Does anyone else think Word 2007 Sucks? Badly!!

The BBQ Pit
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I’m not a huge expert - I’ve just read a couple blog posts about the UI design process. However, all the commands are in the ribbons or accessible by the ribbon, so they must have worked it out somehow. Just playing around with Word 2007 myself, there’s eight different tabs on the ribbon for major groupings of commands (Home, Insert, Page Layout, References, Mailing, Review, View, Add-Ins), and some of the buttons open a dialog box. Also, some tabs only appear when needed (e.g. insert a picture or select a picture and the “Picture Tools Format” tab appears, insert a table and the “Table Tools Design” and “Table Tools Layout” tabs appear).

But all the commands fit in the somehow, and every command has one home and is in the same place. My understanding is that in previous versions of Word some commands were in the menus and toolbars, some were only available from toolbars, and some were only in task panes. Then in some later versions of Word the menus tried to be “smart” and hide the less commonly used tasks, but I always found it to be a huge pain in the ass when trying to find a command you hadn’t used in a while.

I’m not some huge Office 2007 devotee or anything, but after fiddling around with it for the last year (came on my new laptop I got for school), I don’t have any huge issues with it. I am somewhat of a power user, and in old versions of Word I customized the hell out of Word and added custom macros, toolbars, etc… and use mostly keyboard shortcuts. I’m not finding the lack of user UI customizability in 2007 to be a huge issue for me, and the Ribbon works fairly well overall.

162

Of course it sucks massively. MS boxes everyones thinking, serves them a pile of shit, repackages the shit so the box feels new and different and everyone just goes along with it.

I work in an office, using Office 2007 - as I suspect most users do. How the FUCK is it possible that this far down the line there is zero integration between the Office products, or the Windows OS?
For example, let’s say I’m working on a spreadsheet. I need for someone in the office next to me to add some data to it. Where is the button on the motherfucking ribbon that lets me select the person’s computer and queue the file to open on their screen? HMM? it’s fucking STUPEFYING how pathetic Office is when you consider they make the shitty O/S too. no, instead I have to save the file, go to outlook, compose a message, add attachment, send via the server, and then the receiver has to go through the reverse steps, add their data, save the file, go to outlook, compose a message, add attachment, send via the server etc… Tedious, time-consuming and 100% unnecessary. We’re on the same network, using the same software on the same operating system, but there is no integration.

Anyone who thinks Office 2007 provides a decent product is as imaginative as M$.

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Are you sure your problems aren’t the result of your organisation not having something really basic, like a fileserver? No company with a competent IT department should be collaborating on documents via email.

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Because every other program since the beginning of Windows has used menus. People know how to use them. Having your program be artificially different is stupid.

It’s the wrong type of optimization, They should be trying to make every program work the same, rather than make each program different, which is what the ribbon does. They analyze each program individually, rather than the entire operating system as a whole.

My overwhelming rule for software is not to remove something people are using unless you HAVE to, for some logistical reason. They didn’t HAVE to take out the old way. So my guess is that the whole point was not to make things easier (though they arguably did) but to make their UI proprietary so people wouldn’t be able to change. If they really cared about the best UI, they’d leave both in, and let the progression naturally happen. They were actually starting to get some competition amongst their current audience, and wanted to quell it to make it harder to switch later.

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Yes obviously there are other work-arounds to this issue such as using IMs or shared folders… that’s not my point, none of them are as simple as having the products integrated as they should be.

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This sounds like a network issue in your company, not an Office issue. I can do exactly that here at my firm.

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I think one of us is misreading the complaint. It seems to me that Random Design wants to push a document to open in Excel on another user’s workstation.

I am unaware of any spreadsheet software that allows this, and would be surprised if there’s any significant demand for a feature like this. If our workflow demanded this, I would probably approach it as a templated shared task in Outlook, with an imbedded link to the document. The risks of inbuilding an ability to push a macro-enabled document to another workstation far outweigh any perceived benefits.

Corner Case, thanks for the link to the interactive guides. This is pure pain relief, and installing these on transitioning users’ desktops will be much more helpful (and less of a time-suck) than hoping they’ll use the actual “Help” feature or (more likely) finding the answer for them myself when they ask for support.

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I’m well aware of the phenomenal bloat of Word. It was well-underway when Word version 4 for Mac was in its heyday. We all said “Word can probably do anything… but it may take you a week to find out where the command to do it is buried”. And that included the straightforward simple everyday stuff.

As opposed to putting 1500 icons on some kind of toolbar or “ribbon”? Where finding the one you’re looking for would be EASY? :dubious:

Of course they didn’t / couldn’t. That’s in large part because there are 1500 freaking commands in the stupid program.

People keep requesting new features in Word because as relatively ignorant newbies the first thing they learned to use on their computer was the word processor, and they came to think of the word processor as the main program on the computer. So for any given task they’d ever want to do on the computer, their default behavior is to try to do it in WORD. This predictable but wrong-headed behavior was greatly encouraged by Microsoft tossing in silly feature after silly feature, many of them having damn little to do with word processing.

