I love Office 2007, but it took awhile to get used to it. Now, the interface really makes sense to me, and the added functions in Excel are most appreciated.
Microsoft’s “Story of the Ribbon” is pretty interesting if you like this sort of stuff.
Office 2010 looks pretty cool, especially Visio 2010, but they did change the Button to be a separate File tab. If you use Visio extensively though, your life is going to become heavenly with this next version. It’s intuitive and the shapes and connectors are smart as hell and easy to use.
For those saying people are still going to use Office 97 or 2003, that’s true, but not a good idea. 97 no longer gets security patches, and 2003 will go that way sooner rather than later. Unpatched is no way to live.
Taking a few classes is hardly the same thing as actually being responsible for whatever happens as part of an software upgrade at a big company.
It really isn’t lazy or incompetent employees. It’s the lost productivity due to learning new software, reworking procedures and processes that no longer work the same way, dealing with software defects, etc.
There is also the aspect of “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it”.
Despite wmfellow’s snotty attitude, he’s 100% correct. Especially when it’s HIS ass on the line if something goes wrong.
“But I liked it when notices were in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet, stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’!”
If Word is so wonderful, why do I rotate across 5 text processors?
With respect, this nonexecutive has grasped his underlying point, which many here have either ignored or dodged.
Transition costs to a new UI are not trivial: actually they are substantial. The advantages of a new UI in a mature product are inevitably minuscule.
Well, actually I disagree in part with that: Excel is arguably a pretty good swiss army knife that could have its feature set expanded usefully. So a more flexible UI might make sense for that. And it tends to be used by analysts anyway, who are a little more motivated. But Word? If their new UI was acutally so superfreakingawesome, then a Revert to 2003 option would have died a natural death anyway.
Credit where due
Word’s 2007 equation editor was improved. Yay! Word 2010 brings back menus. It also has a way of pasting in multiple way, something that copiers of web pages might appreciate.
Business Letters
Dumb question: why doesn’t MS like to put the return address in the upper right hand corner? I can adapt, but I’ve always wondered what their problem was.
Anyway, some thoughts after using Office 2007 for about a week:
It’s not that bad. It’s not good either, but it’s not bad. With the “Search Commands” that Southern Yankee recommended, along with some experimenting, I’ve learned where everything that I regularly use in both Word and Excel are hiding. It does seem like a lot of things take more clicks with the mouse than they did in 2003, therefore taking a little longer to get things done. (I’ve never used keyboard shortcuts, so the fact that MS changed that up is of no consequence to me)
I don’t like how much space the ribbon takes up, and it still seems less than intuitive.
Even though I say that it’s not that bad, I would still take 2003 over 2007. I want my damn menus back!!!
Everyone has grasped that change management is important, and that cost/benefit considerations are vital. Of course rolling out 2007 to an entire company directly on release is daft, but then I don’t think anyone has suggested such a thing.
I think you’re simply wrong here, because you’re ignoring the plentiful examples of things that were exceedingly fiddly in pre-ribbon Office, assuming that everyone who uses Word is already entirely familiar with it, and further assuming that any new features included in 2007 can be integrated with the old-style UI without completely compromising their usability. If the best that can be said about the old UI is that most people have memorised where some subset of its functions are, then no, I don’t believe you can blithely write off UI improvements as of “miniscule” value. Even if you assume that the UI is worthless, you’re paying for new functions. What’s the value there, if no bugger can find them?
Of course if you assume that any UI change has no value, you’re going to prove to yourself that a UI upgrade isn’t worth it. I don’t think it’s a sensible assumption, though.
Microsoft have taken the pain with this latest release to ensure they can keep adding features without making the interface ever more byzantine. Businesses, as wmfellows says, can and should take a more conservative approach to this change (familiarity with the new interface will increase naturally, as universities and home users upgrade). But that doesn’t mean it’s sensible for Microsoft to keep releasing the same old dogshit, and it doesn’t make them stupid for releasing something that wmfellows doesn’t find instantly worth the upgrade. He’s still got 2003, no?
I can grant this to an extent, but nothing in the features updates, expansions requires imposing the added burden of retraining relative to the interface. That is an entirely separate calculation.
Regardless, Excel 07 given our other tools does not merit me taking large amounts of analysts and other relevant staff time into retraining for a bloody interface. Wasted effort. In particular as I believe complaints from my type of firm will cause MS to create a transition tool that will reduce our costs - a revert to 03 option relative to interfacing style.
Yeah, and evidently you’re a jealous, peevish little git of a labourer-peon. Not terribly enlightening that.
And this is as well important, as I have been noting the same point:
Doubtless, the last is correct. And overall were the Ribbon not imposing a cost relative to lost productivity, I would have nothing against it per se. On a personal basis I am using, although I find it annoying in key areas.
