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DPChallenge Forums >> Tips, Tricks, and Q&A >> Microsoft Ultimate Office 2007 - $59.95
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 11/17/2007 12:29:10 AM · #1
//www.microsoft.com/education/ultimatesteal.mspx

One of the faculty at my college alerted me to this deal this week and I thought I would pass it along. It's a valid offer from Microsoft for students and a great bargain considering the normal price for this suite is $679.


11/17/2007 05:31:47 AM · #2
Intersting rebate, albeit U.S. only.
I had a test version that shipped with Vista. I disliked the new Office even more than I dislike Vista. I'm back on Office 2003.
 11/17/2007 05:46:48 AM · #3
It is also avaliable for uk, australia, canada, italy and spain

edit (and france)

Message edited by author 2007-11-17 05:47:12.
 11/17/2007 07:48:45 AM · #4
Originally posted by gloda:
I disliked the new Office even more than I dislike Vista. I'm back on Office 2003.

Yup, same as me. I couldn't understand why there was any need to change the interface in something like Excel. Left me poking around for ages trying to figure out where the old menu options were.

And filling up even more screen space with ribbon bars and giant icons makes no sense.
 11/17/2007 08:05:44 AM · #5
Originally posted by jhonan:
Originally posted by gloda:
I disliked the new Office even more than I dislike Vista. I'm back on Office 2003.

Yup, same as me. I couldn't understand why there was any need to change the interface in something like Excel. Left me poking around for ages trying to figure out where the old menu options were.

And filling up even more screen space with ribbon bars and giant icons makes no sense.


I'll third the motion. Simply the ugliest user interface I've ever seen. I work at a school at a major university. We thought about rolling out to our faculty and staff...for about 5 minutes. There would be a mutiny and we would spend all of out time trying to retrain them. Simply awful.

Otherwise, $60 is a pretty good deal. We have Office 2007 Enterprise available to students, faculty & staff for $80.
 11/17/2007 08:38:16 AM · #6
A fourth post railing against the new user interface. It's awful. It takes up a *ton* of screen real estate while providing little or no improvement in the interface itself. The best interface is one that the user does not even perceive as being there, and facilitates rapid, intuitive work. The new interface does not move forward in that regard, it moves backward.
 11/17/2007 08:50:55 AM · #7
If you're not a student, hate the new Office interface, would rather not pay even $60, or are just looking for a good office suite with a relatively familiar interface, OpenOffice is free and quite functional. Even if you're not sure it'll meet your needs, it costs you nothing to try it.

~Terry

Message edited by author 2007-11-17 08:51:32.
 11/17/2007 09:35:56 AM · #8
Good point Terry, that alternative sometimes gets drowned by the confusing choice of MS Office suites (Ultimate, Enterprise, Home, Student,...)

OT: Does anybody know how I can permanently get rid of the Acrobat Writer Toolbar? It reappears everytime I start Word.
 11/17/2007 10:22:26 AM · #9
uninstall MS Office ;}

Originally posted by gloda:
OT: Does anybody know how I can permanently get rid of the Acrobat Writer Toolbar? It reappears everytime I start Word.

 11/17/2007 10:40:33 AM · #10
I guess that's what you get for going OT.
 11/17/2007 10:42:27 AM · #11
Originally posted by gloda:
Good point Terry, that alternative sometimes gets drowned by the confusing choice of MS Office suites (Ultimate, Enterprise, Home, Student,...)

OT: Does anybody know how I can permanently get rid of the Acrobat Writer Toolbar? It reappears everytime I start Word.


From earlier post you are on Off2003?

(I'm on 2007 so going from memory here)
In Word:
Help > About > There is a button for Add-in manager (can't remember what it is called) Adode should be there...uncheck it.

Message edited by author 2007-11-17 10:42:58.
 11/17/2007 10:46:00 AM · #12
Originally posted by gloda:
OT: Does anybody know how I can permanently get rid of the Acrobat Writer Toolbar? It reappears everytime I start Word.

May also show in 'Control Panel/Add or Remove Programs' ???
 11/17/2007 11:11:38 AM · #13
The trouble is that I don't want to completely disable it. I still want to create PDFs from time to time, but I do so using the Print dialogue.
Tools->Templates and Add-ins doesn't even list it, nor does the Organizer from there.
View->Toolbars->Costumize->Toolbars allows me to uncheck or even delete the Acrobat toolbars, but they reappear next time I start Word.
Help-> doesn't get me anywhere.
The Adobe menues don't offer any useful options.
 11/17/2007 11:22:44 AM · #14
K the Wifey has 2003 on an old Laptop here.

Help > About > Disabled Items...

You should see PDFMaker in there, disable it. Enable it when you want to make PDFs.

Ed: My users at work somehow inadvertantly do this all the time...

Message edited by author 2007-11-17 11:24:39.
 11/17/2007 11:30:46 AM · #15
Originally posted by ClubJuggle:
If you're not a student, hate the new Office interface, would rather not pay even $60, or are just looking for a good office suite with a relatively familiar interface, OpenOffice is free and quite functional. Even if you're not sure it'll meet your needs, it costs you nothing to try it.

~Terry


I was using OpenOffice but ran into a serious compatibility problem with it surrounding the documents I'm using for school. It looks compatible, but it isn't compatible with MS Office in a lot of form features. Unfortunately I had to switch back to MS Office...
 11/17/2007 12:03:56 PM · #16
I use MS office 2003 at work, where they provide it. I've gone to using OpenOffice at home, though. As JMSetlzer mentioned, I have heard of occasional compatibility quirks between OpenOffice and some features of MS Office, but for most folks it works just fine. It's worth trying for a while before plunking down a lot more cash.

