Software Review: Microsoft Word 2010

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Once you are used to the Ribbon, makes using the software easy

Cons: Little upgrades from Word 2007

The Bottom Line: 

Keeps the new layout

Makes creating documents

Logical and fun

Keeping it Easy to Create Documents

Office 2007 was the biggest change to hit Microsoft's family of software in years.    I can still remember struggling to find the tools I used to take for granted.  But the changes to the programs in Office 2010 were pretty small.  In fact, I didn't really notice anything different with Microsoft Word 2010.  That means it is easy to keep writing.

Word is Microsoft's word processing program, designed to help you create essays, fiction, poems, reviews...anything you want to write.  The main screen is a blank page, and as you type, the words appear on the screen just like on an old typewriter.  Of course, the joy of the computer age is that you can go back and make changes to a document as you go.  As someone who regularly makes mistakes in his typing, this feature is more than welcome.

I also love their spelling and grammar checks.  Okay, so they aren't perfect, and you need to know the rules yourself or get the misspelled word close to what you want for their suggestions to be helpful, but it's saved me on multiple occasions since I am the world's worst speller.  When Word doesn't recognize a word, it puts a red squiggly line under it to alert you.  Right clicking will give you suggested correct spellings, although the one of top is usually what I was aiming for.  Grammar is broken up into two sections, with a green line under things like sentence fragments and blue lines under things like homonyms.  This is where you really need to know the rules because it often flags sentences with dependent clauses as sentence fragments.  Additionally, it often gets confused on it's and its, sometimes even continuing to highlight the word as wrong even when I've just changed it.

Of course, the big change for Word 2007 was the ribbon across the top of the screen, and Word 2010 has kept that in place.  Instead of the familiar drop down menus, there are now tabs.  The first is "Home," and I spend most of my time here because the icons that come up are the things I use the most, like bolding or italicizing text, font type and size, or justifications.  But if you are looking for more advanced features, you can find them on tabs like "Insert," "Page Layout," or "References."  For reports for school, there's a whole tab dedicated to "References."  There is now a file tab on the far left hand side, and you can find the Help menu there as well as a few basic commands and the extended print menus.  When I first upgraded to Word 2007, the new menus and layout took me forever to figure out because I couldn't find the stuff I used to use without a thought.  Now, it is once again second nature, and nothing changed between 2007 and 2010 as far as the menus goes.

To be honest, I haven't used the biggest changes in Word 2010 because they involve graphics.  I don't tend to do much with pictures in my word processing documents if anything at all, so I haven't had a reason to use them.  If you are like me, there's probably little need to upgrade to this version from the 2007 version.

Another feature I do like is the funning work count in the lower left hand corner.  It took me forever to find that since I used word count all the time to see just how wordy I am.  This makes it almost too easy since I can look down at any point.

When you go to install the program from the CD it comes on, you'll have to sit there for the standard Ok and Continue clicks, but it's really straight forward and easy to use.  Microsoft does require you to have a 500 Mhz process, 256 MB of RAM, and 2 GB of hard disc space for the program to properly install and run.  That's up in all areas from Word 2003, but pretty much equal to the Word 2007 version.

Once you are used to the ribbon in Word 2010, you'll find the software is great.

Software Review: Microsoft Excel 2010

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Quickly and easily crunches numbers for you

Cons: Until you really understand it, it can be hard to figure out

The Bottom Line: 

Numbers everywhere

Made easy to understand

By Excel's power

Still an Accountant's (or Number Geek's) Best Friend

In my day job as an accountant, I use Microsoft Excel every day and have for years.  I've actually been using it for several generations now.  Currently, I'm working with Excel 2010, and I find it just as user friendly as always.

For those unfamiliar with Excel, it is a spreadsheet program.  That's right, this isn't something that normal people use on a daily basis or even look forward to using.  In fact, it can be a little intimidating when you open it and see a grid with letters on the top of the screen and numbers along the side.

