RE: OFFICE '07 CONFUSING COMPATILITY? Here's Why...

No... it's not a joke. Try every scenario out yourself... but make sure you
apply all of the updates that I did, and that you have the latest
compatibility pack installed with your previous version of Office, because
there have been other compatibility problems resolved with them.

I'm the PM for my company's Office 2007 deployment to approx. 20,000
workstations. We won't have the luxury of updating that many workstations
overnight in addition to converting all of our documents to the new 2007
format overnight. It will probably take us well over a year to get everyone
upgraded, so therefore, compatibility will be CRITICAL during the transition.


Because it is so critical for us, I set out to understand everything I could
about how compatibility works, but I kept getting frustrated. It seemed
every time I thought I fully understood how it worked, it would behave
differently than how I remembered it working the last time I tried it.

So I thoroughly tested it. It took me a good 2 months. But at the end of
the day, I discovered that there were good reasons why I couldn't seem to
LEARN compatibility in Office 2007.... because IT BEHAVES DIFFERENTLY IN
EVERY APPLICATION... EVEN THOUGH YOU MAY BE PERFORMING THE EXACT SAME COMMON
TASK AND USING THE EXACT SAME COMMON FEATURE.

When Microsoft touts that end-users won't need training on the new
interface... they don't mention the ADDITIONAL training required to
understand COMPATIBILITY, NEW FEATURES, REMOVED FEATURES, NEW FILE FORMATS,
NEW SECURITY PROMPTS, ETC...

So, no. It's not a joke.

"shel10" wrote:

This is a joke??? Right???
It's probably the reason that so many businesses are refusing to upgrade to
Vista and the Office 2007 suite.
I wonder when MS will raise its help desk service fee from $35 US to $70 US.
They obviously are planing to get out of the software business.

I normally keep my systems updated to the latest versions of MS software.
This time, I'm going to wait until the Office 2007 products have menus (from
MS), and Vista is on service pack 2.

"funnybroad" wrote:

I was getting so confused and frustrated trying to get my mind wrapped around
how the Office 2007 file formats and features are compatible with previous
Office versions, that I finally bit the bullet and tested it up one side and
down the other. I was relieved to discover that IT WASN'T ME BEING STUPID...
BECAUSE THERE IS A GOOD REASON I was so confused!!!

THE BEHAVIOR OF THE COMPATIBILTY TOOLS (Compatibility Mode, Compatibility
Checker, Feature Refresh, and Compatibility Pack) IS SO DIFFERENT depending
on the Application you're using, that it would be impossible to simply learn
"how to handle compatibility in Office 2007". You have to learn how to
handle compatibility in Word 2007, then re-learn how to handle it in Excel
2007, then re-learn how to handle it in PowerPoint 2007.... even if you're
doing the same exact task, using the same exact features (or no features at
all!)

So, I put this presentation together to help others out there who are trying
to help themselves (and their users) understand it:

http://www.slideshare.net/funnybroad/office-2007-compatibility-mode-confusion

Feel free to re-distribute... but be sure you test the scenarios in your own
environment to be sure you are getting the same results!



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