ARCHIVED: What is Microsoft Office 2007, and what are the system requirements?

On this page:

• Introduction
• Differences from older Office suites
• Requirements

Introduction

Microsoft Office 2007 is the latest version of the Microsoft productivity suite; its core components include:

• Microsoft Word: Word processor
• Microsoft Excel: Spreadsheet program
• Microsoft Access: Database program
• Microsoft Outlook: Email client with calendar and contact management
• Microsoft PowerPoint: Presentation program

The Microsoft Office suite is available in multiple versions. For information about the programs included in each version, see:

Office Enterprise 2007 is available to Indiana University students, faculty, and staff through IUware. For more information about this version, see:

Note: Before installing Office 2007, uninstall older versions of Office. For instructions, see Before I install Microsoft Office 2000, XP, 2003, or 2007, should I uninstall previous versions?

Warning: The default file format for Office 2007 is incompatible with older versions of Office, including Office 2003. Use the "Save As" option to save in the older format. Other compatibility issues may also exist. The Student Technology Centers (STCs) at Indiana University Bloomington and IUPUI are now running Office 2007.

Differences from older Office suites

Office 2007 differs markedly from older Office suites, as follows:

• User interface change: The old menus and toolbars (e.g., File, Edit, View) have been replaced with the Ribbon and the Office Button. The new interface segregates file and authoring functions, groups related commands, and provides context-sensitive sets of controls. For more about these new features, see For Office 2007, what are some new interface features?
  
  
• New application: Groove, a collaboration and communications network application, has been added to Office. In Office 2007, Groove is a client that, in conjunction with a Groove server, allows users to participate in a virtual office. You can read more about Groove on Microsoft's web site: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/groove/default.aspx
• Retired application: FrontPage has been retired. FrontPage has not been part of the Office versions distributed at IU for some time.

Requirements

Requirements vary depending on the specific version. For Office Enterprise 2007, the requirements are as follows:

Also see:

• In Office 2007, what is XPS?
• Locations of commonly used Word 2003 menu commands in Word 2007
• What are the new file extensions in Office 2007?
• For Office 2007, what are some new interface features?
• Why isn't FrontPage included in Office 2007?