Next to the accounting software, this is the program I use the most for work, however.  Each of those parts of the grid, called a cell, can contain data.  I can put words in there or numbers.  Once I've got the numbers in there, I can quickly add up large columns of numbers or manipulate them however I want with various formulas.  Need to correct a typo?  No issue, the formula automatically recalculates everything for you.  I can sort.  I can copy and paste, even from other programs.  I'll dump stuff from my accounting software in here and work on it.  I download weekly statements from our bank to do reconciliations.  By cutting, pasting, and sorting, I get stuff that I can easily use to stay on top of this mammoth task.  Heck, we've got a file we created to allocate interest from our savings account across 100 sub-accounts.  It even then creates the journal entry for me and creates a format we can use to copy it back to our accounting software.

And, yes, I use it at home, too.  I keep track of stats on some of my hobbies in various Excel files at home.  I also keep my personal checking account balance in a spreadsheet.

As you can see, Excel can be used for simple or complex tasks.  You can create graphs based on the information in your spreadsheet, and there are more complex features I have never used.  Once you get over the initial hesitation, the number of ways you can manipulate your data is addicting.

To be honest, I don't remember when I switched over to Excel 2010.  Since I use it at work (still use Excel 2003 at home), the MIS department installed it on my computer for me.  Based on the Microsoft products I've installed at home, I'm sure that the basic installation just took a few minutes.

If you are familiar with Excel 2007, you won't notice too many differences.  And if, like me at home, you are running an eight year old version, be prepared for lots of changes.  Instead of the old, familiar drop down menus at the top, you now have what they call a ribbon.  There are different tabs on the top of your screen, and each of those tabs has tons of options.  It took me a while to get used to this change, and I still have to do a little hunting to find something I don't use too often, but now I love it.  The default tab is "Home," and it has almost everything you would normally need to do right at your fingertips.  You can bold the cell, cut and paste, chose the number format, insert or delete cells or rows, sort, and auto sum with just the click of a button all from the Home tab.  Once I got used to it, it was so much faster.  And for those who complained they couldn't customize it before, one of the changes in Excel 2010 is the ability to customize the ribbon.

Those who share spreadsheets back and forth will love the fact that comments are now part of Excel.  Just like with Word, you can leave multiple comments to let a co-worker know what changes you think should be made or what errors you've found and already corrected.

To be honest, there are lots of functions to Excel that I don't use.  I was looking up a list of the changes for Excel 2010, and most of them are things I never even use.  If you have used Excel, the new version won't throw you for a loop, especially if you have used Excel 2007.  If you are really upgrading from Excel 2003, the new format will take some getting used to, but once you do it will be great.  A couple cool features I do like are changes to allow faster use (although usually it is wait for me and not the other way around) and "sparklines," little graphs that show data in one cell.  Now that I know about those small graphs, I'm having a blast playing around with them.

By the time I graduated from college, computers were doing the hard work of accounting.  My limited exposer to Excel mushroomed quickly, and I became comfortable with it. Believe me, I know my life is much easier thanks to Microsoft Excel 2010.  I couldn't go back to doing all this by hand.

Software Review: Microsoft Office Small Business 2007

Stars: 5 out of 5
Pros: New design user friendly; lots of programs; unhelpful help kept to a minimum

Cons: Expensive, especially for personal use; steep learning curve at first

The Bottom Line:

Lots of big changes

But the programs are stronger

Once you relearn them

Not the Microsoft Office Suite for Personal Use, but It's Perfect for Small Businesses

Change is never popular.  So you can imagine how I reacted at first when I was upgraded to Office 2007 at work.  It took programs I had managed to figure out to get along with (I'm not the biggest Microsoft fan) and made them a whole new learning experience.  Trust me, I wasn't that productive during the first few weeks.  But as I got the hang of it, I really started to like the changes.  I even came to the point where I thought it might not just be change for the sake of change.

Every version of Microsoft Office is different.  Hopefully, you already know the programs you need, so you can look for the particular programs you need.  This particular package is the Small Business package.  It's probably got more programs than the casual user needs, and a price to match.  If you are looking for something simple, you probably want the Home and Office version.  But I'll get to that in a minute.  In the mean time, here's what is included in this version of Office.

