Go and get it

Some screenshots I took:

The new splash screen:


The new program icons:


The new silver theme:


About Dialog for Word 12 B2TR:

Oooo, time to go hunting!

Does it need a new key, or will the beta 2 ones work?

It's an update patch, you will need Office 2007 Beta 2 pre-installed. It doesn't require a product key, just make sure you have Beta 2 installed correctly.

Excellent, thanks. Hopefully it will be posted on MSDN (or elsewhere) soon.

Some pretty big bugs in this version, people are reporting that they can't open files created in Office B1/B2 :S Yikes.

<sigh> Gotta love things like that.

BTW, does this update the server apps as well, such as Sharepoint and Project Server?

I tried opening a Word document and an Excel file that were saved in an earlier beta, and at first they would not open. But the reason for that was because I was opening them from the "My Documents" folder in my Windows XP partition, and I guess I didn't have full access to that in Vista. I copied the files over to the "Documents" folder in Vista, and both of them opened fine then.

But I'm liking this new beta though. There are lots of changes in this TR build (Office sure has a stupid beta release plan).



Well Bink has the link for the SharePoint server:

http://bink.nu/Article8301.bink

Excellent! All the TR files are there! Thanks a ton, Chug

Here's the MS download page:

Anyone noticed how damn fast the TR is? Word opens in less than a second, everything is so fast.

nice.

if you want to change between color schemes, go to or create a new DWORD value name "Theme" to this key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common

0,1, & >3 = BLUE
2= Silver
3= Black

(edit: DUHH just realized this option is available in the Editor Options in Outlook...)

i tried figuring out how to patch the main beta 2 installation source with the msp files obtained from extracting the B2TR file without any luck, since admin install points have been removed from 2007. I think it may take a little more work with the command line and some properties and maybe ORCA to get a full stand-alone installation out of this one.

I haven't looked at that aspect yet, but when I do. Thats one of the first things I'm gonna try. I'll let you know how it goes.

No sign whatsoever on how things are going to work on the corp versions of this and Vista yet. Frankly, those of us that are officially allowed to use them are getting a little nervous....

If you extract the package with the /extract switch, then in the root of the extracted package dir, run <setup> /admin it should give you a list of commands. But that was back in Beta 1, things are bound to have changed by now.

i already tried that. /admin creates a msp file that is used with the /adminfile switch. extracting the b2tr exe with an /extract switch gives you 6 msp files that corresspond to six msi files in the original beta 2 installation. since those original msi files lack administrative install capability, they cannot be patched. i still would like to figure out if i can somehow get admin point out of them by manipulating the command line properties.

though this looks like how they will handle it.



from: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/desktopde...eUpgrade_5.mspx

edit:
@singh

hey, what theme are you running in that program icon screenshot?

doh! I totally forgot about the \Updates\ dir.

It's Luna Element 5.

tried a fresh install with the updates in the update folder on a clean system with office 2k3 installed. even used the OCT to create an install msp to remove all the old components and install full and silent. worked fine, but it installs first then runs the patches. to me this is insane. if you have remote users that you are going to push office 2k7 to, to install a 600mb install and then patch it with 500mb of files is really a waste. to not be able to update the install point to already be patched seems insane.

to even write a whole 600mb to a local system and then patch is with another 500 is nuts.

Has anyone had a problem with the update not running at all? It ran fine on my desktop, but when I try and run it on my laptop, the install won't even start.. :\

nevermind..for whatever reason the setup didn't copy correctly the first time, it works fine now.

Which is why this is a BETA. It's not intended to be deployed that way yet.

i don't think so. i don't think it has anything to do with beta. according to these, it seems that this is the way it is going to go.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/desktopde...eUpgrade_5.mspx

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us...3.mspx?mfr=true

EDIT: OK, I see where's you're going. It won't be bad until we need to slipstream a service pack, but I do see your point - eventually it's going to be painful pushing out new installs.