Office 2007 — First Look

Now I don't know about you, but to me this bloo-ey look is hideous.I am not on Vista yet, by choice, so that sky blue gradation thing going on the top was not my cuppa. Why software designed for a certain platform cannot honor a user's general system UI preferences is beyond me, but Office 2007 does insist on having it's own look and feel. As though the new ribbon clutter was not enough.

I wanted to get rid of those ribbons to begin with. So I downloaded the the free version of Ribbon Customizer. They offer some Pro version but it does things I don't particularly care about. Alternatively, there is ToolbarToggle, but on their site I did not seem to catch a free version, and I was unwilling to pay for this stuff.

The RibbonCustomizer install is pretty straightforward and when you start Word 2007 after its installation, here is how Word looks. There is an additional item in the View menu at the end:

Word 2007 after RibbonCustomizer

I clicked on the obvious menu option to make ClassicUI my first menu tab. This is what this does:

Classic 2003 interface

That's a good start, but I now wanted to clean up some other stuff. Fortunately, Microsoft chose to include the additional "Minimize Ribbon" feature, which contextually hides the ribbon when your focus is on writing inside the document. So let's do that:

Minimize the Word 2007 ribbon

Now to get rid of the forced Blue. Click on the "More Commands" option in the menu shown in the screenshot above. Choose Silver and make other adjustments to your taste:

Choose silver

Now this is what Word 2007 looks like, with minimized ribbon, classic 2003 UI, and a somewhat less intrusive silver gradient:

Phew. I also recommend setting the default "Save" options as your regular Word ".doc" instead of the new ".docx" (or other .xlsx and .pptx equivalents) as that is a bit more standard even today in 2008.

Have a bunch of clumsy Word documents that become huge and it takes the good old MS Word minutes to open it? Here's a tip.

Open the file in OpenOffice (at version 2.2 at the time of this writing), save it as Word .doc, reopen in Word itself, and voila — the file opens without much pain. This is especially useful with documents written in languages other than English, and if you have pictures in them.

Same with Excel. Have password-protected cells? Open the spreadsheet with in OpenOffice Calc, just uncheck 'protection', re-save as an Excel file, and you're good to go. Really helps when the original spreadsheet designer has left the company and something needs changed.

For those who say OpenOffice isn't "truly compatible with MS Office", well, MS Office isn't fully compatible with MS Office. Tried Office 2007 yet? The interface revamp was supposed to be a major breakthrough, but it's just pesky. Here's a quote from OpenOffice 2.2 release notes.

While OO isn't exactly the most efficient (memory hog alert) it is a fantastic option for start-ups and people who're unwilling to fork for an overpriced office suite when office tools are going online (think Google Docs, thinkfree, and such).

So you have Office XP, but cannot get it to update from Microsoft's Office Update website? Here are some ways to patching MS Office in such a way that it accepts all currently released updates as well.

SECTION A. IF YOU ALREADY HAVE SERVICE PACK 1 INSTALLED

Important: Before you move on with this step, check the version of your MS Office. To do this, open MS Word for example and then, HELP | About Microsoft Word. If the version number includes "SP-1" at the end, then follow with these steps, otherwise, first install SP-1 first, as detailed in Section B below, and then come back to this section to upgrade to SP-2.

Assuming you have SP-1 already, follow these steps:

Congratulations! Office XP has now been updated to Service Pack 2!

SECTION B. IF YOU DON'T HAVE SERVICE PACK 1 INSTALLED, FIRST FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW, THEN FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS ABOVE

SUMMARY

This article provides an alternative
method of updating Office XP when the typical Office Update methods fail,
resulting in the following error:

Error 1328.

This alternative method only works with the
Enterprise/Corporate edition of Office XP.

The user may have either used the Office
Update Website or downloaded the oxpsp1.exe file to the local
computer. Both methods will report the same error.

A typical error message when attempting to
update to Service Pack 1 is:

This error has been found to occur when the
following software are installed:

•  Windows XP Pro Corporate
  and Office XP Pro with FrontPage
•  English version of Office and
  windows

The error may also occur with other flavours
of Windows, Windows XP and Office XP.

Additionally, the user will find that the
troubleshooting procedures outlined in the article OFFXP: Office Stops During Setup: Troubleshooting Steps on
Windows XP (Q309191) will not resolve the problem. Microsoft
recommended procedures, such as scanning the disk for errors, installing
in safe mode, or running a "flatfile" installation, will not be
successful.

DISCLAIMER

This method of updating Office XP has been tested and shown to work.
However, Sniptools.com can
make no warranty about the effectiveness of this workaround. You follow
these instructions at your OWN RISK.