Word - One of several programs that every version of Office has, this is the Microsoft's word processing program.  You'll want this for typing anything related to, well, words.  (At least one program has a name that makes sense.)  I'm using Word to type this review, for example, before I post it here at Epinions.  It's a great program to use for essays and letters.  You can add graphics, although whenever I try to do that, I always wind up screaming at my machine.  If you stick with writing and editing word documents in Word, you'll be very happy with it.

Excel - I use this program every day in my day job as an accountant.  Honestly, I don't know how accountants lived without this program.  I know it scares many people, but it is really very simple to use.  You start with a blank grid, and you can create your own spreadsheet full of facts and figures.  Then you can create your own formulas to get totals of all the data or parts of it.  As if that's not enough, the program even creates graphs of all kinds with the touch of a button.

PowerPoint - This seems to round out the holy trinity of Office products.  As far as I know, all three of these are in just about every version of Office released.  Anyway, this program is how you quickly and easily create presentations for meetings.  This can be something as important as a board meeting at a company or as informal as the worship choruses and sermon points for a Sunday church service.  Everything you need is here, including cool backgrounds, although you might want to add your own.

Publisher - Now we're getting into the programs you are spending big bucks to buy in this bundle.  This program is designed to help you create a great looking layout for your printed text.  This is useful if you are designing your own brochures, business cards, fliers, or any other piece of printed material that isn't just straight text.

Outlook - This is a very powerful little program, and the more I use it, the more I realize that.  I've used it for years for my work e-mail, and it is nice for that.  You can easily see messages sent and received and search by sender, date, subject, or even a conversation if there are multiple replies back and forward.  But it doesn't stop there.  It includes a calendar where you can list appointments.  It's got a task list that you can color coordinate to keep you more organized (or waste more time getting organized).  And the version included here can keep your business contacts for you, including names, addresses, and phone numbers.

The biggest absence to this list, at least in my mind, is Access.  That's probably because I also use it every day at work because my boss loves his databases.  But many people can probably get by without it.

These programs are all great if you are in a business where you need them.  And if you are in a business, I recommend thinking about this particular bundle.  However, if you are just buying for home, you probably don't need all these programs (or to spend all the money to get them).  Microsoft does sell a cheaper Home and Student package.  For about a quarter of the price, you get Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote - a program I've never used but that is supposed to make random note taking easier.

I mentioned earlier the big changes that Microsoft introduced with Office 2007.  Take everything you know about an Office program and throw it out the window.  Instead of drop down menus at the top, there are now tabs.  Each tab has a series of buttons you can click to do all the things you used to need the menus to do.  It took quite a while to get used to what was where when it came to looking for things.  But now I have the hang of it.  Almost everything I use on a regular basis is on the Home tab.  And the buttons have either an appropriate word description or a familiar icon from the old version.  It still takes a little time to find what I need if I want to do something I don't normally do, but that's always the case with me.  While all the old shortcut keys still work, they aren't advertised.  Personally, I've always been a mouse person, so it doesn't bother me.  My boss, however, hates his mouse, so not being able to learn new keyboard shortcuts drives him crazy.

Probably because of the changed format, they also introduced new extensions for saving the files with this version of Office.  Fortunately, they do allow you to save stuff in the old format, so if you are slowly upgrading a bunch of computer, you can still work on one file over all of them.  I am a little surprised that they don't prompt you to save an old format file in the new format when you save it, but I appreciate it.  Since I haven't bothered upgrading most of my files, I can say I haven't found any loss of feature by using the old format, either.

I've never been the biggest Microsoft fan.  I've always found that their programs think too much for themselves.  In their attempts to help me, they cause me greater pain and time undoing their "help."  While that can still be the case here, I've found that their intrusive unhelp is being kept to a minimum.  It's not quite enough to make me love them, but I don't dread trying something new anymore.

I will probably never completely sing the praises of Microsoft.  But after the very steep learning curve, I've really come to appreciate the changes made to Office 2007.  Here's hoping that for the inevitable upgrade, they build on the good.

