Five reasons not to upgrade to Office 2007

Angus Kidman
Monday, 04 December 2006 06:14

Your IT - Home IT

Whatever the reason, though, the end result is that one of the major selling points for previous versions of Office -- a consistent interface across every application -- has disappeared. If this is in fact important to you, Office 2007 is a poor choice.

Reason 3: You frequently exchange files with users outside your organisation. Office 2007 boasts a new, XML-based file format. This does in fact have several benefits -- files are smaller, less likely to get corrupted and the file format is more easily exploited by other applications. If everyone in your company is using it -- or if you're a one-person band and don't share files at all -- then it's a useful choice.

However, if you are feeling "collaborative" (to use an MS buzzword) and want to actually mail those files to other people, then it's a right pain. Assuming your correspondents don't have Office 2007 (and most of them won't), you'll either have to do a 'Save As' into the old format every time you send a file, or convince them to install a converter (and pray they're running a version where that's an option). Frankly, who needs the hassle?

Reason 4: You use macros and other customisation features extensively. Microsoft has always boasted about the fact that there's an entire community of Office developers out there building custom applications on top of Word, Excel and the like. It generally makes less noise about the fact that every new version of Office renders these inoperable until they're recoded to fit the new interface and file formats. With ribbons sprinkled everywhere and a totally new approach to files, there's no point even contemplating shifting unless your developer has already made the migration, or you have a lot of time on your hands.

Reason 5: It's still essentially a version 0 application. While Microsoft boasts that the number of beta testers for Office 2007 far exceeds any previous versions, it still remains a product that's only just come out of beta. Yes, it's selfish to let other people discover all the flaws, but why risk your business (or even just your home PC) until there's been a patch or two?