The new 2007 version of Microsoft Office has been available to corporate clients since November 2006, but retail customers have had to wait until the end of January 2007.

As ever, it is available in a variety of configurations and prices, from the Student/Home edition at £90, comprising Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote to the Ultimate edition at £487.

The version supplied for review, Professional, includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook with Business Contact Manager and Publisher. The best price we could find was £357 for the full version or £235 for an upgrade. To qualify for an upgrade you need any Office 2000 (or later) suite or program, or Works 6.0 or later.

So, what’s new? The two big changes are in the file formats and the interface. The proprietary binary file formats – Doc, Xls and Ppt – have been supplanted by Office Open XML (OOXML), with the DocX, XlsX and PptX extensions. These combine Zip technology to reduce file size (if you rename a DocX extension to Zip, you can see that the document consists of several files) and XML.

The latter isn’t new to Office – version 2000 introduced XML-based Smart Tags – but the new formats are claimed to ‘enable rapid creation of documents from disparate data sources, accelerating document assembly, data mining, and content reuse’.

As the name implies, OOXML is open-standard, but is not the same as the XML-based Open Document Format used by OpenOffice. The latter already has ISO ratification, but at the time of writing Microsoft was encountering obstacles in fast-track ISO approval.

You can read more about Microsoft's ODF standard in our news story.

This may cause the company to lose government contracts, but end users have little to fear since the new formats are not compulsory, and you can continue to use the former Doc, Xls and Ppt formats as default. What's more, Microsoft has made available converter packs, via Office Update, that will let 2000 and 2003 users open and save files in the new formats.

The other big change is in the interface. The familiar menus and toolbars that have graced Word and Excel since 1990 are gone. Microsoft’s reasoning is that the accumulation of features and commands has made it hard to find anything through the menu system. Previous alterations to the interface – the irritating Office Assistant, the space-hogging task pane and the infuriating ‘adaptive’ menus - have not proved popular. So, let’s hear a big welcome for the new ribbon interface.

The text labels at the top of the screen may look like menus but they are really tabs; each revealing a different ribbon of tools below. Word, for example, has a Home ribbon containing formatting, clipboard and search tools, and other task-orientated ribbons for Page Layout, Mailing, and so on. Other ribbons – such as Excel’s Chart Design – don’t have a permanent tab but appear when needed. Whichever tab is open, you can still edit text, numbers and formulae. Keyboard shortcuts also work irrespective of the current ribbon.

Customisation (once the joy of power users and the despair of support staff) has all but been excised. Although custom keystrokes are still permitted, the r ibbons are set in stone – only the Quick Access Toolbar can have commands or macros added.

Is it worth upgrading? For home and small business users, the new file formats bring little benefit. XML is largely irrelevant and if file size is still an issue in these days of sub-25p per gigabyte hard disks, then XP and Vista users already have methods of file compression. It isn’t cheap, and UK purchasers have to pay 40 per cent more than their US counterparts.

And elegant though the new interface is, upgraders are still going to have to devote time and effort to learning it. For new recruits who can do without Access or Outlook, then the sub-£100 Home and Student edition is an enticing proposition. Indeed, although we've given the overall suite three out of five for value for money, the Student edition is well worth five out of five in this category.

More Office 2007 reviews:
Microsoft Word 2007 review
Microsoft Excel 2007 review
Microsoft Outlook 2007 review

See also:
Microsoft Windows Vista review
Video review: Windows Vista

Also consider:
Tesco Complete Office software suite
An excellent budget alternative to Microsoft Office, providing all the basics required of an office suite

Openoffice.org 2
Improved compatibility with Microsoft Office make this a genuine alternative for many home and business users

Zoho Virtual Office productivity software
Share contacts and organise calendars