(The tendency has not gone away but in large part people’s “main program” is now their web browser, which has a lot to do with why web browsers are bloated klunky beasts that don’t navigate and render web pages as well as they should, not to mention the tendency of developers to do stupid and totally inappropriate things via the web. But I digess).

169

Having a shared file store is not a collaboration “workaround”, it’s a basic facility that any organisation that regularly collaborates on electronic documents should have. And indeed, Office has lots of features for users who have this facility; in fact 2010 will apparently let multiple users edit the same document simultaneously rather than allowing only one person write access at a time - a bit like Google Wave, if you’ve used that. But if your IT department won’t supply you with shared storage, then yes, collaboration will suck and there’s not much Microsoft can do about it.

Like Larry Mudd, I’m at a loss to name a single bit of software in existence that allows force-opening of files on other people’s computers in the way you apparently want. Quite apart from the nightmarish security issues (do we really need another macro virus vector?), I don’t see how this can possibly be much smoother than emailing back and forth, which is already integrated in to the Office interface (Office Blob > Send > Email). It’s hard to imagine the scheme you suggest being any simpler.

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We received an e-mail that our work computers would have Office 2007 installed over the weekend. I am not looking forward to it.

Although I use a computer all day every day at work, I am by anyone’s definition a low-level user. All I need to do is word process, do some work with adobe acrobat, send and receive e-mails, and access the web. I’m in the goofy situation where I am required to use Word for some things, and Wordperfect for others.

My work product are legal briefs - I get no benefit from fancy formatting or anything. Just give me a legible font and a template that complies with the court rules, and that’s all I want or need.

I really wish that when some new product like this came out they would allow low-level users like me to “hide” all of the fancy new things, and keep my computer appearing and functioning how it always has - at least since the most recent change/“upgrade”.

I don’t have any “problems” with the current system that need to be improved. Well, other than it having way more crap in my face that I am never going to use, but I’ve gotten pretty good at ignoring that. And no improvements are likely to improve my work product, or work experience. Using the function keys for formatting in Wordperfect 15-20 years ago was perfectly fine for my uses. As were each of the subsequent changes. And I’m sure I’ll learn this system as well - probably get damned efficient in it just around the time they replace it with something else!

My intentional approach is to identify the lowest tech “work-arounds” for just about any situation, and have stopped customizing my desktop, because as soon as I do they do something to the server or replace some hardware in my office that causes them to disappear. And our IT support is too unreliable for me to want to go through the hassle of trying to locate or recreate anything I’ve lost. Instead, I’ll just stumble on.

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How many commands are optimum for a word processor, in your view?

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Well, couldn’t you start from the presumption of using the fewest, with some simple way to open up more complex functions?

Or maybe after I’ve used a word prcessor for a few thousand hours, could it somehow say “Hmm, you’ve NEVER clicked on this icon - maybe we’ll toss it into some clearly designated file.”

Or maybe make it more intuitive why some commands are in the drop down menus, some in icons, and some duplicated in both. I really don’t care HOW I get the darned document in some basic format. I don’t WANT all these options. Just make clear the simplest way to do it, and I’ll be happy with that - and then retain that simplest way in all subsequent versions - allowing those with the skills and desire to open up new possibilities.

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Some sort of interface where the most frequently used functions are presented first, say, and where other less-used sets of activity-related functions are accessible with minimal clicking, and with plenty of text cues along with their icons? I agree, this sounds brilliant. Someone should do it. :slight_smile:

Facetiousness aside: there aren’t 1500 icons in the ribbon. There are about 40-odd on the main tab, almost all relating to very common formatting commands. Compare this to pre-2007, when every toolbar you could need was on screen at once. How is this preferable to you, the self-described basic user? Isn’t the ribbon an attempt at exactly what you describe?

The point of my query of AHunter3 is that bloat should not be defined with reference to some optimum number of functions, but with reference to how easy they are to access. Remember, this is the sort of ghastly shit Word users were confronted with pre-ribbon. Can you honestly say you find that more comprehensible than the ribbon screenshot above? Removing features is not the first step to fixing that mess, it’s fixing the interface. And in my humble opinion, despite all the hyperventilating, the ribbon is a pretty big jump towards doing that.

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I won’t be able to comment on 2007 until I see it. Who knows - maybe it will be what I’ve hoped for for decades. But I’m not getting my hopes up. :stuck_out_tongue:

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That’s just not true. You could have all toolbars open at once doesn’t mean that was anything close to how it shipped or how it was routinely set up. This is as silly as saying IE sucks because thishappens.

The ribbon equals more mouse movement, especially on a wide screen. Instead of one small section of columns and plenty of rows menu-wise, it’s now pretty much one long row that you need to move back and forth on. Load up Classic UI via Ribbon Customizer and play around with different commands. This is especially true given how many people have widescreen monitors. Baaaaacccckkkk and fooorrrrrtthhhhhh, baaaacccckkkk and ffoooorrrrttthhh…

ETA: I quoted DB, but am not directing all this directly at him/her. It was just a convenient launch point. No offense meant.

