I installed Microsoft Office 2007 on a computer with Windows XP and then moved everything over to this box that has Linux on it. After moving Office 2007 over to the Linux box I had the joys of importing the registry settings from the XP install into Wine. After a week of working on this and tweaking Wine with dll overrides and registry settings I finally got most of Office 2007 to run in Wine.

This isn't a howto guide, this is only to show that its currently possible to run Office 2007 in Wine on Linux. In the future when I can put together a clean reproducible guide I will do so, so check back often if this is something that interest you.

About Office 2007
Microsoft Office 2007 (officially called 2007 Microsoft Office system) is the most recent version of Microsoft's productivity suite. Formerly known as Office "12" in the initial stages of its beta cycle, it was released to volume license customers on November 30, 2006 and made available to retail customers on January 30, 2007. These are, respectively, the same dates Windows Vista was released to volume licensing and retail customers. Office 2007 contains a number of new features, the most notable of which is the entirely new graphical user interface called the Fluent User Interface (initially referred to as the Ribbon UI), replacing the menus and toolbars that have been the cornerstone of Office since its inception. Office 2007 requires Windows XP with Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1, or Windows Vista.

Office 2007 also includes new applications and server-side tools. Chief among these is Groove, a collaboration and communication suite for smaller businesses, which was originally developed by Groove Networks before being acquired by Microsoft in 2005. Also included is Office SharePoint Server 2007, a major revision to the server platform for Office applications, which supports "Excel Services", a client-server architecture for supporting Excel workbooks that are shared in real time between multiple machines, and are also viewable and editable through a web page.

Microsoft FrontPage has been removed from the Office suite entirely. It has been replaced by Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer, which is aimed towards development of SharePoint portals. Its designer-oriented counterpart Microsoft Expression Web is targeted for general web development. However, neither application is included in any of the Office suites. Also, since speech recognition and handwriting recognition are now part of Windows Vista, speech and ink components have been removed from Office 2007. Handwriting and speech recognition work with Office 2007 only on Windows Vista or Windows XP Tablet PC Edition.

Product Information
Microsoft Office 2007 is a complete suite of productivity and database software that includes the 2007 versions of Publisher, Excel, Outlook, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, PowerPoint, Access, and Word. Powerful contact management features help you consolidate all customer and prospect information in one place, while improved menus present the right tools exactly when you need them. Office 2007 also lets you develop professional marketing materials for print, e-mail, and the Web, and produce effective marketing campaigns in-house. In addition, you can create dynamic business documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, and build databases with no prior experience or technical staff.

Whether you're working on a financial spreadsheet, creating an important presentation, or building a customer database, Office 2007 helps you find and use the features you need faster and more easily. The intuitive look and feel of this software, including task-based menus and toolbars that are automatically displayed based on the feature you are using, improves your productivity. With Publisher 2007, you can create and publish a wide range of marketing materials for print, e-mail, and the web with your own brand elements including logo, colors, fonts, and business information. Or take advantage of hundreds of professionally designed and customizable templates, and more than 100 blank publication types. This software also lets you reuse text, graphics, and design elements, and convert content from one publication type to another. You can also combine and filter mailing lists and data from multiple sources, including the 2007 versions of Excel, Outlook, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, and Access, to create personalized print and e-mail materials, and build custom collateral such as catalogs and datasheets.

                                   

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Doesn't make sense Panarchy 2008-09-30 01:31:08 In your description you said that it doesn't have Publisher. Yet you have Publisher in your screenshot. Explain!!! Thanks in advance for clearing this up, Panarchy Reply | Quote 1   1

Anonymous 2008-10-03 02:45:14 does ms acces have full functionality?? Reply | Quote 0   2

Tom Wickline 2009-01-31 21:26:55 No, Microsoft Access wont currently work with Wine. Reply | Quote 0   0

MS outlook? Rizwan Rafique 2009-02-28 01:16:40 Hi, Nice article. I wonder how far did you go with MS outlook 2007. I installed 2003 on wine 1.1.16 over Ubuntu Intrepid. It installs perfect but doesn't create any email account. Reply | Quote 0   0

