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Should you upgrade to Office 2007?

I love having the latest gadgets, gizmos and like to run beta software.  However, I’ve only just upgraded to Office 2007; some 20+ months after the launch – most unlike me.

So why did I wait so long?  Well, I reckon that even as a power user of Office applications I only use about 50-60% of the functionality (at a push).  My theory was that there is no point in upgrading to a new version, with more functionality, as this will just mean that I use an even smaller percentage of the available features and depress me even more. 

Mind you the upgrade from Office XP to Office 2003 was worth it just to get rid of that annoying paperclip that tapped on the screen to ask if you wanted help…

I’m a self taught user of Office, having used most of the earlier versions and prior to that Lotus 1-2-3 and Word Star etc. So when we rolled out Office 2007 across the company I decided that I didn’t need the associated training programme that we had created – not me, I’m a power user!

How wrong could I be…I was recently helping someone with a document that they were creating in Word 2007 and noticed that they were using features that I didn’t know existed, and doing things more efficiently than I would do them.   So how do you think I felt when I asked them about these new features only to be told “you could do this in the previous version of Word!”.  And yes, I hadn’t taken the training on the previous version either!

So, should you upgrade to Office 2007?  Yes, if you want to take advantage of the new features and productivity gains that it can offer.  No, if you are just going to use exactly the same features that you use in your current version. 

 

Me, well I’ve just booked myself onto Xpertise’s “Migrating to Microsoft Office 2007” course http://www.xpertise.co.uk/MSMMO07 and plan to get my functionality usage up to 75-80%, my productivity increased and my embarrassment factor lowered…