Office 2007 beta is out

[Son Goku]

I still haven't gotten the download, or admitted into the Vista beta. However, today via email/newsletter they sent out notice that Office 2k7 beta is out, and gave a link to sign up for it.

Anyhow, I was provided with a download URL to the binary after signing up, and also an authorization code/product keys. Naturally, I won't be publishing them, as I doubt the product keys and what not are supposed to be transferred; but thought I'd let people know it's out there now...

[crainger]

Anyone else unable to Activate? I'm guessing their servers must be busy or down for maintenence.

[CrazyIvan]

I already made a thread that the Beta is out.
http://nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=70614

I still haven't gotten the download, or admitted into the Vista beta. However, today via email/newsletter they sent out notice that Office 2k7 beta is out, and gave a link to sign up for it.

Anyhow, I was provided with a download URL to the binary after signing up, and also an authorization code/product keys. Naturally, I won't be publishing them, as I doubt the product keys and what not are supposed to be transferred; but thought I'd let people know it's out there now...
It's an open beta, everyone will get the same key. Link (http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/download/en/default.mspx)

Anyone else unable to Activate? I'm guessing their servers must be busy or down for maintenence.
I activated it a couple of minutes ago just fine.

[Son Goku]

Yeah, I'm unable to activate... I keep getting "unable to connect to Internet". Nope, no proxy (beyond my web blocking proxy, which doesn't require authentication, and yeah I set IE to go straight out to the Internet), even disabled Windows firewall temporarlily, and no dice. All the other suggestions they gave, from adding it to the trusted zone, enabling Active X scripting in the trusted zone (which IE 7 had disabled by default), and whatever did nothing...

I'm thinking there might be a problem with it going through the version of IE 7 beta I have, but unknown... Now might be time to upgrade to the official beta release (from the one that came out just before, with earlier build number) just in case.

[CrazyIvan]

I must be invisible.

[crainger]

OK from what I'm reading on the MS Newsgroups a few people have been able to activate, but the MS servers have been hammered since the beta was released and it seems they are down for now. Most can't even download the betas themselves.

Hope its all fixed before my 40 something startups disappear.

Oh cheers to CrazyIvan who did post first. Its just this thread was the only one I saw in my frantic unable-to-activate state.

[Son Goku]

I had been trying to get it to activate, rebooting, whatever... If the problem is their servers, hopefully it will sort out.

Well, in any case, getting the lattest IE 7 beta is the most I can do to update things at my end, as I was previously using beta 2 preview... Beyond that, not much more that can be done here...

[crainger]

I'm running the current build of IE beta 2. So its unlikely that will help, but hey it'll fill in time until they sort themselves out.

Other than that what are people thoughts on 2007? I'm liking it so far, especially Outlook. Just wish my work lappy was widescreen to better acommodate the new side bar. Word looks pretty cool to. I imagine it will take me awhile to get used to the new interface.

[Son Goku]

The new interface will take awhile. I had Office 2k at home (though used Office 2k3 at school). The differences between those 2 versions were minimal compared to this. Also wasn't expected that the document extention would change to .docx now... Should make things really interesting if one ends up needing to view a file over a floppy on a DOS box, but then again with things in XP and headed toward Vista DOS is hardly in consideration...

Outlook I might take a look at with my Gmail account, but am not certain yet about transfering my main mail accounts over however. Just in case things go belly up. Well you know, any pre-release software it's always a possibility to be aware of... Doesn't mean it will happen however...

[Riptide]

Do these betas expire?

[CrazyIvan]

Do these betas expire?
in 180 Days.

[ENU291]

Problems activating here as well.

[Son Goku]

You know, come to think of it, activated or not, if it expires in 180 days, they might not bother with a 40 use limit or whatever. At least, I'm not finding anything to suggest "you only have x number uses left". It's already limited.

Well within 180 days, the next beta should be released or something, and then we can install from there. I rather doubt they'd make beta 2 open, but then close up RC1, leaving people unable to access their files that were stored in the new file formats until the product goes retail.

