Office applications Toolkit

Word 2007 review

7.8

Editors' Rating

Setup & interface		8.0
Service & support		7.0
Features		8.0

Elsa Wenzel CNET

Published: 07 Feb 2007

Service and support

Boxed editions of Microsoft Office 2007 include a decent 174-page Getting Started guide. During the first 90 days, you can contact technical support for free, and help at any time with any security-related or virus problems also costs nothing. Beyond that, paid support costs a painfully high £40 (ex. VAT) per telephone or email incident. Luckily, Microsoft's online help is excellent, although we're displeased that Microsoft and other software makers are increasingly promoting do-it-yourself assistance. We especially like the Command Reference Guide for Word, which walks you through where commands have moved since Office 2003. You can also pose questions to the large community of Microsoft Office users via free support forums and chats. The Microsoft Office Diagnostics tool, included with the Office 2007 suites, is also designed to detect and repair problems if something goes haywire.

Conclusion

Is Word 2007 worth the upgrade? If you primarily work with plain text and don't need to smarten up reports and newsletters and the like, then it might not be right for you. For our purposes as editors, for instance, Word 2007 doesn't introduce must-have goodies, although commenting commands are within easier reach. At the same time, Word 2007 handily presents options for footnotes and citations under its References tab, which researchers should appreciate. Mail-merge functions are also easier to reach. Bloggers might use Word's posting tools in a pinch, but we found Word 2007's rebuilt HTML to be clunky still. Above all, Microsoft's new word processor is most upgrade-worthy if you want to play with pictures, charts and diagrams in addition to text.

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