Message edited by author 2007-11-17 12:05:05.
 11/17/2007 12:32:15 PM · #17
I went to Office 2003 at work and Excel and Word are ok. I hated Outlook. I couldn't configure it to look the way I am use to and want to keep. So I re-installed Office 2000 and still use Outlook 2000. I then installed Office 2007... mainly for the reason that Excel 2007 can now take a lot more rows and columns of data... A LOT more. There are times I'm working with hundreds of thousands or more rows of call records and being able to put a whole month or more into one spreadsheet is great. Using their interface to do anything I'm use to doing with that data has driven me to the brink of un-installing it a number of times. Simple things like text to columns, subtotals, view visible only, etc., are a pain to find. And I haven't been able to get everything I use the most on the task bar, which is irratating. I'm starting to learn where everything is that I use the most of, but there are times when I need to do something quickly and I'll cut and paste it back into Excel 2000, do what I need to do and bring it back to Excel 2007.

There is a warning to anyone that uses Office 2000 still and upgrades to the new versions of Adobe Acrobat. There are some in-compatabilites that when you install the new Adobe, it over writes some files that causes Outlook to have problems and not work right. From all my research and troubleshooting, the only way I found to fix it was to upgrade the people to Office 2003 or Office 2007. I think Microsoft and Adobe are becoming what Internet Explorer and Netscape (Mozilla) have been to each other. It's going to be a constant battle every time one or the other updates their software.

Mike

Message edited by author 2007-11-17 12:33:25.
 11/17/2007 12:35:38 PM · #18
awpollard, thanks for the suggestion, but no, Adobe PDF doesn't show up in that list either.
 11/17/2007 03:47:20 PM · #19
Originally posted by MikeJ:
I then installed Office 2007... mainly for the reason that Excel 2007 can now take a lot more rows and columns of data... A LOT more. There are times I'm working with hundreds of thousands or more rows of call records and being able to put a whole month or more into one spreadsheet is great.

Sounds like the perfect candidate for an Access database. :)
 11/17/2007 09:38:06 PM · #20
I run 4 SQL 2000 database servers so don't need access. We pull the call records out of the SQL databases to do different type analysis and to break down the information to send to clients. With hundreds of clients making thousands of calls into us, we need to be able to break the information down into different informational areas. Access would work (I've created ad-hoc ODBC connections for some of the people at work) but not very often. We use .net and other programs to do a lot of database interfacing but it still ends up in Excel at some point. Most of the time, the workers that need the data can pull it out themselves, but sometimes they need something a bit deeper and more extensive and I can pull it out through SQL quries a lot faster and easier than anyone else can do through ODBC connections... and it's a lot less impact on our databases, makes me lots of brownie points and justifes all the big bucks I'm going to be paid one of these days. :D

Mike

Message edited by author 2007-11-17 21:38:24.
 11/17/2007 10:18:24 PM · #21
I've been actively using the 2003 Office interface for years now and the changes that Microsoft made with Windows(R) Vista and Office 2007 are just horrendous. The really sad part of the story is that we'll "have" to accept it. Let's face it, it's Microsoft's way or the highway with PCs. It sucks, but them's the facts. I don't like it at all, but I figure I'm gonna have to get used to it. I'll put it off as long as possible, but I'm sure that in the end, I'll succumb to Microsoft's pressures and learn the new interface(s).

Message edited by author 2007-11-17 22:19:09.
 11/17/2007 11:21:49 PM · #22
Oops, I love both Vista and the new Office 2007 interface. :) I think the new Office is way easier to use. The ribbon took a bit of time getting used to (about a day), but after I figured it out, I really enjoyed using it. I think it's much better.

I guess I'll just go hang my head in shame. :)
 11/18/2007 12:36:52 AM · #23
Originally posted by Louis:
Oops, I love both Vista and the new Office 2007 interface. :) I think the new Office is way easier to use. The ribbon took a bit of time getting used to (about a day), but after I figured it out, I really enjoyed using it. I think it's much better.

I guess I'll just go hang my head in shame. :)


No need... both are cool and more productive than past efforts.

11/18/2007 02:09:22 AM · #24
Originally posted by kirbic:
A fourth post railing against the new user interface. It's awful. It takes up a *ton* of screen real estate while providing little or no improvement in the interface itself. The best interface is one that the user does not even perceive as being there, and facilitates rapid, intuitive work. The new interface does not move forward in that regard, it moves backward.


When speed is an issue to a user, they generally use keyboard shortcuts instead of heading for the mouse. After installing 2007 tonight and poking around in it quite a bit, it seems that all the serious keyboard shortcuts are still intact. So, when 'rapid and intuitive' is an issue, the functionality is still as 'was'...
 11/18/2007 02:20:15 AM · #25
Originally posted by ClubJuggle:
If you're not a student, hate the new Office interface, would rather not pay even $60, or are just looking for a good office suite with a relatively familiar interface, OpenOffice is free and quite functional. Even if you're not sure it'll meet your needs, it costs you nothing to try it.

~Terry


Yup... and fully compatible with all Office formats. It's truly a great product. The only thing it's really missing is an annoying animated paper clip.
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