But you’re wrong.
This change means Microsoft makes more money – from all the training classes they offer, the Office 2007 books they sell, etc. And so do all their Microsoft Partners who offer local training courses.
Plus creating a new, proprietary format, and making that the default, is another compatibility roadblock for their competitors and anyone writing add-on programs.
Generally, anything Microsoft does can be explained easily – somehow, it will result in more of your money going to Microsoft.
And that’s really what it’s about. How many people are content to stay with Word 2007? Probably quite a few. But if you throw out a new format and force its adoption by creating a new default format, well, suddenly you’ve got a few more converts.
Here’s the thing, though. The .doc format has been around for over a decade. People are used to MS Word saving things as .doc. People don’t give it a second thought that the file they save will be a .doc and will work on whatever computer has to open the file. So if you’re going to do something like change this long-established, highly-ingrained default, it better be 1) with a lot of thought, and 2) for a reason better than it’ll get you more users.
I like new features as much as the next guy, but my problem with it is I don’t see why it couldn’t have been an option to save as .docx, like .rtf and .txt are options. That way, if you want that format, you can choose it, and the people who don’t want it don’t need to change the way they work and everybody won’t have to remember that the default has changed.
It took me about 15 minutes to realize the cause of my file problems were because the format had changed. If I had my computer set to not show me file suffixes, I may have never figured it out. When doing basic troubleshooting for this kind of thing, who the hell thinks to ask whether the default file format has changed? Most people would just think the file was corrupted.
Our IT security policy is more or less dictated by our clients. We do a lot of high-profile DVD, dubbing, theatrical, and game localization work, and one of our selling points is our high security. Furthermore, we did not adopt Word 2007 company-wide. The Word 2007 file was sent by one of our private contractors, from his own computer. To date it’s still the only Word 2007 file I’ve seen here.
I forced my company to switch to Excel 07 and everyone including me is underwhelmed with the ribbon. But its multiprocessor capability and 1 million row spreadsheets are great for large data application prototypes. You can customize the area above the ribbon to hold your favorite commands but I still miss the menu system.
That may be due to a ClearType setting. There should be an option to turn off ClearType; try playing with that to see if it changes the text to your satisfaction.
I loathe Office 2007. They did the one thing that you should never, never, EVER do in software design, which is change the interface for no reason whatsoever. I hate this. I didn’t even mind when Windows 3.11 morphed into the strange and alien thing that was Windows 95 – that made sense, since Windows 95 did a totally separate set of things than Windows 3.11 did. Word 2007, at least in theory, does the same things Word 2003 did except now nobody can find any of them.
The worst part about it, particularly speaking as someone whose general mission in life is to help computer-ignorant people who don’t want to be computer-ignorant anymore, is that the Quick Menu, the one with all the things everyone needs constantly like Open…, Save, Save As…, Print, Page Setup… and all that, does not look like a menu. I just spent the past four months saying “the menu is the widget in the upper left corner that doesn’t look like a menu” so often I considered getting it tattooed on my forehead.
I just got a new computer. It came with Vista Home Premium. I have put two days into stripping all the pretty candy colors off the OS so I can use the damn thing. I will not under any circumstances put Office 2007 on this thing.
Wow. You all sound like a bunch of little bitches here. Seriously. I’ve been using Word 07 to write my 100+ page thesis (technical with lots of equations and pics)with no issues. The new layout is so much easier to navigate (and yes I’m a very experienced Word 97-03 user) and everything is where I EXPECT it to be, not necessarily where I’m ACCUSTOMED to it being. The ribbon is far superior to those goddamned drop down menus of the past where you had to click all over creation just to find basic settings. I really like the new default color scheme too. It’s very easy on the eyes.
And for fucks sake people, it’s like 3 clicks when you first open word to set your default document type to .doc instead of .docx, then you never have to do it again. That’s less time than it took you to type out the sentence on here complaining about the new defaults.
So stop bitching about the software. Just because it’s new and different doesn’t make it bad. Complain to the people who took 03 from you without your permission.
I swear the same bitching happened when Office 03 came out, then Office 07 and XP etc… It’s MS so it must be evil/suck right? :rolleyes:
I’ve been using it at work for 6 months or so now. Mostly I don’t mind it, except when it seemingly randomly starts to do odd formatting things, but I don’t find that any different than previous versions.
I presume this is directed at me, since I’m the one who bitched about the default change. I know how to change the default. But as the file recipient, running Word 2003, there’s nothing I can do about it on my end.
I haven’t used Office 2007, but are the screenshots nyctea scandiaca linked to correct? When you speak of the goddamned drop down menus, are you referring to what every other program on earth calls “menus”? That would be a little weird, because it seems like an inefficient use of screen space, and I’m not sure that they’ll be able to come up icons to represent all commands. Is there an option to be able to use regular menus that are defined by the Operating System? Barring that, is there an option to hide the ribbon to reclaim some screen space? Many of the younger people where I work use keyboard shortcuts and type so quickly that menus don’t even have a chance to drop down before they’ve already continued onto the next action. Does using keyboard equivalents for ribbon commands cause any delay? (Actually, from the screenshots, I’m not sure where they list the keyboard equivalents. Is that in a help screen or something?)
From Microsoft’s Windows Vista Developer Center: Menu bars (i.e., traditional menus)
Do the following conditions apply:[ul][li]Is the window a primary window?[/li][li]Are there many menu items?[/li][li]Are there many menu categories?[/li][li]Do the majority of the menu items apply to the entire program and primary window?[/li][li]Does the menu need to work for all users?[/li][/ul] If so, consider using a menu bar.
