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During customization, the File Location tab will let you change the location where program files are installed and show you the total amount of drive space needed. |
With Office 2007, Microsoft made radical strides in revamping its office productivity suite. Some users hate the changes; others love them. No matter what your opinion may be, you cannot ignore them. (For a primer on some key changes, see the “What’s Different” sidebar.) The good news is that installation is fast and easy, with a few exceptions we have noted here. Furthermore, in December 2007, Microsoft released SP1 (Service Pack 1), which rolls all the updates since the debut of the product into a single release. (For more on Office 2007 SP1, including a link to the download site, visit tinyurl.com/2m9anb.)  A Feast Of Higher-Calorie Offerings
With Office 2007, Microsoft created eight separate suites. However, some are available only as new PC or enterprise-level installations. Microsoft sells five Office 2007 suites on its site (office.microsoft.com). All of them include the core programs Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and all but Home And Student ($109.95 full install; no upgrade discount) offer Outlook. You will probably be installing Home And Student, Standard ($399.95 full install; $239.95 upgrade), or Professional ($499.95 full install; $329.95 upgrade).
In addition to the core offerings, Home And Student comes bundled with One Note, a digital note-taking solution that’s of most use to those with tablet PCs. Standard includes the four core products we have mentioned above; Professional builds on Standard with Access (advanced database software), Accounting Express (basic accounting tools), and Publisher (desktop-publishing).
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Installation Options is the gateway to controlling program feature installation and reducing total install size if needed. |
All the Office 2007 suites require more power and storage capacity than previous Office suites needed. Office 2003 required a 233MHz or faster processor, 128MB of memory, an 800 x 600 resolution display, and 400MB of storage space. The Office 2007 suites you’re most likely to use crave a 500MHz or faster processor, 256MB of memory, a 1,024 x 768 display, and 1.5GB of drive space. (Professional requires 2GB of drive space.) Setup will release some of your drive space after installation if you delete the original download package, but you’ll need it initially. You can install Office 2007 to a different drive than your boot drive, but you will still need more than 400MB of drive space on the boot drive for the installation, no matter where the program files go. We found Setup to be conservative in its estimates; we recommend you have at least 500MB available on the local drive, plus space for program files (more about that in Step 3 later). Ready, Set, Go
Before you install Office 2007, review the “What’s Different?” sidebar. If you have an earlier version of Office currently installed, also take a look at the “One Or Two” sidebar where we discuss the possibility of keeping your old version of Office intact. Office should keep all your settings and files intact during the upgrade, but as a precaution, back up existing Office files. Use the Search utility on the Start menu if you do not know where they are. | 
Unless you have a compelling reason not to do so, enter the Product Key when asked for it to avoid activation problems. |
If you have been using a beta version of Office 2007, remove it first to avoid error messages about incompatible beta software being present. Some users have experienced error messages even without a beta of Office 2007 installed. Office 2007 shares components with many other Microsoft programs and utilities. If Setup finds even a whiff of any Microsoft beta, it may generate a message. If this happens, you can search for the offender with the Add Or Remove Programs tool (called Uninstall A Program in Vista). You can also try Nirsoft’s free utility, MyUninstaller (www.nirsoft.net/utils/myuninst.html).
Finally, if you are installing to a notebook PC, power it with the AC adapter connected to avoid a mid-installation battery failure. If your notebook (or other PC) does not have an optical (CD or DVD) drive, use another PC to copy the contents of the Office 2007 Setup disc to a same-named folder (OFFICE12) on a USB flash drive. To do this, locate the icon for the optical drive in Windows Explorer, right-click it, and select Explore. (Double-clicking the icon will only open the AutoRun utility.) Select all the folders and drag them to the new OFFICE12 folder on your flash drive. After these precautions, you should be good to go. | 
After installation, a visit to Office Online will let you install SP1 and download free goodies. |
Step 1: Log in to an Administrator-level account on your computer. Insert the Office 2007 installation media (optical disc or USB flash drive). If the AutoRun utility does not start (it won’t on your flash drive), click Start and select Computer. Navigate to the installation media. If it’s a CD/DVD, double-click it. If it’s a flash drive, double-click it to open it and then double-click the OFFICE12 folder and double-click Setup. Step 2: At the outset, Setup will ask for your Product Key. While you can run Office 2007 25 times without entering it, we recommend you provide it here. Users have reported (and we replicated) problems activating Office 2007 when they did not provide the Product ID during the initial setup. Enter the key located on the inside of the plastic box that contains the Office 2007 CD. Setup will provide the dashes between character sets. Click Continue. Accept the Microsoft Software License Terms and click Continue again. | 
A progress monitor will show you how your installation is proceeding. Installation takes 20 minutes or less, depending on options you select. |
Step 3: Select Install Now or Upgrade to install Office 2007 to your primary (boot) hard drive, or Customize to make changes to the installation. You will see Install Now if you do not have any previous versions of Office installed; otherwise, you will see Upgrade. Customize lets you select which components to install (the Installation Options tab) and/or whether to keep or remove previous versions of Office components (the Upgrade tab, if present).
