Your Office software is evolving – use its full potential!

Microsoft Office 2010 has been available at CERN since May 2011. It is the default version installed on new NICE computers. The IT Department is now planning to migrate the remaining NICE Windows 7 computers running Office 2007 to this version, so that it becomes the only version of Microsoft Office on NICE Windows 7 and all users can benefit from the improvements that it brings.

NICE Windows 7 computers in the IT Department will be migrated on 12 January and the migration in the other departments will begin on 21 February.  You can migrate earlier at your convenience according to the “Next steps” below.

Windows XP users are not affected by this change. Until Windows XP is decommissioned from office use at the end of 2012, Microsoft Office 2007 will remain the only supported version of Microsoft Office on NICE Windows XP.

Revolutionary benefits of the evolution
Office 2010 is very similar to its predecessor, Office 2007. In particular, the file formats remain the same and the “Ribbon” interface, previously known from Word, Excel and Powerpoint 2007, remains the central point.

The biggest change is that the “Ribbon” interface has now been introduced also in Outlook. Furthermore, behind the scenes, Outlook 2010 offers several important improvements:

  • setting of out-of-office replies directly from Outlook,
  • seeing your mail recipients’ out-of-office status before you actually send them an e-mail,
  • direct access to your interlocutors’ contact information, including their phone numbers and office location,
  • new conversation view of your mail messages (easy to enable/disable according to your choice),
  • better overall integration with the new Exchange servers.

Another change concerns the website editing software: Sharepoint Designer is now reserved only for Sharepoint sites and is no longer installed by default. Instead, Microsoft Expression Web 4 is proposed.

Next steps
The experience of hundreds of current users indicates that Office 2010 and Expression Web 4 will enable you to obtain more in less time and to steer clear of problems. If you have a NICE Windows 7 computer and you would like to see how this change corresponds to your working habits, you can choose to migrate earlier – the pro-active installation procedure is described here.

by Michal Kwiatek (IT-OIS) for the IT Department