Word 2007 First Impressions

Okay, now that I’ve had the opportunity to lay my little grubby paws on Word 2007 for a little while, I think there are some pretty cool features people should be aware of.  There are also some questionable design decisions, but it’s Microsoft so there are bound to be some head scratchers.  Nonetheless, if I were the almighty judge of all things Word, I would say Microsoft did a pretty damn good job this time around.  And yes, there are a number of features law firms especially can benefit from.  In short, here is the list I think law firms will like the most:

·         The “Building Blocks” feature (significant extension to the old AutoText feature)

·         Document Inspector (Metadata removal tool)

·         Document compare (basically just upgraded from earlier versions)

·         PDF Generation (very cool, but you need to download an add-in to use)

Oh sure, there are plenty of other new features and quite frankly, many of the other features are more fun, but they really aren’t directly relevant to law firms.  As far as bad design decisions go everyone will have their own opinion on the new interface so I’m not lumping that into the “bad” category (I happen to like it myself), but there is one design decision that has to be the worst I’ve seen in a while…

You can’t easily customize the buttons on the ribbons (ribbons have basically replaced menu lists in 2007).  And seeing as though almost all features are now accessed on one ribbon or another, this is a patently bad design decision.  Anyhow, I’ve digressed a bit.  What I really wanted to get at was the fact that I’ll be blogging my tail off about Word 2007 and all the new features therein in the coming weeks.  So if you’re interested, stay tuned.  Or call me directly.  The geek in me would be happy to talk Word with you (that’s kind of sad, I know).