Office 2007 Beta Technical Refresh – Initial Thoughts

So, obviously I am writing this Blog entry from Word 2007 B2 TR and so far I am quite impressed. Things are just cleaner, smoother looking and acting. I am even going to attempt posting the screenshots directly from Word embedded into the article. That part should be interested. So, let's start out by commenting on the Apps I use the most.

Outlook 2007 B2 TR

Well, let's start off with the problems I had. I downloaded the TR update and installed it on my Windows Vista x86 RC1 client. The upgrade went just fine, but when I tried to launch Outlook it would freeze up on start up every time. After deleting my profiles and trying to re-create with no success, Josh told me to delete the Outlook .ost file(s). This didn't fix me yet most likely due to the other things I had tried (but for most people this does fix the problem) so I had to do a repair. After a repair I was finally able to get Outlook to open. I've talked to many people running both Vista RC1 and XP who have experienced this Outlook problem and 1 person who said he didn't have this problem. So, I'm not sure where the issue lies, but it seems to be a rather prevelant and obviously huge bug that I am surprised made it into the TR build. That being said, so far my experience with TR has been a positive one.

Outlook seems to have a slightly more polished look to it, but was enabled on the blue color scheme by default so I changed it to the black vista theme by going to 'tools', then 'options', then 'mail format' tab, and then 'editor options.' Many thanks to Jeff on how to do this, because I had no clue. While I had been searching for the right option to change the color scheme I came across something I had not noticed before. I don't know if these 2 items were in Outlook 2007 Beta 2 before TR, but I did notice them now. Outlook Mobile Messaging, and Presence information on new emails.

To the left here is a screen shot of where you will find the 'Outlook Mobile Messaging'. Of course I didn't have it configured so I went to the configuration page. Apparently I have to sign up in some fashion so I clicked the blue hyperlink which took me to the below page.

I am not sure if you can read it ok on this or not, but apparently my cellular provider, which is T-Mobile does not yet support this service which I was a bit bummed about, but hey, what can ya do?

If you are interested in learning more about Outlook Mobile Messaging, click the link below;

http://officebeta.iponet.net/en-us/outlook/HA101549971033.aspx

Now to the prescense information. In the below screenshots you can see where you can enable this feature and how it looks in a new email. Personally I do find that this would be a nice feature as I can get a rough idea of what the response time on my email might be, based on the status of the recipient. Also another nice thing I have noticed is that they moved the 'send' button down by the recipient fields which means when I am in the 'insert' tab of the ribbon I don't have to go back to the message tab to be able to send. This was something quite annoying in Beta2 that has been fixed in TR.

See how nice having the send button down below now is?

Thanks for that one Microsoft!

Word 2007 Beta2 TR

Haha my first bug. (Wow would my English teach be mad if she saw me starting a sentence with haha. Sorry, little side note there.) Anyhow, first bug I have noticed in TR is that in Word when you click the 'underline' button it never 'depresses' to let you know it is enabled or not. Anyhow, Word also features a bit more polished look. I've posted some screenshots below showing the blog entry features. So, first you are wondering about the formatting of this blog entry with the screenshots? No, I'm not damaged in the head nor am I a new user to Word. I'm afraid that Word has a lot of work yet to go when it comes to formatting images into a blog entry. (At least I am hoping it's just this bad for blog entries.) I have been very limited at moving and placing images within this document. I have a feeling this blog entry will look horrendous once posted and I would be honestly surprised if the images make it in the publishing process but it will serve as a good example of which I speak. Let's keep our fingers crossed!

Ok, yes this is to the point of infuriating. Half the time when I move one screenshot the other one just completely disappears. And I can't seem to get these screenshots to stay aligned because one disappears every time I move one.

Yeah, frustrating.

Visio 2007 Beta2 TR

Visio is an app that I use all the time so I just kinda threw together a mockup drawing on it. First you'll notice that the 'black theme' didn't exactly translate over well to Visio, at least on the initial template choice screen.

And just for the heck of it, here's a screenshot of Powerpoint.

Final thoughts? Well, to be honest I really love Office 2007 thus far, but after trying to do a blog with embedded screenshots I'm pretty frustrated! So, that piece has a bit of work to go yet. I've just got my fingers crossed that the images I've spent so much time trying to get into the article in a somewhat logical fashion even show up.

Guess we'll find out!

So, what has been your experience with Beta2 TR? We'd all love to hear!

Update!

Ok, so as you can see the images didn't upload in the article.  To be honest I am quite amazed that the formatting turned out as nice as it did without the images uploading.  When I told it to publish the blog it gave me an error for every since image as it tried to upload it, so I had to sit there and hit yes about 12 times.  That was fun.  I've decided to leave the article as it iss to prove the point of the help that Word needs before it can be considered a fully functional blog app.  I really want Word to be and will continue to use it to post my blogs, but I won't use it for images any longer, at least not until the next build.  One nice thing is that they fixed the publishing time/date issue.  That works fantastic now.  So, I'll post all the screenshots at the bottom of the article.

Thanks!