Create a shortcut for the programs you want to use Word, Excel, etc. Office itself isn't really a program but a collection of programs.

Office 2007 is not a single program. It is the collection of individual programs. You would create shortcuts for each one you use - Word, Excel, PowerPoint... (Edit --- I see dvair already said the same thing about the shortcuts!)

However, I strongly recommend that you uninstall Office 2007 and obtain a more recent version or use one of the alternatives. Office 2007 is long out of support and is a major security risk.

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

Hi Bill, everything seems to be OK. The main thing is the payroll program and that's not old it gets regular updates and he has to pay a yearly licence to use it, he's had to get the next version of it in the last few months to accommodate more employees. No problems with Office either as I have the yearly licence edition of that as well.

I understand what you say about the speed and other factors just didn't feel comfortable about having to leave the machines switched on when we went to bed, especially as the weather was a bit rough with the winds and it always worries me about power cuts.

Fingers crossed all machines in the house are up to date and no major problems.

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Joan Archer
http://crossstitcher.webs.com

Hi Steve.....I was having trouble with creating desktop shortcuts in general because it was necessary to find the file location and click on that to create the shortcut.....as an example, "notepad" was under (C:) Windows>notepad.

As for Office 2007, the only thing I use in Office is "Word". I normally type a letter, print it, put it in an envelope and mail it USPS to someone. My Windows 10 Pro came with Apache Open Office 4 which seems very similar to Microsoft Office so maybe I can try that and see if I like it or not.

You'll find the program file for Word as winword.exe -- probably in the Program Files (x86) folder
Since I don't have Office 2007 any longer, I can't confirm where it will be, but probably somewhere in a Microsoft Office folder under that branch.
If you have installed any part of Office 2007, your PC is at risk.
If you are connected to the Internet to type your letter, you can use the free Office online -- https://office.live.com/start/Word.aspx#

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

Can you elaborate a bit on just what is at risk? The entire program Office 2007 is installed on Windows 10 Pro. I have been using it on Windows 7 Pro for 13 years and never had any issues.......are you only talking about the risk being on 10 and not 7?

He is saying Office 2007 is a risk because it is no longer supported. It is a risk on any system as it will no longer be updated.

As an add-on it isn't just a risk of you using software that is no longer supported. It is a risk just being there. The thing is that, even though you may not use an Office app for anything on-line, the Office app can still be compromised. When you open the Office app for your own usage the compromise takes over.

Is it a large risk? I don't exactly know how to answer that. In theory your security setup SHOULD catch a compromise but theories are just that, theories.

If you need to or insist on staying with Office 2007 I even more strongly suggest that you go with Malware Bytes Premium to protect a visited site being able to drop an Office infection on you as Malware Bytes checks the code being sent from a site and will not allow a malicious site to load. Also don't ever open an emailed file that came in as an attachment that uses Office to open. This even includes such attachments sent from people that you know and trust as they may be forwarding something that they received that is bad without their knowing.

If you don't want to pay for a recent version of Office I would suggest that you remove Office 2007 and install Libre Office which is totally excellent and free. You can find a link to Libre Office on the Computer Haven download page at: https://computerhaven.com/downloads.html
Hover over the download link and a small window will pop up giving more info.

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Jay has provided some good details on the risk and a suggestion to up your security level with Malwarebytes Pro to help mitigate the risk that is presented by having Office 2007 installed.
Here's an example of a security hole that was patched in supported versions of Office. I don't believe it was patched for Office 2007 since it was discovered after Office 2007 End of Life... https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/microsoft-office-rce-exploit.html
-steve

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

I still don't understand all of this. I have already used Office 2007 Word about 5 or 6 times on my Windows 10 Pro Computer checking it out for my own use so does that mean it is compromised?........or does it mean that it might be compromised? It still seems to be working ok, I can type, save and print without incident. Do I have to be on line for this compromise to take place?

Nope, doesn't mean it's compromised at all (right now). It is just more vulnerable than a newer version of Office to being compromised as it is no longer going to be patched.

It does not mean that Office 2007 is compromised. It means that there is a higher risk of it becoming compromised.

Yes, you would need to be on-line for Office 2007 to become compromised. The exception would be such a case where someone sent you an email attachment that was infected and you saved the attachment. If you opened such an attachment it would not likely matter if you were to be on-line or not.

Here is where software becomes an issue when it has reached its end of life as to support. Yes, the software will continue to run fine but will receive no additional security updates. The bad guys know that many will continue to use such software even though it has reached its end of life. They also know that there will be more security updates to patch vulnerabilities in the software. This means that, if they find a new vulnerability, they know it won't be patched. This makes such software an easy target.

You should really look at Libre Office. It is an awesome free package. Since you seem to mostly use just Word I doubt that you would see much of any difference. It is missing some features that are included in Excel but these are appearance of the work sheet features, not functionality. You may want to, at least, look at Libre Office as you can have both Office 2007 and Libre Office installed without any conflict.
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/

You have to understand that we have to look at the worst case possibility when giving advice. Running obsolete software DOES mean that there is a higher security risk on a system but it is impossible to say how high the risk may be.