RESolUTION

The following procedure
is based on two articles from Microsoft's website:

Office Resource Kit: Service Pack 1
Office Resource Kit: Creating and Administrative
Installation Point

Anyway, let's get down to it:

STEP 1 — Create an
Administrative Installation Point

To create an
Administrative Installation Point, Office XP CD 1 is
required.

• Insert
  Office XP CD 1 into the CD-ROM drive.
• From a
  Command Prompt or from the Run Dialog type the following and click OK
  (or hit the Enter key). See example 1

Where X
represents the letter of the CD-ROM drive:

x:\setup.exe /a

• Office XP Administrative Setup
  will run, and the Administrative Installation window will appear. Type
  in your company name, and product key.
  Leave the install location,
  c:\Office\ as it is. see
  example 2

  After entering
  the information, click Next, and allow the installation to complete.
  It will take several minutes for the entire contents of CD 1 are
  extracted into the c:\Office\ folder.

 

 

 

STEP 2 — Download Service Pack 1
Administrative Update

Download the file Oxpsp1a.exe. Alternatively, visit this page.

STEP 3 — Extract Service Pack 1
Administrative Update

Type c:\Office\ as the
destination path to extract. Click OK. Shown below:

STEP 4 — Update the Administrative
Installation Point

The folder c:\Office\ now contains the Administrative Installation Point and the
Service Pack 1 Administrative Patch files.

This step causes the Service Pack 1
Administrative Patch files to be integrated into the Administrative
Installation Point.

NOTE: STEP 4 updates the files in the
Administrative Installation Point only. The currently installed Office
XP will not be updated until STEP 5.

Follow this
procedure:

1. Select and copy the following
   text:

msiexec /p c:\office\MAINSP1_Admin.msp /a c:\office\proplus.msi SHORTFILENAMES=TRUE /qb /L* c:\office\sp1Log.log

1. Open the Run Dialog from the Start Menu,
   or open a Command Prompt.
2. Paste the text (right-click and select
   paste) into the filename area of the Run Dialog, and click OK
   or press Enter.

   The Office XP Setup window will appear. The
   Administrative Installation Point will take several minutes to
   update.

3. To update the Administrative Install
   Point's Office Web Components, select and copy this additional
   text:

msiexec /p c:\office\OWC10SP1_Admin.msp /a c:\office\owc10.msi SHORTFILENAMES=TRUE /qb /L* c:\office\owc10.log

5. Open the Run Dialog from the Start Menu,
   or open a Command Prompt.
6. Paste the text (right-click and select
   paste) into the filename area of the Run Dialog, and click OK
   or press Enter.

   The Office Web Components setup window will
   appear, and the Administrative Installation Point will automatically
   be updated. This will take a minute or two.

7. The Administrative Install Point is now
   updated with an integrated SP 1. To verify that the Installation Point
   has been updated, follow these steps:
   1. Using Windows Explorer, open
      the c:\Office\
      folder.
   2. Under the View menu, select Details.
      This will show the size and modification date of each file in the
      folder.
   3. The files PROPLUS.MSI and OWC10.MSI should
      display the day on which they were updated with Service Pack 1.

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STEP 5 — Perform Detect & Repair from
within the Administrative Installation Point

This step will update the currently
installed Office XP to Service Pack 1.

To update the currently installed Office XP
to Service Pack 1, perform the following steps:

1. Select and copy the following
   text:
   msiexec /i c:\office\proplus.msi REINSTALL=ALL REINSTALLMODE=vomus
2. Open the Run Dialog from the Start Menu,
   or open a Command Prompt.
3. Paste the text (right-click and select
   paste) into the filename area of the Run Dialog, and click OK
   or press Enter.

   The Office XP Setup window will appear. Setup
   will now scan the computer and update all Office XP files to Service
   Pack 1. This will take several minutes.

4. To update the Office Web Components, select and copy the following
   text:

   msiexec /i c:\office\owc10.msi REINSTALL=ALL REINSTALLMODE=vomus

5. Open the Run Dialog from the Start Menu,
   or open a Command Prompt.
6. Paste the text (right-click and select
   paste) into the filename area of the Run Dialog, and click OK
   or press Enter.

   The Office XP Setup window will appear. Setup
   will now scan the computer and update all Office Web Components to
   Service Pack 1. This will take a few minutes.

7. To verify if Service Pack 1 is installed
   follow these steps:
   1. Open Microsoft Word (or any other
      Office Application).
   2. From the Help menu, select About
      Microsoft Word.
   3. The top line of the window should read
      as:
      Microsoft Word 2002
(10.3416.3501) SP-1

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Office XP has now been updated
to Service Pack 1.

The folder c:\office should not be
deleted. The folder c:\office will be required
for any future Office Setup or Detect & Repair
operation.