Pimp Your Work

Office 2007 early adopters, don’t forget everyone else

by Tris Hussey on February 14th, 2007

You jumped on the Office 2007 bandwagon, eh?  Yeah me too.  Like it?  I do.  I think it rocks.  Yeah there have been complaints about Outlook 2007 being a tad sluggish, but eh, I can deal.  But, we’re the cutting edge, we’re out there, trailblazing.  The rest of the working world, well it might be a few years before Office 2007 is installed on the majority of machines.  So in the meantime here are some tips for you.

First, make sure you save files in the old Office 98-2003 format.  You won’t notice much of a difference and Office let’s you know when you’re using an Office 2007 feature that might not be fully compatible.

Next, if you’re working on documents a lot with other folks, stick to the Office 2003 styles.  I love the Office 2007 styles myself, and I use them, but that’s only because I’m usually the last person to touch a proposal before it’s PDFed for a client.

To me sending a file in one of the new formats is pretty rude.  Look, you’re an early adopter (most likely) so you should know better.  Sending and Office 2007 file is like saying “hey you’re not as cool as I am, just get with it and install the importers…”.  Not a good way to win friends and influence people in my book.  Especially clients.  Lord, especially clients.

For the next while, just stick with .doc, .ppt, .xls and PDF.  Those are all standard files.  Do that, and you’ll be happier.  And have fewer e-mails to deal with saying “I can’t open this, can you re-send it?”

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POSTED IN: MS Office