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Hi Jay.....I understand it much better now. Since I am not going on line with Windows 10 until I learn how to use it, the risk of using MS Office 2007 Word seems very slim. One thing for sure, I will never download anything to Windows 10 nor will I ever use it for email.

So far, I dont like Windows 10 much when compared to Windows 7. It has lots of apps that I will never use......is it ok to delete them?
I have tried out all of the programs that I have installed on Windows 10 and they all work, however, MS Expression Encoder 4 Screen Capture runs 3 times faster on Windows 7 than it does on Windows 10. I'm not sure why that is because the program is identical.

Yes, Windows 10 puts up a lot of apps I don't want either. Right click on any you don't want as to the live tiles in the start menu and feel free to select to uninstall.

I'm not sure what you mean by "MS Expression Encoder 4 Screen Capture". Is this part of Expressions Web? When it first came out I tried Expressions Web and did not like. As to a screen capture you might want to click Start then type "snipping tool". It is a screen capture app built into Windows that is pretty good. If you like the Windows Snipping Tool screen capture you can type it in again in the Start Menu and right click on the result selecting to pin to the taskbar making it always easily available.

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I'll second Jay's recommendation about the Snipping Tool, I use that quite a lot and have it pinned to the taskbar so it's always available.

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Joan Archer
http://crossstitcher.webs.com

Hi Jay......Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 Screen Capture with Service Pac 2 is an entirely different program than Microsoft Expression Web. Also quite different than the "snipping tool" App that is on Windows 10.

What Encoder 4 does is capture audio/video from the screen...things like videos on youtube or any other video that you can play on your computer. It has two stages, the first stage captures the video and the 2nd stage sends it to the Encoder where it converts the file to .wmv.......... .wmv's do not play on everything so I use another program called Freemake Video Converter to convert the .wmv to .mp4 which can be played just about everywhere.

More details about MS Encoder Screen Cap on the url below. Just scroll down beyond that black ad:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27870

Sounds like it may be similar to a program that I use called Camtasia by TechSmith.
https://www.techsmith.com/video-editor.html

Actually I think that I remember you looking for Encoder and I gave a link to the free download. It is not supported by Windows Versions after Windows 7. That does not mean that the speed loss can't possibly be helped as it DOES run. If you have a desktop icon for the thing try right clicking and selecting properties. Under the Compatibility tab select to run as Windows 7. There are several other options you could try but it is one of those trial and error things.

Encoder reached its end of life before Windows 10 came out so some glitches can be expected.

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Jay, I went to this website and saw where Camtasia costs $249, plus $50 for maintenance. For me, that's a pretty expensive piece of software. TechSmith also makes a program called Snagit that sells for $50. Have you ever used Snagit; if so, how did you like it? I'm looking to 'jazz up' the short animal videos that I take with my trail cameras, but not $300 worth of jazz, lol.

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BB
http://barrypatch.net

SnagIt is what I use to add text balloons to images I post. SnagIt is my screen capture of choice.

I would not really want to pay the price for Camtasia and SnagIt either but, due to my MS MVP Reconnect status, I get both for free.

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Since I know both you and Steve, and since both of you are MS MVPs, I think I should be entitled to a large discount on either or both programs. After all, it's not what you know....it's who you know, right?

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BB
http://barrypatch.net

Actually I am not an MS MVP like is Steve. I am MS MVP Reconnect or rMVP. There is a lot of difference.

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And I'm a Windows Insider MVP, which is where they moved all consumer disciplines when the MVP program became developer oriented... Actually, I'm rather surprised to have re-awarded this year as my activity level has dropped off quite a bit.

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

I know the MVP program has changed quite a lot since the days of the people I knew were involved, a few didn't like the changes they made.

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Joan Archer
http://crossstitcher.webs.com

Hey Steve, when I got my MVP awards it was for Shell/User then Desktop Experience. Do I assume correctly that Windows Insider MVP is sort of the same thing; a "Jack Of All Trades" as I used to describe my award class? Actually, when I went to the 2008 Summit someone asked me what Desktop Experience meant and I explained it as "Jack Of All Trades".

Sigh, part of me wishes that I were still getting MVP awards but I think that is mostly for the free software. I hardly even go to the rMVP conversation site anymore. When I got my awards in 2007, 2008 and 2009 it seemed that it was for helping people. Now, even in the rMVP community, it seems to be about promoting Microsoft. I mean there is a discussion in the rMVP community about regaining actual MVP status that boils down to you had best have a blog and activity with social media saying how great Microsoft is. Does it seem the same in the actual MVP community?

LOL! Not that we are going off topic or anything...

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Windows Insider MVPs are basically all of the Windows focused consumer MVPs. I am classed as Windows Insider, specializing in Consumer Security. Desktop experience would simply be a Windows Insider MVP. There are very few specialty classifications similarly related to the old MVP disciplines.

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"