You can also select an alternate location for the program files (on the File Location tab, which also shows you how much space is required, both locally and for program files). The User Information tab lets you adjust your username, initials, and company information. If you are drive-space challenged, you should choose to perform a Custom installation, so you can install only the components most important to you. From the Installation Options tab, click a component to see a drop-down menu with installation options for the entire component or click the plus sign (+) to the left of each component to review individual installation options. Don’t skip Office Tools or you will lose important utilities such as the spell checker and thesaurus. When you have finished customizing the installation and double-checking your space requirements, click Install Now to proceed. | 
Once your installation completes, you can visit Office Online with a single click. |
Step 4: Installation is largely automated and it takes about 10 to 20 minutes, depending on your selections. After installation, Office will provide a link for you to visit Office Online. Visiting Office Online is a good idea, as it will allow you to install SP1 (click Downloads) and afford access to freebies. These include Microsoft's Command Reference Guides, which help users of Office 2003 locate features that have moved.
The first time you run Office 2007, Microsoft will prompt you to activate the software. Registration is optional but you must activate within the first 25 uses to retain full functionality. During operation, if you want to maintain Office 2003 compatibility automatically, you can. Open an Office program, click the Office button and select the Options button (each button is named for its program, e.g. Word options are on the Word Options button). The option to change default file formats is under the Save button. 
by Jennifer Farwell
What’s Different?
You’ll come across a host of tweaks that have improved Office 2007 compared to its older counterparts. Some, you may never notice or use. However, there are several major changes with which you should familiarize yourself.
Microsoft completely revised the user interface, adding what it calls a Ribbon to several programs including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This is a tabbed interface where Office aggregates (by type of activity) the major commands. It’s confusing at first. You may have trouble finding less-used commands for quite a while. However, once you become accustomed to it, the Ribbon makes sense. The more commonly used commands are actually easier to find.
Another new option is the Office button, which replaces the File menu. You’ll need to use it to close files if you do not want to exit the Office 2007 program when you only have one file open. (Select the Close command.) This is one of our pet peeves with Office 2007. It forces users to go through an extra, unnecessary step when they close a file and want to open another one.
Most importantly, perhaps, Office 2007 uses an entirely new set of file formats that are based on Open XML (extensible markup language). We won’t get into the technical details, which are intricate and advanced. The important thing to know is that these files consume up to 75% less space than other Office file formats (a good thing). To perform this magic, the format creates a zipped file containing a variety of information about the file and its formatting, plus the raw data that goes into it. Many programs, including earlier versions of Office, cannot read it natively. Office 2003 users can download a free compatibility pack, available at tinyurl.com/ykx57n. |
One Or Two?
Running multiple versions of Office on your system can be problematic. Though Microsoft supports concurrent operation and offers it as an option when you install Office 2007, it does not recommend it, and neither do we. (For more on this, see tinyurl.com/2kjflt.) Weigh your needs against potential difficulties before you run them concurrently. Once you make the choice during installation, you can’t go back without cancelling.
Word can be especially irksome, as it will auto-register itself at every start if other versions of Word are on the PC. This will cause a delay in startup and may prompt Word to ask for installation media. Users also report that Word, Excel, and PowerPoint all have problems with program associations for older Office files. Furthermore, when you are ready to remove Office 2003 from your system, you may have to uninstall both 2007 and 2003 and reinstall Office 2007 from scratch.
If you upgrade, Office will preserve many user settings and preferences. Upgrading may also preserve problems. Fortunately, even if you purchased an upgrade, you can perform a clean installation of Office 2007 without upgrading Office 2003 or running it side by side. To do so, select Customize and opt to remove older Office components. You will lose all prior Office settings and preferences. Note that Office will not let you run two versions of Outlook. It will remove prior versions and update your settings to Outlook 2007.
You can set Office 2003 as the default format for saving globally or individually, and Office 2007 will warn you when it encounters problems converting an Office 2003 file. Thus, you shouldn’t need to keep earlier versions. If you decide to do so, download and install the compatibility pack (see “What’s Different”) or your Office 2003 programs won’t be able to open documents saved in Office 2007 formats. |
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