Software Review: MAS 200

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Logical interfaces; handles many users well

Cons: Accounts Receivable invoices

The Bottom Line:

You'll find some quirks here

But software is mostly good

And easy to learn

Easy to Learn and Use Accounting Program

When I was in college (way back in the mid-90's), I was an accounting major. And we spent no time learning accounting software. The argument was that we needed to know what the accounting software was doing behind the scenes. If we understood that, we could pick up any accounting software while on the job. Since graduating from college, I have had exactly one job. And that job has used MAS 90 or now MAS 200. As a result, I can't compare it to other accounting software's on the market. But I have found this software easy to use and logical in my ten years of everyday on the job use.

What's in a Name?

When I first started my job, we were using MAS 90. Sometime after the turn of the millennium, they decided that MAS 90 sounded so last century, so they changed the name to MAS 200. That's the version we've been using for the last few years, but the program is the same. (And if you're wondering, MAS stands for Master Accounting Software.)

The software manufacturer has also changed their name over the years. When I started, they were Sage Software. Our current version says it was made by Best Software, Inc. What's the difference? I'm not quite sure, but now you know.

A Little About Us

Just so you have some clue how my experience might translate to your company, here's a little about where I work.

I work for my alma mater, a small, private liberal arts college. We have about 1,000 students, 250 full time employees, but over 600 when you factor in student workers. And we've got around 50 departments on campus.

The number of people using the software has varied over the years. The most we've ever had has been 12. We've got about 9 currently.

About the Software

Mas 200 offers their customers a series of "Modules." Each traditional accounting sub-department has their own module. For example, we most often use General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Payroll, and Bank Reconciliation. We've also got some others involving importing data from other programs. For example, we use an Excel spreadsheet to record various deposits, then we use the Visual Integrator module to actually import the data.

When you buy the software, you get one license and the basic program. Each module you need costs more. And each employee who needs access to the software costs an additional license fee.

The modules themselves are fairly straight forward to use. The General Ledger module, for example, has separate screens to look up information on a particular general ledger account, print our reports, and input journal entries. My boss has spent a long time creating custom reports, and we use those each month to send to the various departments so they have some idea how they are doing financially.

In Accounts Payable, you create a unique vendor ID for every company, then you use that ID to input invoices and print checks.

Accounts Receivable allows you to track each customer by ID, input payments, and track delinquent accounts.

Checks and payments automatically update into the Bank Reconciliation module, which makes it easy to reconcile the bank. You can track multiple bank accounts at once with this module. We actively use 6 right now and have used more in the past.

Payroll not only allows you to pay employees, but it also tracks benefit deductions and information for quarterly and annual reports, which makes creating those a breeze. It also prints out W-2's and collects the information for state payroll taxes.

These are the modules I am most familiar with. As I said earlier, we use others. For example, Magnetic Media gives us the information needed for our state filing in the correct format so we can save it to a disc and send it in each quarter.

Our Experiences

Each time you ask MAS 200 to do a new task, it opens a new window for you. It took me no time at all to learn the software as the windows are very logical. In fact, I recently had to print a check, something I haven't done since I first started. I figured out how to do it without any problems.

As I hinted earlier, we track expenses for each department separately. As a result, you should see our chart of accounts. MAS 200 is set up to handle that. Every department has their own separate chart of accounts, and the program keeps track of the separate information and combines it all with ease. I know my boss has spent a lot of time setting all this up. But once it is set up, it works well.

When I first started, you could actually go too fast for the program. If I got going doing data inputting, I would move faster then it was ready for, leaving me with some blank fields and no data input. With the most recent upgrade, that's no longer been a problem. In fact, I tried to trip it up, and I couldn't.

As soon as the calendar year changes, the program wants to put everything in the new year. We've always got a couple weeks where we are processing stuff for January and December at the same time. Since we normally don't have to input the year, everyone inadvertently puts something in December of the new year. It's always easy enough to fix, but it would be nice if the program were smart enough to put things in the correct December.

Being a small company, we don't often have conflicts, but they do come up. For example, when I am reconciling the bank, no one can update check runs or deposits. When this happens, the program lets the "blocked" user know they can't complete that task right then. The error message retries frequently, and when the conflict goes away it proceeds with the update.

