Course
Advice
Microsoft Office Versions
We are currently offering Microsoft Office application courses using Microsoft Office System 2003 (conventionally known as "Office 2003") and the 2007 Microsoft Office System ("Office 2007"). These include courses in the following applications: Access 2003, Access 2007, Excel 2003, Excel 2007, FrontPage 2003, Outlook 2003, PowerPoint 2003, PowerPoint 2007, Project 2003, Publisher 2003, Word 2003, and Word 2007.
If you are using Microsoft Office XP, you can take our Office 2003 courses. There are very few differences between the 2002 and 2003 versions of most Office applications. Overwhelmingly, the features covered in our Office 2003 courses are applicable to the 2002 applications, but you may see a few minor differences. Most of the significant enhancements are extremely specialized and do not apply to our general curriculum. For example, Office 2003 allows you to use XML to organize your Word and Excel documents, but this feature is not currently covered in our courses. Outlook 2003 offers the most notable changes in Office 2003, including improvements to the user interface, although the primary functionality of Outlook is similar to previous versions.
Our Office 2003 courses are also appropriate for students using older Office programs, such as Office 2000 and Office 97. If you are using an older Office version, you may notice some changes to the appearance of the desktop and some enhanced features, but overall, there are not significant differences among versions 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using the Office 97 or 2000 products, you could take our Office 2003 courses.
Microsoft has introduced many new features and significant changes in Access 2007, Excel 2007, PowerPoint 2007, and Word 2007. These changes include a drastically different interface, where the traditional toolbars and menus have been replaced by a new Ribbon.
If you are an experienced user of Access, Excel, PowerPoint, or Word, and you are upgrading to Office 2007, consider taking our Transitioning to Office 2007 course. This half-day course will help experienced users ease the transition to Office 2007 by introducing the most important new features and updates, including how to access a variety of common commands. After taking this course, you can continue your Office training by taking one of our intermediate or advanced Office 2007 application classes, depending on your needs and level of experience. (These intermediate and advanced courses assume a familiarity with the new Office 2007 interface, including the Ribbon and the Microsoft Office Button.)
For beginning Office 2007 users, we will be offering introductory Access, Excel, PowerPoint, and Word 2007 courses beginning in September 2007.
Because the other Office 2007 applications, such as Publisher, Project, and Visio, use the same interface as previous versions of Office (including traditional toolbars and menus), students looking for training in Publisher 2007, Project 2007, or Visio 2007 can take the 2003 versions of these courses to learn the application's basic functionality. New features introduced in Office 2007 will not be covered in these classes.
If you are having trouble deciding which course is best for you, call Paul Westermann at (314)-984-9000 or email info@micros.umsl.edu