I was going to start my own thread, but decided to do a search first, so here I am! I don’t think this thread is too old to restart.
My IT department at work just upgraded my office PC from Office 2003 to Office 2007. I didn’t have a vote in this, and I can’t go back to the previous version.
What a piece of shit program! I’ve used every MS Word version that’s been put out for PCs and Macs over the last 20+ years, and I am completely floored. Just updating a simple two page document took me over an hour. I had to search for help on how do everything. Nothing is intuitive.
Even now, I still don’t know how to simply insert the page number and the total number of pages in a footer without inserting a whole stupid page numbering template. Where the fuck is the option to insert the page number? Where the fuck is the total number of pages? I finally had to overwrite my whole entire half-written footer with the stupid template, then edit that to get what I wanted.
This is the worst program I have used in over 20 years, and I’m even including AutoCAD in the mix. At least Autodesk, who updates AutoCAD every year or two, keeps classic functionality.
I guess Microsoft’s feelings for its power users is one big “fuck you.” Well, fuck you, too, Microsoft. :mad:
As best as I can tell, there are no real menus, and you can’t hide the ribbon. Everything is icons. Yes, it sucks.
I’m so pissed off I could spit. I’ve got huge amounts of work to get done in the next couple of weeks, and no time to relearn my most basic desktop program at work. FUCK!! :mad:
Oh, and while I’m at it, Microsoft, thanks for intentionally disabling the import of your stupid proprietary .pst files into your other email programs, like Entourage (for the Mac). I actually though I was accomplishing something when I saved those files, but they are evidently useless to me. I can’t import my contacts or anything into my home computer. Fuckers. :mad: I’ll dance with joy when your stupid company finally implodes.
I don’t get it. At the very least, it’s no more complicated than learning a new piece of software, and I assume you all are saavy enough to do that. It took me a few hours to get used to, and a week to get completely comfortable with.
What do you expect them to do? Never change a thing? Keep adding to a format that was designed around technology that no longer exists so that you don’t have to spend an hour reading a help file?
If you guys ran the world, we’d still be doing everything from DOS prompts.
I think it makes formatting in particular a lot easier. And I love the ribbon- it gives me a good understanding of exactly what is going on where. The SmartArt and themes are fun to play with, and my documents look very professional. Everything I’ve done on Word 2007 has received comments on how professional it looks.
Am I missing something here? Insert-Footer or Insert-Page number doesn’t work for you?
I just got a new laptop with Vista and a trial period for Word '07. At first, I didn’t want to fuck around with it and DLed Open Office, but seriously, I think OO is the worst word processor I have ever, ever used. I guess if I were just pounding out the occasional essay or something, it wouldn’t be too bad. But how does anybody actually work with that thing? It regularly fucked up all my formatting, I couldn’t view comments inserted on other documents (well eventually I figured out how but it’s not on the page. They’re on a separate, unhelpful window).
There was a little starting and stopping with '07 at first. I thought the ribbon was a huge pain in the ass and I miss my helpful and quick toolbar. But it only took a day or two of fiddling around to figure out where everything is. I don’t understand why the default font isn’t Times New Roman, and I’m not in love with the program, but if I had to choose between it and Open Office, I’d choose it every time.
Whoah, dude! Most people seem to have been able to handle the changeover to Office 2007 and the various Office 2007 file formats. You seem to be having a bad time doing so. Post some threads in GQ and folk will be able to help. Don’t get too stressed.
Thank you. I had that piece of crap for a while at the end of last year. I never installed a MS product with as much glee as I did Office 03 when my computer got rebuilt.
Heh, yeah. OpenOffice isn’t in the same league as Word. Word’s in the Premiership, OpenOffice is Vauxhall Conference material. The program is a complete and utter piece of crap. Everything about it is shit. The way it looks, the way documents look that it produces, the spell checker, lack of proper outlining, the fact it takes a year to start up etc.
I hate that look. It’s the same look that Microsoft has been pushing on us since XP came out. The first thing I did when I got my first computer with XP was change it back to the classic skin. I hate that cartoony look so much…
Oh, this. If I want bright, bold colors, I’ll set an interesting wallpaper picture.
I’ve only used Word 2007 a couple times, and I think the issue is not that it’s any less intuitive, it’s that it doesn’t look like Microsoft Word. Word has looked the same for, what, fifteen years? And now there’s something that looks and acts differently, yet is still Word.
Personally I found it bothersome really only for that reason. It’s one of the pieces of software I know inside and out, and suddenly not knowing exactly how to do in order to get my document the way I wanted was just annoying.
The program was installed on my work computer on Friday. I’ve been using it for a grand total of about an hour. I expect that it will get better.
I still think it’s a huge mistake for them to be jettisoning the basic interface that I have been using since MS Word 3.01 (for Macintosh) in 1988. FWIW, I never used DOS prompts.
I already had a footer, so I didn’t want to insert a new one.
After typing in "Page " and centering it properly, and dealing with the stupid Autoformat which did not want to give up trying to change the tab stops, I found there was no way to simply insert the “page number” wildcard without inserting the whole template. After getting through that hurdle, I found there was no way to insert the “number of pages” without starting over with a different template.
I just really hate “idiot-proof” interfaces that assume all users are idiots.