Office 12 = Office 2007

It is official. The new version of Office, until now only known as the rather boring 'Office 12' has been named as Office 2007. How original(!) Nevertheless, the new UI (two links there with screenies) does look quite cool, although it will take a bit of getting used to for a lot of people.

And from the looks of it there are going to be lots of versions, I'll round up the main versions of the whole suite here.

Microsoft Office Home & Student 2007

This looks like the natural successor to Office 2003 Student & Teacher Edition (the version I have), but they've dropped the 'students and teachers only' requirement.

• Word
• Excel
• PowerPoint
• OneNote

What? No Outlook? This looks interesting, as I use Office Outlook 2003 all the time for my primary email account. Result: people switch to Thunderbird? And do I really need OneNote? Well, only time will tell.

Microsoft Office Basic 2007

An OEM only version this one, so will only come bundled with a new computer (well, that's the idea anyway).

• Word
• Excel
• Outlook

But no PowerPoint? Actually, there was no PowerPoint in Office 2003 Basic either...

Microsoft Office Standard 2007

Your bog-standard retail-available version of Office.

• Word
• Excel
• PowerPoint
• Outlook

Microsoft Office Small Business 2007

Basically, it's standard plus Publisher and some small business stuff.

• Word
• Excel
• PowerPoint
• Outlook (with Business Contact Manager)
• Publisher

Microsoft Office Professional 2007

We've seen this version before, so not much to say here.

• Word
• Excel
• PowerPoint
• Outlook
• Access
• Publisher

Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007

A volume licence only version, so it's going to contain the following.

• Everything in Office Pro but also with:
• Office Communicator (business IM client)
• InfoPath

Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007

Wow, this is like Vista Ultimate Edition, but for Office. Apart from the fact that this is again, limited to volume licence purchase only.

• Everything in Office Pro Plus, as well as:
• OneNote
• Office Groove (P2P collaboration)
• Server-based content management, forms management, and information rights and policy capabilities (so it's all the data protection stuff introduced in Office 2003, right?)

That's it for the Office suite as one, but there is a whole round-up here (it's what I've said and a bit more).

Congratulations, by the way, if you're still reading here.

Peter