The quicklaunch bar is a hint at avoiding this, but it’s limited to one row across the top. It’s as if MS recognized the need for customizability (having the sets of commands you mostly use at the tips of your fingers) but were so obsessed with carving their market niche that they limited it to just one row.

It’s been mentioned upthread that they are moving from widespread usability – just about every other program out there has the File/Edit/View/Etc.-type structure. That makes for ease of switching between programs. If this concept isn’t important, then why are the ribbons similar across Office apps?

And what is the ribbon other than a thick, uncustomizable toolbar? At best it’s a tabbed toolbar. And this is where the marketing department entered. Rather than keeping with industry conventions, they prevented users from laying out the tabs as they want. They prevented floating tool-ribbons. The back-end is there, because things like thesaurus and style inspector still float.

It’s not a matter of finding commands. Yes, that is an annoying part of the transition, but there’s so much more. That MS depreciated marching ants and Vegas Lights was bothersome to me (not that I’d ever send them to someone, but for my own internal use they were handy), but not necessarily angerfying. It’s the blatant attempt to break from the industry to lock in/entrench an interface for the primary purpose of retaining market share.

Compare Office to Windows 7, where there is real competition. Apple’s main advertising thrust (and it’s only selling point beyond aesthetic design) is how much better it’s OS is than Windows. While Win 7 still has some flaws, and Vista did screw the pooch on some things (I went from XP to 7 so I don’t know specifics), Win 7 is designed for the user, not for Microsoft. The changes to the UI are improvements, most of which take some getting used to, but most of which benefit the user. Office changes are in a completely different class. And I giddily upgraded to Office expecting to be in geeky heaven.

My challenge still stands. I could very well be terribly wrong about things. Someone find solutions half the list I posted above and I’ll be happy to praise the program.

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About 40, give or take:

New document, Open document, Open Recent Documents, Close window, Save document, Insert Document, Save As, Print Setup (includes options like double-sized printing, restarting of pages), Print (includes options like printing odd or even pages only), Add Footnote/Endnote, Add/Edit Footer/Header, Quit Program,

Insert Page Break, Insert Special (date, time, path, other codes),

Undo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Paste Unformatted, Find / FindReplace (including Find All => list of found results), Find Again, Go to Page.

Font, FontSize, FontStyle.

Justification (left, centered, right, even-justified), New Section (with its own tab stops and margins), Copy Section Settings, Apply Section Headings. Kerning. Line Spacing (single, double, custom). Units (inches, cm, points, picas, pixels, whatevers).

Create Index. SpellCheck. Add to Dictionary. Browse/Edit Dictionary. Add Graphic Frame (right-click to change characteristics of graphic frame). Add table (right-click to change characteristics of table).

Document Info (wordcount, character count, pagecount, sentence count, avg wordsize, avg sentence-size, path saved to, date created, date modified, etc).
Give me awhile, I might be able to think of a dozen or so more.

Then again, maybe not.

177

Margins? Inserting pictures? Tables? Table of contents? Indexing? Mail merges? Comments, reviewing and tracking changes?

There are lots of features in Word 2007 that are extremely useful for many people. I know some people call them “bloat” because they don’t use the features, but I think if MS got rid of those features there would be much louder bitching from the people who use them a lot.

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Go to top of section. Margins and tabs, right there. Or create a new section. Different implementation, same idea.

Add Graphic Frame. See above, got you covered, among my 40.

Add table. See above, got you covered, among my 40.

Would not want. If I wish a table of contents I will type out a table of contents.

Create Index. See above, got you covered, among my 40.

I would use FileMaker, not a word processor, but OK. We’re up to 41. Lots of folks would prefer to use a word processor for mail merge.

I would not want.

You’ve got a long way to go to get to 1500.

Put the [del]40[/del] umm 41 features in a default menu. List the remaining 1459 in a “Power Users” section in Preferences (hmm, OK 42 menu commands) and let folks who want them add any specified command to any specified menu.

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I don’t know how the folks at MS count the number of commands, but think you’re probably simplifying way too much. Your “only 41 commands” is really much more than that.

You can’t just say “add table” and then say you’re done with one command. In reality it’s add table, how many columns and rows, add row, delete row, add column, delete column, adjust row/column width/height, merge cells, split cells, format table fonts, text direction, borders, shading, , etc, etc, etc

Similarly, pictures aren’t just “add graphic frame”. What about adjusting picture size, shape, border, effects, cropping, position on the page, text wrapping, etc

Sure some of that stuff can be done with other computer programs, but I think regular average users don’t want to open up another program like Photoshop or even Paint just to make basic modifications to a picture when for over a decade they’ve been doing those things within Word.

180

I opened a document in which its date updated to today, not the date it was created. There is probably a way to turn off this “feature” which does not include hitting over the head with a rolled-up newspaper the people on whom I depend for my bread and butter, but I haven’t managed to find it. I trust some caring soul here will point me the right way.

Um, Word 2003, of course. :wink: