Corporate Upgrade to Office 2007 SP2

[DeanH]

Currently: Office 2003 SP3 applications on XP 2002 SP2
Upgrade to Office 2007 SP2 suite
We are planning a corporate upgrade from 2003 apps to 2007 suite for
100,000+ users globally.
My question is what are the known issues with this upgrade, whether they are
server issues, application issues, functionality issues, etc.
I have cross-posted this to the usual applications as well as
windows.upgrade and office.misc so I can capture all users of these
applications as well as the network people.
I am aware of the usual new 2007 user interface issues but are there any
problems we can head off at the development stage?
I have reviewed the MS website but am after other issues that MS may or may
not know about, or wish to keep quiet about ;-)
Many thanks in advance
DeanH

 

[Ute Simon]

Currently: Office 2003 SP3 applications on XP 2002 SP2

Upgrade to Office 2007 SP2 suite
We are planning a corporate upgrade from 2003 apps to 2007 suite for
100,000+ users globally.
My question is what are the known issues with this upgrade, whether they
are
server issues, application issues, functionality issues, etc.
I have cross-posted this to the usual applications as well as
windows.upgrade and office.misc so I can capture all users of these
applications as well as the network people.
I am aware of the usual new 2007 user interface issues but are there any
problems we can head off at the development stage?
I have reviewed the MS website but am after other issues that MS may or
may
not know about, or wish to keep quiet about ;-)

There's a helpful list in the PPTFAQ: http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00967.htm

I cannot give you tips from a deployment admin's view, but as a trainer:

If possible, give your users a basic training to familiarize them with the
new Ribbon User Interface. We hat one hour of mandatory Office training for
every employee in our company (large groups, no hands-on training) plus one
hour of optional training per program for Word, Excel and PowerPoint
(smaller groups, hand-on with one computer per three people).

I handed out a copy of Jensen Harris' "Welcome ..." page to every
participant of the Office trainings:
http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/05/31/611552.aspx (as we are
based in Germany, I translated it into German). And we had a
six-part-E-Mail-series highlighting important new features (file format,
Outlook, etc.).

To facilitate searching for commands during the start, we installed the
downloadable version of the Interactive Reference Guides on everyones
Desktop: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/HA102295841033.aspx

After two weeks everyone (even the not-so-computer-savvy people) had become
used to it.

Best regards,
Ute

 

[AlEdlund]

I'd respectfully suggest that this forum is not the appropriate place for
that question. Visio is part of Office in name only, it is a separate
product and not included in an "office" upgrade.
al

 

[DeanH]

AlEdlund: many thanks for the response and I understand that Visio is not
part of the "2007 suite" per se.
The reason I asked specifically in this forum is that we will be upgrading
Visio along with the 2007 suite and I have been asked by the Development Team
if I can investigate any problems with such an upgrade from both User and
Development (Installation) points of view with respect to most MS
applications.
If you have any such pointers, such as language packages (as we will be
rolling out globablly), etc. all would be gratefully received.
Thanks for your time.
DeanH

 

[DeanH]

Ute Simon: many thanks for the reponse, the links are most welcome and will
help to initiate the training programmes that I will probably be asked to
develop :-(
Many thanks for your time and effort.
All the best
DeanH

 

[DeanH]

Steve: many thanks for the links, very useful.
I am not sure that as part of the roll-out "the powers that be" will allow
such customisation, but definitely a useful tool for the odd power-user and I
will make not of these for my training programme.
All the best
DeanH

 

[AlEdlund]

The real changes were that the data linking functionality available in v2007
is in the professional version only, they have to pay attention to the
features that are being used. Security (just like all of the others) was
also tightened up. Basic drawings (without associated code) should have no
problems.
al

 

[JulieS]

Hi Dean,

To add the "Project" perspective:

MS Project 2007 did not receive the significant change in user
interface that the rest of the Office products did. So that
challenge will be avoided from that perspective. If you are using
Project 2003 without server, I believe you will find very small
differences between Project 2003 and Project 2007. I do think more
significant changes were implemented in Project Server 2007. If you
are using Project Server 2003 and switching to Project Server 2007,
you may wish to post your question to the Project Server newsgroup
to gain some insights into that component.

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for the FAQs and additional
information about Microsoft Project

 

[DeanH]

JulieS: many thanks for the comments, and I have posted to Project.Server as
you mentioned.
All the best
DeanH

 

[JulieS]

You're most welcome Dean and thanks for the feedback. Good luck.

Julie