Roll that annoyance and loss productivity out over multiple offices, analysts, secretaries, consultants, and I see a big hit. For near zero gain, trivial widget gains, bright & shiney “ooh, doggies can stand on their hind legs for 10 seconds” type gains for the most part. Layer on training costs, inevitable refreshers for the large body of staff with decades of experience with the old interfaces, and the decision is, “Pass.”
And we tell the MS Sales Rep, “fuck off mate, go tell your masters that our mega license stays with 03 until you address our concerns.”
As in the case of the Vista cock up, that will move things.
Better that than a dumb smarmy shite who understands fuck all of what is being said to him.
Oooh some classes, bloody impressed mate, bloody impressed. Go get your fucking money back as you evidently didn’t grok a fucking thing, you dumb shite.
Evidently you do else you would not have been haranguing and belittling the others and then getting slapped by me, eh?
No you dumb shite, as you keep dodging and weaving your stupid fucking smarmy pretension this is about being “smart” or “competent” enough to learn Office 07 becomes more fucking stupid.
Competence is not about jumping into every fucking little marketing move by MS just because they added some shiny little objects for dumb gullible fucking shites like yourself, but assessing whether the transition cost is worth it, given lost productivity, training money spent on this bloody basic tool rather than on more mission critical training in software that actually is adding substantial new value, or even training spend in areas other than software.
My firm is the fucking client, and MS will serve us, not the other way around, they’re the fucking tail, and the tail doesn’t wag big dogs.
Adapting to change involves, you stupid gullible git, knowing what changes are effective, and what is just running around like a fucking chicken with its head cut off or some Attention Deficit Disorder Retard child.
Fuck me with a blind rooster, I’m pissed. So pissed I’m making up Popeye-like swears involving handicapped poultry.
My current nightmare – I’m trying to change machines. A simple fucking task. What the hell happened to the Office tool that did just that?! Why am I copying templates, macros, and style sets manually? What the fuck about all the keyboard shortcuts I have? What about the myriad tweaks and customizations? Do them again? What the hell am I missing? (And while we’re at it, why did I have to hack the registry and make changes to a control panel setting just to get my Outlook email accounts to transfer over?)
No shit Word can do a lot of things better, but buying the “oh, we had to change the interface for your own good” line of bullshit makes the most ardent Apple Fanboy look like an aloof zen master. Bullshit they had to redo the entire menu system to make things work. It’s like some hack designer insisting that an entire site must be done in Flash, and insisting on controlling every aspect of the Web Experience so it will look “right.”
Bullshit. Open up just about any program and you’ll see lots of similarities in menu trees and systems. File. Edit. Tool. View. All sorts of things that are common to programs. Word is really that much more complicated than Dreamweaver? Illustrator? A fucking Web browser? Bullshit they needed to make things pretty in order to make it work. They needed to carve out a niche before Open Office and Google Docs started overtaking them. No fucking excuse other than taking advantage of a current (and seemingly short lived) veritable monopoly.
I’m awfully proud of those of you who are so fucking special that you know where to find your nice features. Who gives a flying fuck? Who gives a fuck about how much your mothers love you and beam at your adaptation skills? That has nothing to do with the main complaints made in the thread. They took a bunch of industry standards and fucked them into Tuesday purely because marketing said so.
I’m sure there are a good number of firms out there with more than ten people who are just full of plucky little go-getters who love eating MS’s shit and feigning bemusement that anyone could find it vexing to adapt to some pretty little lights (I need to fucking see where the page number is going to appear? What the fuck is up with that? I can’t just PUT IT IN THE FUCKING PAGE?!). But anyone who has ever managed more than ten people cannot, with a straight face, suggest that switching over to an absurdly revamped UI isn’t going to be a hell of a headache in terms of personnel management, training, and lost productivity.
Bullshit they had to rip out customizability for non-marketing reasons. Bullshit they needed to totally redo the interface for any of their new features. What the fuck couldn’t fit into the industry standard structure? What? What feature needed the ribbon?
I really like a lot of the improvements. Given that I often lead teams of contributors, the document review/compare functionality is fantastic. As noted, references are a boon. But that doesn’t make up for the needless change and the lack of customization.
Way up thread I mentioned a running list of off-pissing things. Here it is. Maybe there’s a simple fix for these. Point out the obvious for more than half and I’ll definitely turn a new eye towards the piece of shit and honestly praise it.
