At the last meeting that provided information on the WINDOWS 7 Operating System, a question was asked about the use of the Microsoft Office Suite of programs. This program will discuss your options about selecting your Office Application Programs. The current version offered by Microsoft is OFFICE 2007. It can be installed and run under XP, any VISTA, or the WINDOWS 7 operating systems.

OFFICE 2007 has a slightly different appearance than some of the earlier versions. The area containing the menus and tool bars is now called a ribbon. You can modify the content of the ribbon to provide easy access to the task that you perform most often. You will also find that the content of the ribbon will change depending upon the various tasks you may be performing.

Earlier versions of the Microsoft OFFICE Suite will also run under the newer Operating Systems, so it is not necessary for you to upgrade your OFFICE Suite when you upgrade you OS. However, the later versions of the OFFICE Suite are designed to take advantage of newer features of the OS, so you will find some advantages of upgrading both at the same time.

The newer version of the OFFICE Suite Programs will be able to import, edit, and the files that you created with these earlier versions of these same programs; however, the reverse may not be true. You may not be able to import the files written by the lastest version into earlier versions of the Programs because the file format in which the file is saved may not be the same. This may create problem if you send one of these files as an attachment to an email to someone who only has an earlier version of the OFFICE Suite. You can SAVE the file in an earlier version of the Microsoft Office Suite, if the recipient has an earlier version.

There are several ways in which you can avoid this problem. Most often people will convert the file into the Portable Document Format (PDF) of the Adobe Acrobat Program. The Acrobat Reader Program is a free program that can be downloaded from the Adobe web site for any operating system and hardware. However, the Adobe Acrobat program to create the PDF file is relatively expensive. You can download a program call CutePDF from CNET; this program acts like a phantom printer that you can use to print the output from your OFFICE program; the result will be a PDF file. Also, Microsoft provides a download for OFFICE 2007 that allows the creation of PDF files.

As usual, there will be a time before the formal presentation for members to discuss problems that they may have encountered in using their computers.