Office Standard 2007 provides small businesses and home computer users with the software essentials they need to get tasks done more quickly and easily. You can create great-looking documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, and manage your e-mail, calendar, and contacts.

Find packaging information on the 2007 Microsoft Office packaging page.

Four major areas of innovation distinguish the 2007 release of Office Standard. These areas of innovation work together to help home computer users and small businesses get things done more quickly and easily. The innovation areas help you:

• Easily find commands and Help to get you started. Office Standard 2007 has the Microsoft Office Fluent user interface and an enhanced Help system, including online tutorials with step-by-step instructions, to help you quickly learn the program and find the answers to your questions. The improved Office Fluent user interface makes it easier for you to deliver better results faster by simplifying the way the Microsoft Office system programs work. The Fluent interface organizes program features according to the tasks you want to accomplish, reveals additional features when needed, and shows you previews of formatting and editing changes as you browse and select options.
• Create high-quality documents you are proud of. Office Standard 2007 has new graphics features, formatting galleries, and the Ribbon, a new device that exposes commonly used commands, helping you to produce high-quality documents you can be proud of.
• Organize your time and communications. Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 is now an even more complete and easy-to-use e-mail and time manager, leaving you more time to do the things you want. You can quickly search your e-mail, share your calendar with the people you care about, and get the latest news from your favorite Web sites by using Really Simple Syndication (RSS). (Please note: Separate fee-based RSS subscription required.)
• Get tasks done with enhanced confidence and security. With an improved junk e-mail filter, automatic document recovery, and the Document Inspector for removing personally identifiable information from your documents, Office Standard 2007 helps you work with more confidence and enhanced security.

As we’ve added more and more features and functionality to the applications, it has become more challenging for people to find the things they want to do with the software. For example, Microsoft Word 1.0 only had about 100 commands; you could easily browse through the menus and find everything you could do. In comparison, Microsoft Office Word 2003 has more than 1,500 commands, many of which are admittedly difficult to find. That element of discoverability is just one of the key issues addressed by the Office Fluent user interface.

We wanted to deliver new capabilities that empower people to get the results they want, faster. We had four major design goals:

• Make it easier for people to find and use product features.
• Reduce design clutter and interruptions.
• Make it easier for people to discover the capabilities they need.
• Support the creation of great-looking documents.

Office Word 2007, Office Excel 2007, Office PowerPoint 2007, Microsoft Office Access 2007, and the authoring part of Office Outlook 2007 — your calendar, your mail notes, and your contacts — feature the Office Fluent user interface.

The Microsoft Office system comes in a variety of different suites and provides full-featured productivity applications for both home and business users. Microsoft Works is an attractively priced alternative to a full-featured Microsoft Office suite. Microsoft Works is a nicely integrated productivity package designed specifically for home users and families with computing beginners.

Find pricing and licensing information on the 2007 Microsoft Office System pricing page.

Visit the How to buy the 2007 Microsoft Office suites page for purchasing options.

Yes. Office Standard 2007 will be available in both upgrade and new-user versions. The upgrade version will require that you own a qualifying prior version of the Microsoft Office system.

For qualifying prior releases, see the 2007 Microsoft Office System pricing page.

Find pricing and licensing information on the 2007 Microsoft Office System pricing page.

See the system requirements for Office Standard 2007.

No, Office Standard 2007 will not run on Windows 98. Office Standard 2007 requires Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2) or later.

No. Office Standard 2007 is designed to run on both Windows XP (SP2 or later) and Windows Vista.

Yes. Office Standard 2007 will expand on the Open XML support in Microsoft Office 2003 and Microsoft Office XP by using the Microsoft Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas as the default format for creating and saving documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.

The Ecma Office Open XML Formats will offer some key improvements over the binary file formats in use today within Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Because these new file formats are compressed, the resulting document sizes will be much smaller — between 50 and 75 percent smaller in some cases. The architecture of the file formats also improves data recovery of damaged or corrupted files.

Yes. The Office Standard 2007 programs can be configured to save files in the earlier Microsoft Office file formats (.doc, .xls, and .ppt). When configured this way, the Microsoft Office system programs will operate in a Compatibility Mode that will enforce compatibility between releases of the Microsoft Office system by disabling functionality that is incompatible with prior Microsoft Office releases.

Yes. Office Standard 2007 introduces the new Ecma Office Open XML Formats, which are compact, robust file formats that facilitate improved integration with external data sources and systems. These formats are compatible with Office 2003, Office XP, and Office 2000 with the addition of a file format converter patch, which will be available from Microsoft Update. Users of Office 2003, Office XP, and Office 2000 can open, edit, and save files using the new Office XML Formats.

Yes. You can convert Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations to PDF documents directly from within Office Standard 2007.¹ You can save your work as a PDF file by using the Save As command from within one of these Microsoft Office system programs. Instead of printing the document to fax it or send it by overnight mail, customers can save a PDF and electronically distribute a read-only, “as printed” representation of the document.

To facilitate creating accessible PDF documents, Office Standard 2007 supports the PDF 1.4 specification, which helps to ensure compatibility with Adobe Acrobat 5.0 or later.

Microsoft is committed to responding to customer requests and to the adoption of open document formats for content sharing, publishing, and archiving needs. With the support in Office Standard 2007 for XML Paper Specification (XPS) file creation and PDF, as well as existing support for the native formats of Microsoft Office system products, HTML, and Ecma Office Open XML Formats, customers will have a rich variety of choices when it comes to sharing, publishing, and archiving their documents.¹