[ol]
[li]Title bar now gets squooshed by quickmenu. This means with a lot of items and a less-than maximized screen, I can’t see the window’s name. [/li][li]Double clicking on a comment in draft view doesn’t bring it up. I don’t want to hover. Maybe I want to edit or add to it. [/li][li]Much more mouse movement left-to-right not just in the upper corner and compact menus. [/li][li]Show changes defaults to showing formatting. EVERY TIME I work on a document I need to change this setting. [/li][li]Maybe it’s just my system (I’m moving machines, so let some maintenance slip), but it’s a lot less stable. [/li][li]Help system has shit the bed. Videos? Who the fuck wants to watch videos? Contextual help is not contextual. [/li][li]Got rid of text effects (marching ants, etc.). Not that I’d ever send them to someone, but blinking background was a huge help. [/li][li]Cannot customize Outlook macros?[/li][li]Their miserable lack of customization is predicated on their being a slew of add-ons. Where the hell are all the add-ons?[/li][li]No automatic updates? Office update doesn’t work and Windows update isn’t automated program-wide[/li][li]Can’t track changes of deleted endnotes without crashing[/li][li]How do I get page numbers to stop previewing in dialogue box [/li][li]Language setting doesn’t change for comments. If a document came in with the wrong language (UK v. US English or vice versa), the change must be done manually for every new comment. [/li][li]Reviewing pane doesn’t spell check when adding comments.[/li][li]Used to have 3 rows (on a widescreen monitor) for toolbars and information. Now I have just the top, thin quick-access and thick, unwieldly, uncustomizable (size-wise) ribbons. [/li][li]I lose an entire row so that sections of the ribbon can be labelled (e.g., font , paragraph, styles)?[/li][li]Style panel is useless — more space devoted to image than style name, can’t get away from square boxes. Some styles are subtly different, and without seeing their name don’t lend themselves to easy differentiation. [/li][li]Why the hell can’t I edit the right click menu?[/li][li]Why can’t I float toolbars?[/li][/ol]
There is some merit to this, and I am not unrelentingly hostile to the Ribbon revision as such. However, again to enhance the transition for legacy users - which are a massive base - tools such as flip to 03etc style should have been included.
One can buy such aftermarket, it would have been trivially easy for MS to include that - however it is very clear that they are also angling to use this interface break to lock in users to their specific product (note for example they are blocking adoption of Ribbon by other parties).
Well, I am not convinced as such that the Ribbon does in fact improve accessibility. Some features it does, other seem rather harder to access.
Further, one can not edit or change style to meet own needs, a wholly unnecessary rigidity in my opinion (as I see large parts of the ribbons displaying features I don’t care for at all. They may well be popular, that is fine, but as a user I should be able to remove them so I have stuff up that I like to use.
Generally, given the retraining costs, I think the baseline hypothesis that a major interface break adds more cost than value is whole defensible as a hypothesis.
Well yes I do. And the IT people have conversion packs installed across the board for the annoying gits who email out docx without thinking.
And yes on corporate decisions, one tends to be more conservative. When I started my career although Windows was around, the corporate world was very much in DOS (and typewriters for that matter), even Windows transitions were slow, up to XP which showed immediate and immense value over its prior versions (and contra the cock up with Vista, dumb shites).
However, MS was stupid not to include more flex into the release, and the very simple recreation of 2003etc type interface option. They earned quite a bit of ill-will for that stunt in my circles, as we don’t much appreciate the imposition of added and unnecessary training costs for an item we shouldn’t have to think about.
The format innovations and features are fine, ex the cock-ups in Excel, and even the interface innovation might be fine were MS not trying to over-leverage it to create barriers to change and entry.
Maintaining two distinct UIs is far from trivial, and in essence the 2003 interface is provided - you can still use 2003, which is in extended support until 2014. Microsoft are quite used to companies skipping entire upgrade cycles, and you’d think companies, therefore, are used to doing so too. It’s the anger I don’t understand. As I say below, it’s perfectly reasonable to view 2007 as a skippable upgrade, but I don’t understand why this would be considered some sort of major problem. For Microsoft, providing the dual route doubles their work (particularly in testing), will lead to extra bugs, and only postpones the changeover problem to some unknown future date. This is already a release that took 4 years; UI design may seem trivial to the end user, but any programmer will tell you it takes a quite staggeringly disproportionate amount of project time.
While I broadly agree that a little bit of customisation might be nice, it seems a bit incongruous to claim that your user base is so adherent to 2003’s specific interface that an upgrade is all but unconscionable, yet simultaneously argue that it’s important that everyone can create their own interface. If people are flexible enough to not only understand existing UIs, but bend them to their needs, aren’t they flexible enough to learn something new?
Sure, but with the caveat that this equation will change, and change quite rapidly as the new interface is adopted in other, less training cost-sensitive areas. 2007 is ubiquitous in universities and on new home PCs now, and I’m quite sure we’re already at the point where significant numbers of workers are familiar with the 2007 interface through use outside work. Upgrading in 2007 may not have made financial sense; upgrading in 2010 may well.
