Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 3

Introduction

Microsoft Office 2007 leads the pack in integrated business productivity software. Office 2007 Service Pack 3 includes the full version of the software, so you can use this download for either a new or an exiting installation of MS Office 2007. In either case, installation resolves a variety of issues with previous editions of Office, still the most popular business production software worldwide.

Service Pack 3 repairs certain performance, stability, and security problems from the first release through Service Pack 2. It includes all the updates, cumulative updates, and hotfixes released through September 2011.

Microsoft has also made several new tools available in Word 2007 including the MLA 7th Edition, APA 6th Edition, and Harvard Anglia, among others. Service Pack 3 also fixes certain problems with the Outlook Calendar and the French thesaurus, as well as, general encryption issues.

Service Pack 3 upgrades all versions of MS Office 2007 including Basic, Standard, Student, Professional, Professional Plus, Small Business Edition, Ultimate, and Enterprise. This upgrade applies to both retail and volume editions.

Service Pack 3 completes the overhaul of the user interface—originally referred to as ‘the ribbon—presented by Microsoft at MIX 2008. The ribbon enhances user productivity by consolidating the toolbars and drop down menus of previous editions in one place. Unfortunately, that also means that it uses up real estate on the screen, a disadvantage for small monitors.

System Requirements

The Office 2007 Basic requires 256MB of memory; however, the Outlook Instant Search feature requires 512MB. Using the grammar and contextual spelling component in Word raises that bar to 1GB. The OneNote Audio Search feature also requires 1 GB of memory.

Office 2007 requires a 1GHz or faster processor, 1.5GB of free hard disk space and a display resolution of 1024-by-768 pixels or higher. Service Pack 3 runs with Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, and with later versions of Windows.

Use your operating system’s built-in tool to find out how much memory your system has before installing.

What’s Included

Office 2007 Enterprise includes MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, Access, InfoPath, Communicator, Groove, OneNote, the Office Customization Tool, and the Visio Viewer.

Installation Issues

Office 2007 automatically overwrites all earlier installations of Outlook. However, the other parts of Office 2007 installation permit continued use of previous editions of MS Office. Some caveats apply. In particular, before installing, disable Terminal Services to avoid conflicts. In addition, the latest edition must be the last one installed. That is, to keep access to Office 2000 when upgrading to Office 2007, install Office 2000 first. The same applies to all previous editions of Office.

Also, if you uninstall one of the installed versions of Office, it will be necessary to reinstall the remaining versions of Office to avoid conflicts.

In addition, OLE objects created in one version may not work properly when you share files with users who do not use Office 2007. Also, because it automatically registers itself on opening, keeping multiple versions of Word makes Word 2007 opens slowly.

Microsoft makes detailed installation guidelines available on their website.

Pros

• Leading global productivity software
• High compatibility strengthens collaborative work environments
• Integrated project, database, and presentation tools
• VBA extensibility seamlessly incorporates programming power
• Improved security
• Eases automation
• Password protection and encryption
• Multi-language support
• Enhanced web queries and HTML editing
• Advanced object linking and embedding (OLE) functionality
• Permits complex/customized installations
• Free

Cons

• Installation needs planning to avoid conflicts
• Installation may break legacy tools
• New file structures incompatible with earlier versions
• User's computer requires Office 2007 to view Office 2007 embedded objects