Office 2007 to go Gold by October End

Betanews has reported that Microsoft is all set to close the beta program for Office 2007 as it prepares for its ‘Gold’ release by the end of this month. On October 25, Microsoft will close its Office Preview site and will remove the betas that are available for download now.

“Office 2007 products will be available in retail channels early next year,” Microsoft wrote in an e-mail to testers. “The Beta2TR build is set to expire on March 15, 2007 for all client products and May 31, 2007 for all server products. This should allow you to use Beta2TR until you can upgrade to the retail version.”

Beginning October 28, the support site for Office 2007 will be migrated to Microsoft’s primary Web site. On October 30, the BetaPlace Web site and support newsgroups for the beta test will close. SharePoint team sites will be decommissioned on October 31, and all data will be destroyed."

Office 2007 is widely expected to ship around the same time as Windows Vista which in turn ships on Jan 30 2007.