This is the point: the old interface was, by almost any measure, objectively terrible. Its sole benefit was familiarity, and this can only take you so far. In much the same way as Microsoft took the pain with Vista to rectify Windows’ unquestionable history of security flaws, Office 2007 has seen them take a hit to rectify Office’s godawful interface. This has meant that for many more conservative users this has been an upgrade cycle to skip, and that’s fine. But it doesn’t mean 2007 and Vista were bad products, nor that Microsoft were wrong to make the changes they did.
Office 2007 is much better to work with then 2003…once your getting used to it.
The first time I used it, I couldn’t find the printer icon… CTRL+P still worked, so I was out of the pickle and discovered this ball in the top-right… great place to start.
The Ribbon is there and the buttons are always at the same place, no more change of toolbars or moving of the damn toolbars or haveing half the screen filled with fucking toolbars.
Execel… you can actually move stuff around like colums, add colums or boxes and you don’t have to re-do all the formulas…
…I know Word 2.0 was a great improvment and maybe we should have stayed with DOS and the command prompt a bit longer… if this get’s all to complicated for you, just use WordPad or NotePad or scrible on a stonewall with some dirt.
First, one can buy an after market add on (single user license Euro20 I believe) that recreates substantially the 03 interface. I have not used it, but it receives great reviews so far.
Asserting that staying with 2003 is the same as MS providing 2003 replication ability in its upgrade is simply absurd and laughable.
My irritation here specifically has been with the stupid gits who were abusing those users complaining about 07 as if it were some bloody magic leap forward.
There is nothing incongruous at all. It is not - and I don’t know how many fucking times I have to make note of this before you stupid gits get it - a matter of being “flexible enough” to learn something new for the sake of a bloody fucking Christ. It is a matter of whether taking the time is worth it given we have lots of other fucking things to do.
Nevermind the triviality of the usual customisation is nowhere near the leap from Ribbon to Menu and vice-versa. (Or even simply excluding unused functionalities from the Ribbon to leave more space for more used functionalities).
That is an amazingly idiotic comparison.
Maybe in the US of A, where apparenlty MS has you lot bloody getting wagged by the tail, but not in my markets.
So you assert. I don’t see objective efficiency data out there, I do see a lot of taste and style being asserted as objective.
And Vista was a bad fucking product, that is why it failed.
To the Format change…its not really a new thing. Office 97 does not open Office 2003 files correctly either. So, by this definition Office 2003 is a heap of shit aswell.
Why we need new formats? After all a floppy disk is as good as a CD, DVD or BlueRay. Surely, sometimes the new formats are put out in a hurry and are not well thought through…and mistakes are done.
The gerneral Joesoap does not even know what these extensions are or that they even exist…for crying out loud, they send desktop shortcuts as email attachments.
Secretries can not open Word files, like CV’s from people in email attachments.
The CV’s where done in Word…MS Works Word… MS Office Word did not open them…unless you download a patch, which the program prompts you to do anyhow.
Those same clowns call it Office Vista.
By the way 2003 prompts you to download a patch to open things like the docx files, after patching it… of cos
It also failed because, people used underpowered PC’s which can’t even run Windows XP properly to run Vista…and to many idiots that never knew anything else but XP and are unable to change…but that’s another thread for another day…
…that’s not saying, Vista was a great OS to start with…it has it’s good sides as well…a few… somewhere… really
Ah, I’m glad I bothered to try to talk this down into something resembling a normal conversation. Have fun swinging your EXECUTIVE dick, you big ol’ hunk o’ joy, you.
Thanks for that. Is this the sort of mindless reductionism that one needs to be an EXECUTIVE?
You guys are all suckers…WordPerfect has had all of these problems solved for years. Everything is completely intuitive - I’m constantly shocked that people still use Word, with it’s high cost and totally ridiculous interface.
I’m a high-level user, and I can click around almost program to figure out how to do something. Most programs make sense. Word on the other hand, is a big pile of shit. It doesn’t make any sense to anyone, ever.
If I need to change margins in WP, I go to “Format-Margins”. Or I use a shortcut key. Or I just drag the little gray line around. In Word…well, I couldn’t figure it out the one time I tried. There was no on-screen drag feature, and I couldn’t even find it in a menu. It sounds like that’s what the “Ribbon” is supposed to fix, but why not just use the fucking tool bar?
I think that, in the next ten years, MS is in for some hurt. As more “regular” people become more confident with computer work, this kind of bloatware bullshit is going to become quite unpopular, and MS is going to get their asses handed to them. They’ve already lost the IE race to Mozilla, and word processing, spreadsheet and database programs are not far behind.