Dear Holy Cross Faculty and Staff, As many of you know, Information Technology Services has been evaluating Office 2007 for Windows (the next version of Word, Excel, Access, and Powerpoint). We have also been evaluating Office 2008 for Macintosh. Both of these products are considerable improvements over the previous versions; however, in the case of Office 2007 for Windows, the software looks quite different than the older versions and the menus have been significantly re-organized. Our testing has shown that this new look and re-organization actually makes this version of Office easier to use, having more commonly used features readily accessible. However, given all the changes, persons who receive this product take some time to get used to the new set up. Testing has been done both within ITS and in the community. Additionally, last year’s student laptops came with Office 2007. All this testing the new version of Office has shown that it is stable and reliable. Further, it is compatible with existing documents and processes that we use here at Holy Cross. Given this, we are moving forward on deploying Office 2007 and 2008 this spring. The software will be deployed on new computers that are placed this year. We will not be doing a general installation sweep – rather, we will give it out with new systems, and on request by individuals and departments. It will be deployed into all the public labs over the summer. Given how different Office 2007 is, there will be training classes offered beginning this spring. Additionally, we will have the old version of Office installed on all new machines as well for one more year; that means that folks who need to work in the older version of Office for whatever reason will still have it. However, the default for new document creation and opening existing documents will be Office 2007/2008. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Help Desk (x3548). Additionally, if you want to request having Office 2007/2008 installed now, you can also coordinate that through the Help Desk. Regards, Ellen Keohane, Director of ITS James Pinkerton, Technology Support Director
Tags: Office 2007