Preview the 2007 Microsoft Office system and gain first-hand experience with the new look and feel, features, and functionality of the 2007 Microsoft Office release. Microsoft Office 2007 Beta 2 is a public preview release designed to help you evaluate the Microsoft Office system. The beta is not final and should not be used for business-critical work.

When planning the release of the 2007 Microsoft Office system, formerly code-named Office "12", MS took on the challenge of making the core Microsoft Office applications easier to work with. Taking into account extensive usability data and recent advancements in hardware and software, the team has delivered the most significant update to the Microsoft Office user interface in more than a decade. The result of these efforts is a user interface that makes it easier for people to get more out of Microsoft Office applications so they can deliver better results faster.

The goal of the new Microsoft Office user interface is to make it easier for people to use Microsoft Office applications to deliver better results faster. They’ve made it easier to find powerful features by replacing menus and toolbars with a Ribbon that organizes and presents capabilities in a way that corresponds more directly to how people work. The streamlined screen layout and dynamic results-oriented Galleries enable users to spend more time focused on their work and less time trying to get the application to do what they want it to do. As a result, with the new Microsoft Office user interface, people will find it much easier and quicker to produce great looking documents, high-impact presentations, effective spreadsheets, and powerful desktop database applications.