Under the Hood of Office 12

An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet has posted an FAQ on Office 12, plus a quick preview of Office 12 pre-Beta 1. From the review: Microsoft Office 12.0 pre-Beta 1 drastically revamps the interface layouts of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access. More than a year before the final product will hit the shelves, a pre-beta version of Microsoft Office 12.0 is revealing radical interface changes and user paradigm shifts that recall the overly ambitious Microsoft Office 97 update of the past."

Re:Clippy?

[Chess_the_cat]

If you fire up an Office app you may be surprised to find that the name of the Office Assistant in question is actually Clippit. Not Clippy.

Re:Where is office 11 ?

[jagilbertvt]

Office XP == Office 10
Office 2003 == Office 11

Screenshots

[neosake]

Definitely, check out these screenshots, I mean I haven't tried it but this ribbon thingy doesn't strike me as intuitive as the menu paradigm we're used to.

Microsoft's Screenshot [microsoft.com]
Zdnet series of screenshots [zdnet.co.uk]

Plus it takes loads of screen real-estate.

Re:Awesome new feature!!

[Manip]

I know you're joking but I've seen this feature and its nothing to be turning your nose at. You have a drop down list (with pictures of sized letters, not sizes) and as you move your mouse over them the text in the document (or selected) resized allowing you to find what you want without clicking the size box more than once.

It is one of those That is *so* obvious features that ends up in every product because it is just so *DUHHH* after someone popularises the concept. :-)

Re:Why exactly is it called Office 12?

[stud9920]

Office 4.3 = Word 6, excel 5.0 Access 3? = Powerpoint 4? Office 7.0 = Word 7.0 = Excel 7.0 = Access 7.0 = Powerpoint 7.0 == leveling to the version number of the highest, flagship product

Re:Hey dude,

[michaelyery]

actually, office 98 and 2004 are for mac. 98 is about the same as office 97 for windows, and office 2004 is the equal to office 2003.

Re:I want a copy!

[superub3r]

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/s ep05/09-13OfficeUI.mspx [microsoft.com] Click the thumbnails on the right.

Re:I want a copy!

[hepwori]

Where did you see the screenshots?

There are some here [xbetas.com]

Re:Hey dude,

[Maserati]

Those are available, amongst other places, from Apple's online store. Well, 2004 is - 98 is looooong since dead and would only run in Classic mode anyway. 2004 is a pretty nice office suite.

Office 98 = Office 97 for Mac OS 9
Office 2004 = Office XP for Mac OS X

the comparisons are in feature sets and document formats, I don't believe there's much code in common.

Re:Competition driving innovation

[utnow]

I installed OOo a few days ago for the express purpose of never having to deal with office again. I REALLY REALLY wanted it to be good. Sadly, I uninstalled it less than 5 minutes later. It's come a long way, but side-by-side with Office... well you get what you pay for.

And to head all of the jokes about bugs that I'm paying for, I'm saying that Office is better.

Office 97 - no license key

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Perhaps I should clarify - my copy of Office 97 is from an old purple-and-black MSDN developers CD I picked out the trash at work. The print on the CD says "for 60 days of evaluation" but the code neither asks for a license code nor expires after 60 days, so that CD (and some of its backup copies) remains valuable to me.

Re:Competition driving innovation

[mspohr]

I really think that most Excel "power users" should be looking for a better tool. The spreadsheet is a poor tool for large numbers of rows and complex functions. It's impossible to audit and figure out what it is actually doing. I think large spreadsheets are dangerous tools.

I know it's easier to use a tool that you already know than to learn a new tool but it's time for spreadsheet users to grow up. You really need a relational database.

Re:Competition driving innovation

[fupeg]

Well then by that standard, Chris Capossela, one of Microsoft's VPs, would say that MS Office is not worth trying anymore:

"When we asked people what would you like us to do in the next version of Office, nine times out of 10 people have named something that is already in the product"

So it sounds like 90% of Office users haven't been able to find how to do something even after years of using MS Office. Maybe they should all wipe MS Office off their computers and maybe MS Office is not nearly as good as you'd like to think.

Re:Competition driving innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

This is fixed in Excel 12. The new row limit is 2^64, and I'm not sure how many columns but its much larger than before. Then there's Excel Server which will also run on Windows Server Cluster edition at some point in the future.