The biggest problem we have had is with the Accounts Receivable system. The statements that it generated were almost impossible for students and parents to follow. I know I never figured them out when I was a student. A few years after I started, we created our own database program and use that to track student accounts. That's made the students much happier. It takes a little more work to get the information into MAS 200 for financial report purposes and bank reconciliation, but we figured it out. We have to run special programs to update MAS 200 every so often, but they do work.

And I swear there is a ghost in the system. It seems every January when we start a new year for Payroll, one person's deductions get changed at random. We never have figured out this phenomenon, but it means you have to keep reconciling accounts to make sure things are working right. Since that's part of my job, it means job security.

Conclusion

MAS 200 has a few issues, most noticeably the Accounts Receivable invoices. But it is basically a solid accounting program that works well for our small accounting department.

Software Review: Excel 2003

Stars: 3 out of 5

Pros: Makes adding numbers and creating number reports easy

Cons: It’s 10 years old

The Bottom Line:

Creating spreadsheets

Becomes easy and painless

Software out of date

Excel 2003 Adds Up to…Usable but Outdated Software

Computers have revolutionized how we do business.  Between word processing and spreadsheet programs, it’s easy to create documents and then edit them on the fly.  Honestly, I can’t imagine going back to the pencil and paper days.  Since Microsoft has a virtual monopoly on these types of software programs, the go to program for spreadsheets is Excel.  Currently, I am using the 2003 edition which is outdated but still so useful.

While a word processing program seems fairly obvious when you first open it up, spreadsheet programs can be a bit intimidating if you aren’t familiar with them.  After all, you just see a grid with letters for the columns and numbers for the rows.  What exactly do you do?

Anything you want.  Excel is actually a very powerful software if you have to do anything with numbers.  And in today’s business world, who doesn’t?  Its main purpose is to report financial information in ways that are easy to read and follow.

You can enter any type of information you want in each cell in the grid – words, symbols, numbers, or any combination thereof.  You can label rows and columns and then enter the actual numbers in the resulting grid.  For example, the columns might be the months of the year and the rows could then be revenue and expenses.  You’d plug in the values for each in the cell the matches.  Or you could flip that.  Or you could break it down by week and sub-sub-sub account.  Anything you want with as much or little detail as you need.

Of course, one reason I love this program is the formulas.  Instead of manually adding up the numbers entered, Excel does it for you.  Actually, you can add, subtract, multiply, or divide.  Change a number?  The formula updates automatically for you.

And, of course, you can cut, copy, paste, print, change color, format, or anything else your little heart desires.

Looking for more features, you can create pie charts and other graphs.  Or you can even create a pivot table.  This will take a huge amount of date and summarize it for you.  Change your source data?  Just update your table.  It really is that easy.

And I have a feeling I’m missing out on some other powerful features, but these are the ones I use the most.  I love having all of these at my finger tips.

My computer at home is a dinosaur, so I still use Excel 2003 there.  I am using it at my current job as well since I’m using old computers there, too.  But I used to use 2007 and even 2010 at my last job.  The basic functionality remains the same.  You’re still putting numbers in spreadsheets and adding them up.

However, the jump from 2003 to 2007 was a major upgrade.  So major in fact that Microsoft created a new file system.  You can open any file created in Excel 2003 in the later versions no questions asked.  However, if someone sends you a file in Excel 2007 or 2010, you need a special conversion program to open it.  It does a good job (I’m using it quite a bit at work).  But then you need to save a new version of the file in Excel 2003 instead of just saving any changes or updates to the old file.

The other major change is what Microsoft called the “ribbon.”  Instead of the old menu options displayed on the top with further drop down menus, the options were displayed on several different tabs.  Think of the old traditional icons but with icons for everything.  Yes, the old shortcut keys did still work, but I’m not a keyboard shortcut guy, so that was never an issue for me.  It did take people a little while to learn where the commands were located now, but once you get used to it, it’s easy to use.  It’s certainly no harder than Excel 2003.

So what do I recommend?  There’s really not even a question.  Why would you go out and buy Excel 2003?  It’s 10 years old!  Go with the latest and greatest edition because it’s the one that Microsoft will be supporting for the immediate future.  But if you have Excel 2003, there’s no reason to rush out to upgrade.  The changes are nice, but you can still use the one you have just fine.