If a lot of peeps are having problems activating, and they're aware of it, I can almost gaurentee another beta will be out there also. Naturally, once the product ships, they don't want their paying customers to be unable to activate, then... Well true, there will be the phone option by then

[Riptide]

Well that sorta sucks. Sure I highly doubt I'll be sticking with Vista B2 for longer than 180 days but it's always lame to have your OS sitting there ready to go boom on you like a ticking time bomb.

[einstein_314]

Mine's not activating either...it gives me an error about thier activation service being down or something like that.

But I love what I've seen so far. I really like the way they've redone the menu system with the tabs at the top. And I'd have to say my favorite feature is (in Word anyways) if you highlight some text and move the cursor to the right of what you've highlighted, the little menu pops up and you can change text style stuff right there. There are so many little things I love.

And in excel, they've gotten rid of the terrible graph colours!!! Now you have options to make really nice looking graphs!! :thumbsup:

And apparently this beta expires in February 2007...

[Son Goku]

OK, it just activated now. So I'm gathering that whole "can't find connection to the internet" bit, though it was implicating the client, was really a server glitch. Others caught with this, might try activating now.

And speaking of colors, the color combos they picked for this program (which incidently are rather similar to those used on this forum) aren't hard/displeasing, or whatever on the eyes. But yeah, there are a lot of features it looks like they've added, which will take some time to even begin to go through...

[einstein_314]

OK, it just activated now. So I'm gathering that whole "can't find connection to the internet" bit, though it was implicating the client, was really a server glitch. Others caught with this, might try activating now.

And speaking of colors, the color combos they picked for this program (which incidently are rather similar to those used on this forum) aren't hard/displeasing, or whatever on the eyes. But yeah, there are a lot of features it looks like they've added, which will take some time to even begin to go through...
Yeah, the colour combo that it uses by default is blue but you can change it to the "vista scheme" which is blacks and greys. I like it a lot. The blue is nice too though.

I'll have to try activating it when I get home..if only this day of work would b e over. 20 minutes and counting :D

[crainger]

Yep. I'm activated too.

Anyone had any probs getting it running on another PC? Using the same key?

[crainger]

I'll have to try activating it when I get home..if only this day of work would b e over. 20 minutes and counting :D

I have 7hrs and 30 mins and counting :(

Atleast most of it today is building PCs so thats actually fun

[Son Goku]

If the same key is being used in all cases, then I'm not sure they'll restrict that yet. However, the date will come somewhere before release that they'll probably restrict things down, after knowing it will activate OK. Not sure how they'll do that and keep it an open beta, but it's a test that would need to be done nonetheless...

I'm not sure about the black and grays (somehow the blues seem nicer tbh), but I s'pose that even in Vista there will be a user preference setting for all of this.

[NightFire]

Interestingly enough, I've heard the key that they give out for the beta test works on all versions of Office! Better get in while it still works...

[Son Goku]

Even funnier still, was that the MSDN keys seemed universal to all Microsoft software that was released at the time, regardless of whether it was distributed under MSDN or not.

However, and as an aside, probably when Office 2007 gets released retail, I doubt these keys will work. And as to older versions, my Office 2k that used to require phone activation stopped doing so after the product was more then 3 or 4 years old, or so. Not sure what the state will be with Office 2k3 however after a lot of time has ellapsed. I guess after awhile (at least looking at my Office 2k distro), they cease to care...

[ENU291]

Hey is anyone having a problem viewing the body of an email with Outlook 2007? All I see on emails I have recieved after the upgrade is the subject line of the email. Is there some new option I am missing that is preventing me from seeing the entire email message?

[Son Goku]

Does it provide you with a link "click here to view entire message"? I know in OE one can set it to not display emails by default (for security reasons, as well some emails can contain nasty-ware). But in those cases it does allow one to individually select the viewing of each one.

Perhaps I should look at Outlook 2007. Not sure if this got set to on by default, or if something else is going on...

[Riptide]

Outlook 2003 can do that. It's annoying. I'd play around in the view menus if he hasn't already tried that. Play around with autopreview as well if that is an option anywhere.