purchase a computer without Windows Vista after January 31, 2008. So its time to get to work on determining what this means to your organization!

We are here to help our Clients with this process. Over the next several weeks I will be writing articles on this Blog that will overview Windows Vista and Office 2007. We will be presenting a couple of seminars in July that are intended to present an overview of these products and yes, we will be demonstrating both products during the seminars. We will also assist our Clients in setting up a test environment at their locations to help them test their applications and look for issues specific to their environment. We have installed and have been using both products in our own office for some time now. This will help us help our Clients with issues that may arise during their implementation of these products.

So let's get started! Check back here regularly to catch the articles or better yet, subscribe to this feed with your RSS reader. If you don't have an RSS reader (one is built into Internet Explorer 7 and Outlook 2007), you can simply enter your email address on the sidebar and click Subscribe to this Blog. When I post new articles an email will be sent to you. Details on the seminars will be posted here and will be emailed to you as they are finalized.