Product Description

Microsoft Office Small Business 2007 is an accessible and comprehensive set of productivity and contact management tools designed for small businesses that rely on technology to work efficiently and serve their customers. Small businesses face a unique set of challenges. Developing a customer base is of the utmost importance, but marketing budgets are limited and competition is fierce. Building customer loyalty helps a business thrive, but finding the time to respond to customer inquiries and manage custome...

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #284 in Software
• Brand: Microsoft
• Model: 45251G
• Released on: 2007-01-30
• Platforms: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 2003 Server
• Format: CD-ROM
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 3.11 pounds

Manufacturer's Description:

Microsoft Office Small Business 2007 is a powerful and easy-to-use suite of productivity and contact management software with new tools to help you save time, stay organized, and deliver better customer service. Comprised of the 2007 versions of Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Publisher, and Outlook with Business Contact Manager, this software package empowers you to create professional looking documents and presentations, build powerful spreadsheets, and manage your e-mail messages, calendar, and contacts.

In addition, Outlook with Business Contact Manager integrates powerful contact management features into Outlook that allow you to access and track all customer information and communications in a central location. With improved menus and tools, enhanced graphics and formatting capabilities, new time and communication management tools, and more reliability and security, the Small Business 2007 package makes it easier and more enjoyable for you to get things done at home or at work.

Which edition of Office is right for you? View a comparison of Microsoft Office 2007 editions.

Tasks are easy to follow up on because they are included on the new To-Do Bar and within Outlook reminders. You can also drag tasks onto your calendar. View larger.

Business Contact Manager also combines contact, customer, and project information in one place. View larger.

Create, preview, and send personalized e-mail publications with Office Publisher 2007 using new E-Mail Merge. View larger.

Work More Efficiently and Effectively
The more intuitive look and feel, coupled with the improved tools, make Small Business 2007 the ideal software system to help you work faster to complete routine tasks and create more professional documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Task-based menus and toolbars automatically display the commands and options you can use, making it faster and easier to find the software features you need. Thanks to the Instant Search function to save you time, junk mail and anti-phishing filters to protect the security of your computer, and new graphics capabilities to help you produce publication-ready documents, (complete with logo, colours, fonts, and business information), this software can increase both your productivity and efficiency, while giving you more time to spend with your customers. And to help minimize time-wasting future edits, the Live Preview feature makes it easy to sample your changes before you apply them.

Improved Time Management
When work is busy, it's sometimes difficult to stay on-top of appointments and tasks. This is why Small Business 2007 lets you schedule tasks in Outlook that will appear on your calendar, while the To-Do bar presents a consolidated view of tasks, calendar information, and e-mail messages flagged for follow-up. To help effectively manage your time, take advantage of the templates and tools in Word, all of which make it easier to reuse content, so you don't have to start from scratch whenever you create a new document. And keeping track of important information is a snap thanks to new Excel tools for filtering, sorting, and visualizing information to help you find and analyse business data more effectively.

Manage Contact and Customer Information in One Place
To help you manage contact and customer information, Outlook with Business Contact Manager includes a complete contact management solution for small businesses that helps you deliver better customer service. This software enables you to organize all of your contact, prospect, and customer information, so it's easier to manage prospects, respond to customers, and manage your sales process in one place. Enhanced reporting features include over 50 reports that you can easily modify for your unique business needs, and new filtering capabilities help you forecast and close sales. You can also record all types of communications with a customer in one place-- including all e-mail, phone calls, appointments, notes, and documents-- and view a consolidated view of your sales pipeline by using a variety of flexible reports that you can easily modify for your unique business needs. You also can track and manage project tasks and even transfer tasks to coworkers. For added flexibility, you can work offline on your laptop or Pocket PC, and then synchronize data when you return to the office.

Produce Professional-Looking Marketing Materials and Campaigns In-House
Small Business 2007 makes it a snap to manage the entire marketing process so you save the time and expense of hiring an outside service. Create and distribute professional-looking marketing materials and campaigns for print, e-mail, and the Web by using Publisher. Then use Outlook with Business Contact Manager and Publisher together to track and manage marketing campaign activities, including compiling mailing lists, distributing materials, and tracking your results. You also can access the library of customisable templates in PowerPoint to create professional-looking presentations that enhance your business identity. If you need to merge information from multiple sources, combine and filter mailing lists and data from Excel, Outlook, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, and Access to create personalized print and e-mail materials and build customized collateral such as catalogs and data sheets.

Dynamic Presentations
One of the most effective ways to inspire both employees and customers is to impress them with a dynamic presentation. With its extensive library of customisable themes and slide layouts, PowerPoint helps you to create powerful charts, SmartArt graphics, and tables, while giving you the time-saving option of quickly previewing formatting changes so your final result is ready to go. You can also use the PDF file format for easier document distribution and high-quality printing. No matter what you need to help your business thrive, Small Business 2007 can make it possible.

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Customer Reviews

Don't bother. A very poor upgrade
As a business user I don't really have anything good to say about Office 2007. The new interface now requires 3-4 mouse clicks where 2-3 were needed previously. Many of the keyboard shortcuts no longer work or don't work the way they used to (I don't use the mouse very often). It's not possible to customise the menu structure to any extent as Microsoft have imposed the "ribbon" structure with it's fixed content.

Many of the highlight colours just don't stand out e.g. highlighting text is pink on a white background but highlighted buttons are a sort of yellow colour. There are also only 3 colour schemes available, blue, silver or black. None is particularly attractive and none is particularly clear. Differentiating between several windows often not easy because they are all similar colours.

As a heavy office user, I found the new version of office restrictive and un-instinctive, as if Microsoft have told me how i will work and what commands I will have easily available instead of me being able to select my own. Oh, and you can't even customise a macro button image now! Instead you have to use the ones provided which are an anonymous bunch at best.

you are restricted to a single row of custom buttons - the "quick access toolbar" but if you want the traditional icons on the bar (font, size, style) then you can only fit another 10 or so on the bar - which is restricted to a single line only. when visible, the ribbon occupies a massive amount of space (about 30mm of vertical height) thus restricting the amount of text that can be seen. There appears to be no option to relocate the ribbon, it's always along the top. Hiding the ribbon then needs a double click to bring it back.

I am struggling to express how frustrating I find this software. I am currently in the process of requesting a refund from MS and going back to Office 2003. Note that I can't find anything that 2007 does which 2003 didn't already do for me.