I’ve managed to lay my hands on a copy of the upcoming Microsoft Office release, Office 12. I’ll be taking you through my first impressions.

Office 12 didn’t take very long to install, no more than 10 minutes to install Pro, but I haven’t timed how long it took to install other programs like Frontpage.. But then again, I’m on a quite high-end machine (1.5GB RAM, Athlon 64 3400+, 250GB SATA…) so I don’t know how long it would take on a slower machine. The install interface is very good looking, and from very early on you realise the software is going to be very cosmetically different to previous versions.

The most commonly used program in Office is probably Microsoft Word, and this was the first program opened. At first you wouldn’t recognise it even as a Windows program. It seems to have the style of an Apple and Linux product – however the use of blue gives it a way a little. However, it looks nothing like Office 2003.

In Word tasks like making things into columns can be done in three easy clicks. You have lost menus such as Options and Tables in return for more useful menus such as Page Layout and Write.

Also, there aren’t as many drop-down menus, it comprises many of horizontal based menus called ribbon menus with great graphics. However I feel that adding items such as References and Review to the main menu is a bad move – I don’t know a single person you uses these features.

Another thing which is noticeable – but not quite as much – is the smaller title bar and smaller close, minimise, maximise and restore buttons.

Despite the heavy cosmetic changes made on the main areas boxes such as spell checker and options look very out of place. I hope Microsoft decide to change this. (see right).

Also, Office 12 sees a new file format docx, this format is only openable in Office 12 as it uses an XML based file format. However, if you wish you can change it from saving to this by default to saving .doc by default; which is best as not many people can read docx.

I’m not much of an Excel user, so I can’t really compare it much to previous versions – however one thing I can say is like Word, it looks far better. Also, it provides a better layout.

By default it now displays a page layout view when Excel loads. You can switch between views in a similar manner as you could in previous Excel versions.

In what I can see no changes have been made to formulae formating since Office 2003.

I have to take note it is easier to import data from Access databases, the web and flat-text files. It is very easy to import external data and then update it – this can be done with a built-in web browser. One bug I’ve noticed is though on links which open in a new windows it loads IE.  This could prove useful with changing statistics and calculations. However it doesn’t seem good at fetching small pieces of pages, but better at pages at a whole.

Other features I’ve never seen before include What-If Analysis and Text To Columns. Also, the file format is xlsx by default, but you can easily change this. Excel has almost as good bug handling as well.

Moving on again, I shall now move to Powerpoint. Like Word and Excel, Powerpoint has being re-skinned. However it’s interface is a little different, even excluding the ribbon menu. I feel a little disorientated as I can’t right click to do things like Custom Animation. To do this I have to go in the animation menu.

In Powerpoint many of the icons in the menu are pixelated and/or low quality. This seems to let the application down. Like previous versions of powerpoint you have Slide Designs but it has had it’s name changed to Themes. I forgot to mention this but you can theme Excel and Word files. You can also do many colour scheme effects.

I also find it easy to do such things as recording my voice. It is easy for people with two monitors to present a presentation, it has the Presenter View. I don’t have two monitors so I haven’t tested this feature.

Also, PowerPoint outputs as PPTX by default

Microsoft Publisher looks almost identical to the version in Office 2003. There’s a few cosmetic tweaks – especially in the Publication Type windows which has fantastic graphics. However, I believe in a later build of Office 12 this will be tweaked.

Due to this I can’t really say too much about how great it is, because nothing much has changed.

Unlike most other applications in Office 12 Publisher outputs in it’s usual format: .pub .

Microsoft Access has also been reskinned similar to Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Like Excel you can capture external data. There is more options though, and you can import XML, SharePoint, Excel and various other formats; but not data from the World Wide Web. That really does spoil the prospect of a highly dynamic database.

Other un-prettified application include InfoPath, which I can’t see any changes with whatsoever. Outlook also looks exactly the same. But of a dull ending

I don’t generally like Microsoft, but I’m impressed with some of these applications. Microsoft has seemed to realise users don’t want the XP interface, but something even more futuristic. I wonder how long it is until a CSI style OS is made. It will be good to see the other programs made to match Word, Excel and PowerPoint menus.