I really hate migrating unless there are real and obvious benefits. And I really hate it when people who tend to come to me for help migrate before I do and all of a sudden a quick fix or some instructions down the phone can't be done. I suspect they then aren't that happy either.

In general I suspect most moves to "new and improved" software swallow up what productivity gains are on offer by a factor of 3 in terms of time taken to learn all the new stuff, reconfigure the product into something that allows you to keep working in enough of the old way while using some new features, and the exasperated searching of the web for someone who has worked out how to make the product do some aspect of what it always did, and you mainly used it for, in its new form. By the time all those hours are wasted you've probably cost yourself or the boss the cost of the software around 2 to 3 times over. Multiply that by the desktops in the office and most accountants would say declining an upgrade is a no brainer. And that's before you get told the of course old computers can't handle the program anyway and need to be upgraded themselves.

I've pretty much stuck to Office 97 on most of my computers, until 2003 came out nearly everything offered was merely an invitation to waste my time and meanwhile basic problems, like getting English Aust to actually stick in dictionary, kept recurring. Though the death of Clippy was a good thing.

And when one uses lots of macros and auto text migrating up was made a real pain, as opposed to simply keeping a backup file of the old normal.dot and moving it between computers all running 97.

Not that microsoft are on their own with all this, Adobe's bloatwear and pointless upgrades are in a class of their own.

So my first question re office 2007, does it have a sound migration wizard that gives me options regarding keeping bits of my past configurations?

Second does it actually now handle graphics and semi-publishing tasks with some stability and simplicity?

I'm not holding my breath on either. And for the record I can add that at least one faculty helpdesk at a major university has only in the last twelve months recommended moving to Office 2003. Office 2007 in 2015 (global warming permitting) seems to be a realistic timeline.

You are right TFlip in regards to the issue when a client/customer migrates to the new version before you have and that would be a prime reason why I am constantly doing the 'early adopter' scenario to hopefully eliminate some of those concerns.

Microsoft have tried to all alleviate some of the heartache of searching the web when looking for the ‘How do I do that in the new version’ with a set of interactive demos for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook using a Flash application to pick the command you would use in Office 2003 and then show you how you perform the same action in 2007. They are quite handy and like most help applications you will find when you want to really start digging deep these can leave you wanting, and you are again searching the web. I must say though at this stage the help feature in Office 2007 and Vista are much better than the predecessors as the help content is constantly updated with new information from the web and so far I have been able to gather all the links for this comment from the help section of Office 2007 and 'Clippy' is nowhere to be found.

Over on the Microsoft TechNet site under the Planning and architecture for the 2007 Office release section there is a fair amount of information including determining the best migration strategy and using the Assessing your environment with the Office Migration Planning Manager. I have not run this application and I am far from a heavy macro user so I might pass that migration issue over to Ananda to comment on how his macro's have moved into the 2007 system. Thus far though I have not had to convert very many of my documents into any of the new MSO2007 file formats and by default I am saving most of the new files I create in the Office 97/2003 format to ensure compatibility if I need to send the document to a 3rd party.

On bloat you could grab yourself Adobe Creative Suite CS3 Master Collection for US$2,499.00 and it only requires 23 GB of your hard drive, that said it is the 'ducks guts' Adobe Suite with everything inside.

I really hate migrating unless there are real and obvious benefits. And I really hate it when people who tend to come to me for help migrate before I do and all of a sudden a quick fix or some instructions down the phone can't be done. I suspect they then aren't that happy either.

As in most real life Policies and Procedures, a changeover imparts some benefit and some issues. One driver for change is often incompatibility with new systems and the rest of the world. Office 97 is now 10 years old - regardless of whether it is a classic (it is), bits of it are less compatible with current systems. I can see that people with Office 2002/XP or 2003 feeling reluctant to move on, but Office 97 (and it's associate NT4) are ancient.

In general I suspect most moves to "new and improved" software swallow up what productivity gains are on offer by a factor of 3 in terms of time taken to learn all the new stuff

I empathise with that. If you compare Office 97 and Office 2003, there are some areas where things have gone worse like Word Mailmerge, but there are substantial places where things have gone better (like Excel 2003's colour coded trace of precedents in formulae and richer object model for macros). However, if reviewers and evaluators spend less than 10 minutes taking the two for a drive to compare, they don't notice the improvements and therefore many Office 97 diehards say that Office 2000, 2002, 2003 are weak and pale upgrades. On the other hand, when a major menu system upgrade happens in Office 2007, we humans then rise in rebellion because it is too much of a change in UI.

