Microsoft Office- 2007?

[Yooper]

Excuse my computer ignorance here. My daughter bought a new computer for school, and her first classes use Microsoft Office 2007. It came as a demo on her new laptop, but she needs a product key. When she tries to buy one, only Office 2010 is available with the "student" pricing. She swears she needs 2007.

First, is there that big of a difference in 2010 and 2007? And secondly, any ideas where to buy a student priced version of 2007 (cheap), or at least the product key?

 

[marubozo]

As far as actual differences, there shouldn't be any that make a huge difference come school time. Usually, as long as you're using something newer rather than older you'll at least have everything the teachers are instructing you to do. The only issue may be that icons or menus may be in slightly different locations from one version to another, thus making it harder for the student to keep up, but all of the features will be there one way or the other.

That being said, 2007 is still readily available. Usually the campus computer/book store will be the best place to get a student software license. If they don't have or refuse to sell the older version you can hop on Amazon or something and pick up 2007 for a little over $100.

 

[Mutilated1]

2010 is much different than 2007


if file compatibility is the only concern open office is both compatible and free

 

[avidhomebrewer]

A lot of schools have an academic alliance with Microsoft where the students get a 'free' copy of whatever software the school has from Microsoft. I say 'free' because the student needs to go ask the instructor to go to the website to download it and burn it to a CD/DVD.

Ask your daughter to contact her instructor to see if this is an option; if not, follow Mutilated1's advice.

 

[Yooper]

A lot of schools have an academic alliance with Microsoft where the students get a 'free' copy of whatever software the school has from Microsoft. I say 'free' because the student needs to go ask the instructor to go to the website to download it and burn it to a CD/DVD.

Ask your daughter to contact her instructor to see if this is an option; if not, follow Mutilated1's advice.

Thanks! I know that they're doing 2007, but it's the same cost for 2007 and it is for 2010. I'd hate to see her buy the 2007 and then need to buy the 2010. She'll call the school on Monday.

 

[Edcculus]

She'll be able to use any version of Office. Even if she has 2003, you can download the "xml" compatibality for free from Microsoft. Look and feel are very different. The newer versions save files with a "x" extension, so a Word document would be ".docx" instead of ".doc". What is her major? Unless she is going to be doing some very complicated excel stuff for engineering, or physics, I doubt she will have any problems with either version.

Vista (and Office 2007) came out about a year before I graduated. Even before that, I was never required to do something in a program that required a specific version. Even in my graphics classes, I kept using CS2 well after CS3 and CS4 came out.

 

[Yooper]

She's doing business/accounting.

The issue (I think- remember, I've been out of school for 25 years!) is that some of her classes are "Microsoft Office 2007" and stuff like that. So, it's actually learning the programs from what I understand.

 

[Edcculus]

Ah, yea that makes sense.

 

[Toecutter]

my daughter starts at california baptist university on monday. they told the students specifically, that they need office 2007,because it is compatible with all their programs, printers etc. they were told not to try and use any other version. I'm in luck, my brother has a copy and is coming over to install it today.

 

[Beernip]

The main thing is that all of her textbooks will be written using Excel 2007 as an example. While she can do all the assignments with Excel 2010 the menu's and buttons may be in a slightly different spot. May make the class a little harder. MS used to allow you to install a previous version of the software if you owned a new copy too.

 

[weirdboy]

2010 is much different than 2007


if file compatibility is the only concern open office is both compatible and free

Compatible with huge caveats. Generating 100% Office 2007-compatible documents is a challenge and there are a lot of cases where fonts/spacing/etc don't look the same between Open Office and MS Office. My SWMBO had some class where they had to turn in excel, word, and powerpoint docs. She tried using open office since it was already installed, but kept running into little issues like that which ended up hurting her grades on those assignments.

At a lot of universities you can get MS Office for free as a student (MS has an educational website where you can download it), and the classes tend to use the same version(s) available from that.

 

[Hang Glider]

If she has to buy a copy, google Ultimate Steal - full-product student-priced copies of 2010 can be had for $80.

I did the same thing when I started my Master's - got the 2007 ver. - but now MS only has the 2010 ver.--I've seen it, it looks essentially the same, and should be backwards compatible. The school shouldn't insist on a product that isn't readily available. She won't be the only one in that class having problems finding it. She'll have to have an .edu e-mail address to take advantage -

Open Office might be free, but if the class function is training on MS products, then she'll need the MS products.

 

[kappclark]

Office licensing standards can sometimes be more of a black art..it gets confusing when a new machine comes with a "trial version" .. we have a volume licensing agreement where I work, and surprisingly, I forgot to uninstall the trial version of 2007, and simply put in the academic download CD -- it did an upgrade without asking for the license key ...

 

[Stuntman]

2010 is much different than 2007 if file compatibility is the only concern open office is both compatible and free

+1
Company pulled us in to familiarize us with 2010....Very cool stuff, works similar, but there is so much more you can do with 2010. We had a terrible time trying to open up stuff that was made up in 2007 and working on them on 2010 (Power Point is what we were dealing with at the time). Sure wish we knew about "Open Office" we were half way through our work and they upgraded all our software.