Office 2003 Mainstream Support Ending in April 2009
Mainstream support for Microsoft Office 2003 is scheduled to end on April 14, 2009. Extended support for the 2003 release will be available until January 14, 2014. Office 2003 was replaced by Office 2007.
We have found Office 2007 to be a bit slower in many areas. The new ribbon menu structuring takes a while to get used to, but thank goodness they have good imbedded help search. I have relied on these searches many times to find a feature or capability that was not clear at first glance. For instance doing a mail merge took me a while to relearn the new process. Once I figured it out, the new 2007 made sense; it was just painful to go through the learning curve.
Good luck with your own relearning process.
Oh by the way, when you use Office 2003 and receive a document created by Office 2007 you will undoubted have trouble opening the new document. The basic method for storing all Office 2007 documents (word, excel etc) all changed. The new Office 2007 files are primarily saved as xml doc' which will be more critical over time as we move to more web services and use xml standards to exchange data.
You can download compatibility add on to read the new 2007 files with your old 2003 Office software. Here is the link.
I recommend you consider getting this compatibility pack
Jeff Cozens
