New security features help you to erase all the traces of authorship, revision, and collaboration from documents-traces that earlier versions of the suite should never have preserved in the first place. A new Office Communicator program, for corporate installations only, adds real-time IP and VoIP communications.
#BETA 2 OFFICE WEB COMPONENTS SOFTWARE#
(For more on Microsoft's plan, see " Whatever Happened to FrontPage?") SharePoint server software makes collaboration simpler and more flexible. New additions to the suite include the Groove 2007 collaboration software and SharePoint Designer 2007, a professional-level Web editor that partly replaces the SOHO-oriented FrontPage program.
A new template-based graphics engine called SmartArt creates dazzlingly professional charts and diagrams with just a few mouse clicks. When you fire up this new version of the suite for the first time, for example, you'll find that five of the major apps-Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and parts of Outlook-sport a radically new interface.
The results? Well, depending on what you're looking for, Office 2007 is either completely different from the previous version or essentially the same. So when Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh came out recently, I decided to take a look. Chances are good that most PC Magazine readers who work in an office work in. Why? Because Office is without doubt the most-used set of productivity applications in the world. Love it or hate it, most of us have a vested interest in the future of Microsoft's ubiquitous Office suite.