I finally loaded up a review copy of Office 2007 on my home computer this weekend and spent the next few days getting oriented to the new interface Microsoft has created for its suite of programs.

You need the time, as this tabbed interface is regrouping and renaming of the features used in the previous versions of Office. So if you are implementing the new Office in a work environment you need to take into account the time needed for users to get used to the tabbed interface, in addition to the other newer features.

According to a Microsoft manager quoted in Computerworld, the company?s customer research showed that 83 percent of surveyed users think they will need two days to two weeks to learn the new interface.

In this week?s column I will just briefly go over the obvious differences and the various forms of Office available on the market from yesterday, when it was launched along with Vista, the new operating system.

For Office 2007 Microsoft has added two new packaged options individuals and businesses can choose from when deciding what they need from the suite.

In addition to the existing five flavours of Office 2007, Microsoft has added Office Ultimate 2007 and Office Enterprise 2007.

The Ultimate sits between Office Professional and Office Professional Plus, having more functionality than the former but less than the latter. The Enterprise version sits at the top end of the scale, which begins with Office Basic 2007.

Basic contains Word, Excel (spreadsheet) and Outlook (e-mail). All the other various options contain a mix of these basic tools along with Access, Accounting, Communicator, FrontPage, Groove, InfoPath, OneNote, PowerPoint, Project, Publisher, SharePoint Designer, and Visio.

Trying out the new Word, the first thing I notice is a new toolbar interface Microsoft calls a ?ribbon?. This is a tabbed menu as compared with the pull-down menus of Word 2003. The interface is similar for the other members of the suite, such as Excel and Powerpoint. Microsoft has also moved some of the most commonly used commands to different groupings and taken out such categories such as ?File?. Very disorienting.

Microsoft says the rearrangement is an attempt to put a better order to the ever-growing list of commands. The new hierarchy of commands are now grouped under ?Home?, ?Insert?, ?Page? ?Layout?, ?References?, ?Mailings?, ?Review? and ?View?. You can guess from the titles that most of this is not intuitive. You have to ?discover? and explore to get a feel for the difference. I am still lost trying to open a previously opened file! Actually most of the commands previously grouped under ?File? can now be accessed underneath the Microsoft Office logo button in the upper-left corner of the screen.

?That element of discoverability is just one of the key issues addressed by the new UI (user interface),? Microsoft said in a statement meant to be a consolation to those like me who do not RTFM (read the manual).

I noticed as well that the new version of Word did not pick up the default settings of my previous 2003 version. That is, the ?Normal? template was set to a Microsoft default, which is a hassle to redo back to your old settings and a potential risk if you open up your old documents.

Another change likely to cause some frustration is the new file format for Word. Microsoft has created a new DOCX file for Word 2007. A user with older versions of Word will not be able to open the new DOCX type. They must first download a free ?Compatibility Pack?, which allows them to convert any Word 2007 files into the older version of Word, removing any incompatible features. Opening an older DOC file within Word 2007 puts the software into the ?Compatibility Mode?, closing down access to some of the newer features in the program.

So watch out for this problem, which means the same Word document will be displayed differently depending on the version it was created in.

Again, I can see a lot of grief in the short term between colleagues who have to work on the same document but might have different versions of Word. While I plan to dig deeper next week into other features of the new Office 2007, you can get a jump on me by visiting http://office.microsoft.com. Of course, keep a watch out for other reviewers to determine how businesses are coping ? or not ? with the changeover.

l