I've pretty much stuck to Office 97 on most of my computers, until 2003 came out nearly everything offered was merely an invitation to waste my time and meanwhile basic problems, like getting English Aust to actually stick in dictionary, kept recurring. Though the death of Clippy was a good thing.

It is quite difficult for deployment teams, service desk teams to deploy 100% adjusted and optimised migrations because they simply are not the power users or even regular users. They don't notice that the Language is wrong and such. Or they get it right for one bench test but the deployment mechanisms / deployed image fails to capture all the tweaks.

And when one uses lots of macros and auto text migrating up was made a real pain, as opposed to simply keeping a backup file of the old normal.dot and moving it between computers all running 97.

In general, Word auto text and word macros from 97 through to 2003 have not been drastically different - particularly the ones that end users write. However, specialist macros written by third party houses - they wring the Word Object Model and Windows API to the max since they are written by real serious pros, and of course, this level of compatibility or lack of causes grief.

So my first question re office 2007, does it have a sound migration wizard that gives me options regarding keeping bits of my past configurations?

Whilst we speak of Office as one monolithic beast, even now, in 2007, it is not. Each Office app has different Product Managers, different programming teams - Office is a suite for marketing and integration purposes, not a monolith. There is and cannot be "one" migration wizard - each team will handle their own jobs - which particular app are you referring to?

Second does it actually now handle graphics and semi-publishing tasks with some stability and simplicity?

Again, which particular app are you referring to? There are common features when each app leverages off the same library for certain tasks and there are very different approaches each app takes. Word 2007 has markedly made "Dummies" typing and layout much simpler, to the angst of diehard Word power users who have subconciously memorised all the incantations they have carried out over the years. Powerpoint and Access used to store graphics in multiple meta formats leading to bloat - the later versions of these apps now store graphics as more compressed formats thus making smaller files and faster processing. In particular, with the new .docx Word file format, there is no "additional graphics format" - you can literally see the .jpg in the plumbing of the file.

I'm not holding my breath on either. And for the record I can add that at least one faculty helpdesk at a major university has only in the last twelve months recommended moving to Office 2003. Office 2007 in 2015 (global warming permitting) seems to be a realistic timeline.

Universities and teaching institutions have to be at the forefront of having new Office versions? Why? Because Microsoft sells Academic Office Pro for less than $200 and early this year sold Office Ultimate for $75. That means they have seeded your students with these new versions. Unless you mandate that students *must* submit assignments using Office 97 document file format and send gestapo to each individual house to set their settings on every PC, you will get a trickle followed by a flood of assignments in Office 2007 Word and Excel and Powerpoint files. The Compatibility Pack sort of bandaids Office 2003 to read those assignments but I would expect not Office 97

thanks Stephen and anandasim for your responses. Interesting, useful and I'm sure not just to me. I guess most of my issues have to do with Word since that and some Excel are my main tools of use.

Thus a first question I might ask in migrating from Word 2003 would be - can I just load word 2007 over the top and does it then automatically pick up my existing auto text, my macros, and a large chunk of my "normal" style sheet and other settings. Do I keep or have to redo, font size, para spacing, page margins, preferred dictionary, updated dictionary and so on? Where the upgrade can't keep my settings does it let me know and offer me options? If it doesn't this is already one reason to postpone, and will be a nightmare for IT support when the non tech users start staring at their new screens. And this even before they reach for the menus. Having to be walked through such changes will be a lesson in using the new menus but with much aggravation and wasted time.

May I also say well done and thanks for the bleeding edge thread for Office 2007, bound to be a very worthwhile offering for some time to come.

Re anandasim's point about the uni protocols, I guess you are right if there are real backward compatibility issues with different versions of Office. (though submit in pdf is my preference) My point related to (a) what software was standard on the student computer lab desktops (b) what the staff are using.

Re office 97 I'm more or less resigned and not too unhappy to now have be working more often than not with 2003, it's superior capacity to interact with web documents is one example of a definite productivity multiplier. And it's true that in education and research, as in many other fields, we do have to keep riding the waves of the future. However sometimes its choppy, sloppy, really cold and no fun at all!