Word 2007 review

Elsa Wenzel CNET

Published: 07 Feb 2007

Features

Aside from the interface, the other radical change in Word 2007 is its new file type. For the first time in a decade, Microsoft is foisting a new file format upon users, and old Word DOC files make way for the Word 2007's new DOCX format. Microsoft has taken steps to ease this transition, but we anticipate that it will not be smooth for many users.

What happens when you're sharing work with people who use an older version of Word? Word 2003 and 2000 are supposed to detect when you first try to open a DOCX file, and then prompt you to download and install an Office 2007 Compatibility Pack. After you've done this, the older Word should convert your Word 2007 files and remove incompatible features. When you reopen that same DOCX file again in Word 2007, the file's original elements are supposed to stay intact. On the other hand, if you open an older DOC file within Word 2007, it will also run in Compatibility Mode, shutting off access to some of the newer program features, which explains why two documents within Word 2007 may display different formatting options.

Among the small tweaks in Word 2007 that make formatting easier, rollover style galleries let you preview the changes. However, the constant shape-shifting of the galleries can be distracting. And some options, such as for adjusting margins, use an older-style dialogue box rather than the live preview menus.

Still, it takes just a couple of clicks to insert a JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG or another image type. Click the graphic, and the Picture Tools Format tab lets you tweak the brightness, colour mode and contrast of a picture. You can also rotate it, crop it, skew its angle, add 3D effects and shadows to its borders, and convert it to all manner of shapes, such as a thought bubble, an arrow or a star. Options for positioning an image and wrapping text around it are also prominent, which should be helpful for creating professional-looking business documents, as well as casual party invitations. You don't get nearly the amount of control offered by Microsoft Publisher, QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign, but Word 2007 may do the trick for very basic desktop-publishing needs.

For those who don't need all the formatting choices, we're glad that Word 2007 doesn't apply a complex style to our text by default. In Word 2003, we'd have to highlight all the text and then Clear Formatting to remove unwanted indentations and bold letters. In Word 2007, Calibri — a crisp, default font — replaces the standard Times New Roman from Word 2003. You can choose from galleries of text styles, such as Emphasis, Strong or Book Title, and easily create your own styles and set them as a default.

Although Corel WordPerfect has traditionally offered better features for managing longer documents, Microsoft Word 2007 has improved a bit in this regard. For those working on a dissertation or book report, the References tab lets you manage citations and bibliographies in styles from APA to Turabian. Just click Next Footnote, and the cursor takes you there. However, the Table of Contents feature still isn't easy to work out.

Editors who collaborate on documents with others can make use of the Review tab. The new Compare pull-down menu lets you look at two versions of the same document side by side, as well as merge changes from several authors and editors into one file. Administrative assistants and those charged with mass-mailing tasks should find those features much easier to access than in Word 2003. Bloggers can now compose and post entries to their Web sites without leaving Word.

If you deal with sensitive information — in a private diary entry, a CV or a company financial statement, for example — Word 2007 allows more control over buried data, such as the original author's name or your supervisor's cursing comments. Office 2007's Prepare options step you through inspecting that metadata, as well as adding a digital signature and encrypting a file. You'll also find some of these options under the Review tab's Protect button. However, if you need to black out text, you'll have to turn to Adobe Acrobat 8 to make secure redactions (simply highlighting the font in black within Word won't do it).

As integration has improved throughout Office 2007, you can click Send from the Office logo menu to attach a Word document to an email message through Outlook's composition window. A message recipient using Outlook 2007 can preview that Word document within the email message pane. And if you paste an Excel 2007 chart into a Word 2007 file, just right-click the chart and select Edit Data to launch Excel in split-pane view. When you change the source data within Excel, the chart adjusts in Word.

Unfortunately, Microsoft isn't providing an option for storing or editing Word files online to most users who buy below the $679 (£345) Ultimate edition of Office, and there's no browser-based version of Word. Need to collaborate on a file with specific people or take work on the road? At this time, you may have to e-mail those documents. Alternately, you could upload a Word file into one of the many free, Web-based word processors served up by other companies, including Zoho Writer, which offers a free upload add-in for Word 2007.

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