PROBLEM WITH EXCEL IN wine JOHNSON 2009-03-15 14:51:23 Hi, am using ubuntu 8.10, using wine 1.1.17 now, have installed office 2007 in my system...everything works perfect except for excel, when i draw charts or any other plots, it acts wierd...does not show the axis system and cant even view the charts drawn in native windows sytems, when i load it into wine....could you elp me with this...amd esperate for a solution :).. thanks in advance...great job..cheers Reply | Quote 0   0

principal software systems engineer zman58 2009-03-19 12:01:44 Why go through the expense and pain of MS Office on Linux? It is not designed or supported for Linux. You must fork out $500 to obtain it (professional version). How do you upgrade it? How do you perform service maintenance on it? What happens when you call MS help desk on it? Stick with Open Office. It already works great on Linux--and on Windows. For economy and efficiency you will not beat it. Simple to install, upgrade, service, and use. Expand you horizons beyond the status quo. I suppose you want Internet Explorer on Linux also? ...maybe just stick with Windows if you want to run Window applications. ;) Reply | Quote 0   0

Tom Wickline 2009-07-12 14:14:56 zman58, You tell people to use Open Source software then turn around and tell them to stick with Windows if they dont run what you think is right for them. Reply | Quote 0   0

Franco 2009-05-17 13:10:09 You are being too vicious with him, Tom. He simply does not get why you want to run M$ Office on Linux when there are OpenSource equivalents. Reply | Quote 0   0

Senior Software Systems Engingeer zman58 2009-07-12 03:57:55 Wickline, I am not a troll and I only have one face :) I just can't imagine why anyone would go through the pain of trying to run applications that are not designed for a given platform on that platform--against the vendors plan. Microsoft does not design their software or business process behind it for Linux. Quite the opposite, they would probably be working against that use of their programs so why force yourself into that box? Why bind yourself in those chains? You will continuously be running the gamut trying to keep it operational on Linux--an utter waste of time. Consider using products that are DESIGNED with the Linux platform in mind. You will have much greater success and will find that the solutions and benefits of open source flow much easier in your direction. I have been using Open Office for many years now and it has delivered all of the solutions I need for the various components provided, documents, spreadsheets, drawings, database, etc. In most cases it does a far better job than the Office products available from Microsoft. It is available for free and can be distributed to as many systems and users as you desire--for free. It is also fully SUPPORTED on the Linux platform as well as other platforms, such as Windows. Use the power of the Community to get the answers and solutions you need. Reply | Quote 0   0

Tom Wickline 2009-07-12 14:16:11 OK, I edited my reply since people think im being harsh... Reply | Quote 0   0

Eh? Alex 2009-05-23 07:43:26 I believe that open source is the best way to create software however I still believe in using the best tool for the job, which in this case is MS Office. In the workplace, .doc and .xls documents have become the standard and in my opinion, unfortunately Openoffice just doesn't support these formats well enough. Text is often garbled, text boxes and other embedded objects often don't display, or display incorrectly and until OpenOffice sorts out these problems, or their open document formats become the norm, I'll just have to have my Linux with MS Office installed, supporting open source and linux as best I feasibly can. Reply | Quote 2   0

Senior Software Systems Engineer zman58 2009-07-12 04:30:09 Alex, You stated, "In the workplace, .doc and .xls documents have become the standard and in my opinion, unfortunately Openoffice just doesn't support these formats well enough." Well everyone is entitled to an opinion. But please consider that the formats you describe are not designed for interoperability as they are designed exclusively for vendor lock-in to the Microsoft platform. They are grossly unspecified, changing continually and generally broken. None-the-less, Open office does a great job with them except perhaps in some extreme corner cases. In some cases, Open Office actually does a better job reading older .doc formats than the later Microsoft products do. As long as you continue to accept Microsoft proprietary, ever changing, formats as "standards" you will be behind the curve in benefiting from the concepts of "Freedom" and choice. Why do you think DOJ and EU are having serious issues with this business? Perhaps the problem you are having is your own misconceptions in understanding the difference between freedom and servitude. If you look hard enough for reasons to stick with the status quo, then that is what you will do. On the other hand, how does Microsoft Office support a true inter-operable ISO standard of the IT world--the Open Document Format (ODF)? This is the native format of Open Office as well as many other office software products available in the open source world. ODF is also the format that Microsoft Office 2007 is supposed to support. The write-ups on Microsoft support of ODF have been seriously negative--I sense some serious foot-dragging on Microsoft's part. I wonder why? Do you know why? Be careful not to focus too heavily on the fancy spinning widget and consider the business behind it. The real story is in the EULA. Reply | Quote 0   0

