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

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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:

  http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/FX101635841033.aspx

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

  http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/FX101674041033.aspx

Note: Before installing Office 2007, uninstall older versions of Office. For instructions, see ARCHIVED: Before installing Microsoft Office on my Windows computer, should I uninstall previous versions?

Warning: The file format used by Office 2007 documents is incompatible with older versions of Office, including Office 2003. For ways to open Office 2007 documents without installing Office 2007, see ARCHIVED: If I don't have Office 2007, how can I open Office 2007 documents? 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 ARCHIVED: Ribbon and the ARCHIVED: 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 ARCHIVED: 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:

  Required for all Required in some situations
CPU 500MHz CPU minimum
1.4GHz processor recommended for some features
RAM 256MB RAM minimum
512MB recommended for certain functions in Outlook
1GB required to use Instant Search in Outlook or the contextual spell checker in Word
Hard drive space
2GB free hard drive space for installation; final amount used depends on which features are installed
 
Media drive CD or DVD drive  
Monitor
Monitor capable of 1024x768 resolution
 
Operating system
Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or later
Some features require Windows XP Tablet PC Edition.

Certain features, such as OneNote 2007's print driver, Groove server folder synchronization, or Office Clean-up wizard, are not available on 64-bit versions of Windows.

Browser
Internet Explorer 6.0 or later, 32-bit browser only
 
Other hardware  
Microphone and audio output device required for speech recognition functions

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Last modified on 2018-01-18 15:41:32.