In my previous post I mentioned that if you are going to use SharePoint 2007 you really should use Office 2007 with it. In this post I will try to describe differences between various versions so you can know what to expect on your implementation.

Every project is different, and you will encounter numerous combinations of Microsoft software installed. Some large corporations we work with, are still using Office 2000 and Office XP. The majority of enterprise accounts are still using Office 2003 on Windows XP. (I cannot find any hard figures on this though).

Scenario 1

Client platform: Office 2007
Server Platform: SharePoint Portal Server 2003

You might have a customer that moved to Office 2007 but who is still using SharePoint 2003. There might be a number of reasons for this. Your customer probably has a very customized  SharePoint 2003 and have decided not to upgrade it because it the solution work fine.

Feature	Office 2007 with SharePoint Portal Server 2003
Saving documents to SharePoint sites
Editing documents stored to a SharePoint site	(Edition only works for the Office 2003 formats. You cannot save a DOCX back to SharePoint 2003)
Check-out/in, version history
Updating properties	(it works but not as elegant as on SharePoint 2007)

 You will also experience the following server limitations:

• Inability to index new document formats
• Problems with using Address Books
  
  

Scenario 2

Server Platform: Office SharePoint Server 2007

In most cases you will run into this scenario. Your customer decided to implement SharePoint 2007, but they will still be using Office 2003. Here are differences between Office 2003 and Office 2007 when working with data from SharePoint sites.

Application / Feature	Office 2003	Office 2007
Saving and editing Office 2003 files from SharePoint sites
Saving and editing Office 2007 files from SharePoint sites	You must install Compatibility Pack.
Check-out/in, version history
Start a workflow
Word
Updating properties	Improved in Word 2007.
Inserting document properties for (DOC/DOCX)	(DOC file format)	(DOCX file format)
Automatically updating server properties that were inserted to document body (DOC/DOCX)
Write a blog post
Compare versions of a SharePoint document	/ (Very limited)
Outlook
Synchronize tasks/discussion boards to Outlook
Synchronizing calendars to Outlook	/ (One-way sync only; from SharePoint to Outlook)
Synchronizing contacts to Outlook	/ (One-way sync only; from SharePoint to Outlook)
Synchronize document libraries to Outlook
Excel
Publishing Excel files as web pages
Powerpoint
Working with Slide Library