Microsoft Office Basic 2007 Frequently Asked Questions

Office Basic 2007 provides office software essentials for new personal computers, helping both home and small business users to get tasks done more quickly and easily. You can create great-looking documents and spreadsheets, and manage your e-mail, calendar, and contacts.

Find packaging information on the 2007 Microsoft Office Packaging page.

Four major areas of innovation distinguish the 2007 release of Office Basic. These areas of innovation work together to help home computer users and small businesses get things done more quickly and easily. The innovation areas are:

As we've added more and more features and functionality to the applications, it has become more challenging for people to find the things they want to do with the software. For example, Microsoft Word 1.0 only had about 100 commands; you could easily browse through the menus and find everything you could do. In comparison, Microsoft Office Word 2003 has more than 1,500 commands, many of which are admittedly difficult to find. Helping people quickly find the menus, commands, and options they need is the key benefit of the new user interface.

We wanted to deliver new capabilities that empower people to get the results they want, faster. We had four major design goals:

Microsoft Office 2007 programs Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access will all receive the new look. In addition, specific parts of Office Outlook 2007, such as when you are authoring a new e-mail message, will use the new menus and toolbars.

The Microsoft Office system comes in a variety of different suites and provides full-featured productivity applications for both home and business users. Microsoft Works is an attractively priced alternative to a full-featured Microsoft Office suite. Microsoft Works is a nicely integrated productivity package designed specifically for home users and families with computing beginners.

Find pricing and licensing information on the 2007 Microsoft Office System Pricing page.

Office Basic 2007 will only be promoted by computer manufacturers in conjunction with a new computer purchase and will be preinstalled.

No. Office Basic 2007 is a preinstall option only, and will be preinstalled by computer manufacturers in conjunction with a new computer purchase.

Because Office Basic 2007 is available as a preinstall option only with new computers, the various computer manufacturers will ensure that each system meets the minimum system requirements. See the system requirements for the 2007 Microsoft Office release.

No. Office Basic 2007 will not run on Windows 98 and is only available with the purchase of a new computer.

Yes. Office Basic 2007 will expand on the Open XML support in Office 2003 and Microsoft Office XP by using the Office 2003 Open XML schemas as the default format for creating and saving documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.

The Microsoft Office Open XML Formats will offer some key improvements over the binary file formats in use today within Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Because these new file formats are compressed, the resulting document sizes will be much smaller—between 50 and 75 percent smaller in some cases. The file formats' architecture also improves data recovery of damaged or corrupted files.

Yes. The Office Basic 2007 programs can be configured to save files in the earlier Microsoft Office file formats (.doc, .xls, and .ppt). When configured this way, the Microsoft Office system programs will operate in a Compatibility Mode which will enforce compatibility between versions of Microsoft Office by disabling functionality that is incompatible with prior Microsoft Office releases.

Yes. Office Basic 2007 introduces the new Office XML Formats, which are compact, robust file formats that facilitate improved integration with external data sources and systems. These formats are compatible with Office 2003, Office XP, and Office 2000 with the addition of a file format converter patch, which will be available from Office Online and Microsoft Update. Users of Office 2003, Office XP, and Office 2000 can open, edit, and save files using the new Office XML Formats.

Yes. You will be able to convert Office Word 2007 documents, Office Excel 2007 workbooks, and Office PowerPoint 2007 presentations to Portable Document Format file (PDF) directly from within Office Basic 2007. You can save your work as a PDF file by using the Save As command from within one of these Microsoft Office system programs. Instead of printing the document and faxing it, or sending it by overnight mail, customers can save a PDF and electronically distribute a read-only, "as printed" representation of the document.

To facilitate creating accessible PDF documents, Office Basic 2007 will support the PDF 1.4 specification, which helps to ensure compatibility with Adobe Acrobat 5.0 or later.

Microsoft is committed to responding to customer requests and to the adoption of open document formats for content sharing, publishing, and archiving needs. With the support in Office Basic 2007 for XML Paper Specification (XPS) file creation and PDF, as well as existing support for the native formats of Microsoft Office system products, HTML, and Open XML Formats, customers will have a rich variety of choices when it comes to sharing, publishing, and archiving their documents.