Max T. 2009-04-07 19:33:37 I have Kubuntu 8.1 installed in my laptop and i think its great, but most of the companies around the world uses Ms-Office as the default word processor/spreadsheet calculator. So, i'll change to openoffice when it will be able to run and code excel macros in VBA. Reply | Quote 0   0

Petter 2009-10-15 18:40:24 You can't even do that on Office for Mac so your seriously weird though it will probably run a lot better then Office on WINE, you'd have better luck on variants of OpenOffice.org. Some support VBA macros or have tools to migrate them, you don't on Office for Mac. Virtual machine/RDS(Terminal server/Citrix) is the only way to go to run Office on Mac or Linux. It's also the only legal way of doing it. You seriously can't use Office for Mac in an enterprise so I wounder why they have it at all and why Apple is offering it, it must be some kind of deal, I mean even TextEdit supports docx-files and you also have Pages/iWork. OOo builds has better support for advanced documents then Office for Mac has. Any enterprise will stream the Windows application to the Mac desktops. Small businesses will just run iWork and the Pages application. You will never get full support for Word outside of Windows. But at least now the MS Office Binary File Format specs are open and free to implement. As well as the XML formats. The future isn't VBA docs. The future is .doc/x documents everywhere. Reply | Quote 0   0

getting an error installing Office 2007 De E. 2009-05-02 12:08:24 I've installed Wine. Now I'm trying to install Office 2007 on Ubuntu 9.04 and I keep getting an error. The installation bumps out about 30% into it. Any thoughts? or solutions? Thanks Reply | Quote 0   0

Office 2007's distinctive features Jim 2009-05-06 08:14:10 I am primarily using Office 2007 yet I tried OpenOffice.org on Ubuntu I must say for word processing Office 2007 possess distinctive functions such as the simple and easy to use interface (i.e. 2 clicks for setting spacing) and nice grammar and mistake checking plus synonyms and dictionary support. They surely attracts much for intensive typists. OpenOffice have the potential yet it's not fully revealed. It's been open sourced for around 8 years and I see improvements. Yet more are necessary. But it's free and open sourced I won't complaint about it. It's great software I agree. Don't get me wrong I am a supporter of free and open sourced software. However for businesses time is money and there's no reason why Office 2007 cannot be installed on open sourced environments, if it fits. Reply | Quote 2   0

M$ Office on Linux Franco 2009-05-17 13:08:45 I do think this is a good idea, if someone knows how to service it for themselves. If a user goes whining to M$ every time he/she needs help, then they should use OpenOffice.org (because M$ will sue he/she for not using windows). If someone really needs 100% compatibility between M$ programs and Linux programs, then they should install Office on Linux but use OpenOffice.org most of the time. Reply | Quote 0   2

re: M$ Office on Linux Chris 2009-08-22 23:11:29 OpenOffice needs a LOT of work! It's no where near the standard of MS Office 2007. Furthermore, it can't format MS Office .doc files which makes it effectively useless when everyone else is on Windows and writes to these files. If it effectively runs on Linux, I'm going to get it and bye bye OpenOffice. The only reason I survive with OpenOffice is because I export Writer and Impress files to PDF. (Impress is terrible btw, unless you want to create a very static and uninteresting presentation). I have no complaints with Calc tho - that's the one good program in the OpenOffice suite. Reply | Quote 0   0

re: re: M$ Office on Linux Lee 2010-01-18 16:47:33 Chris, I can't help but cough at your suggestion of MS Office being a standard. If a program can't even read it's own files properly (.doc) and .docx is not supported by default (by older versions), how can it be a standard? I always use Open Office (so thus you can criticize me and label me a fanatic) and it's files works just fine with MS. Okay, so I'm saving the files in Microsoft Office format. Can you criticize me for allowing people to not have an excuse to grumble? In my experience, Writer is *quite* flexible. And I do use Impress. It works. I still haven't figured out how to use Database, though. It's amazing somebody would go through so much pain to run it on Linux. You've got to admire that guy. Reply | Quote 0   0

ms office rules Anonymous 2009-11-07 02:16:09 windows os sucks, linux os good, openoffice sucks, ms office really good, the only way linux will get anywhere is if it has an office suite as good as ms office. Mac sales picked up after ms office was ported to it. Linux community should sue ms like apple did or make a better office suite or else stop bitching about being the best or wondering why it doesnt dominate the desktop market. P.s. No one can be the best at everything Reply | Quote 0   0

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