I just upgraded my software from Office 98 (yes, really) to 2007. I do medical transcription for a living, so I’m loving the improved spell check and some other features. One thing I wanted to confirm with any other users, though- can you make Word 2007 look like the old versions of Word? I can’t stand the new interface, and while I know I’ll learn it over time, it’s costing me money hunting around for the features I need. I’ve searched on this and it appears that you cannot, but I was hoping some other frustrated Doper had found a way to do it or that there is some hidden way. It’s driving me crazy!
I don’t know of any one click fixes, but the toolbars are fully customizable and you could basically manually reconfigure them to be more like the old one. A real PITA, though.
I can’t believe there isn’t a prominent “Print” button by default! Madness!
There are Word gurus at allexperts.com that may have an answer if you don’t find one here. Good luck!
I hear you. I keep thinking "OMG, where is my “Tools, options” thingie? WHERE ARE MY TOOLS?? I was so excited to upgrade for the increase in functionality, but it’s costing me money by having to recreate menus that I’ve been using the same way for nearly 10 years. I’m seriously considering rolling back a few versions. I understand progress, onward and upward, but it doesn’t seem that hard to give the option to make the interface the same as has been present for the last 10 years. Maybe it’s just me but I find it frustrating.
I hear you, I swear I do- I don’t have a problem with moving onward and upward, but changing the entire interface seems a little extreme. I was just hoping there was a way to check a setting and boom- my regular old toolbar would be there just as it is in every other program and has been in Word forever. I miss my “File, edit, view, tools” and all that. My fingers are so trained to use them that it’s taking a while to retrain my brain, which costs me money, that’s all.
Not that I’m aware of. What some people are doing, though, is customizing the hell out of that little toolbar at the top of the window (I forget what its name is.)
Maybe if you feel like manually editing XML, but the ribbon is not customizable by default.
I’m finding the tools now (I use word count a lot as well as custom document properties- man, I had to hunt for THAT). I’m making shortcuts as I go, but I was just hoping there was a quick “Make it look like old Word” available like you can make Windows look like old Windows. I’ve trained myself to very quickly click on stuff like tools, format, and pick out what I want, so the new “ribbon” style is not so great for me.
I guess unless someone has some super secret way to make it look like old Word, I’ll just jot down what I can’t find, look them up in my off time, and customize the toolbar myself.
I’ll take that bet. Microsoft is getting lambasted over removing the menu bar–practically the only user interface element that you can expect that every desktop computer user, from any OS, will know how to use, and replacing it with a big glowy button.
Microsoft has ignored public opinion on their user interface nightmares before (look how long Clippy and “personalized menus” lasted. The latter is where you leave only the commonly-used items on the menu and hide the occasionally-used ones: exactly opposite every user interface principle I’ve ever heard of.). But if this monstrosity survives into the next version of Word, I’ll be stunned.
In any case, once a UI change so drastic that you have to learn it from the ground up occurs, you can’t get any further behind by waiting.
Actually, no–there was a bunch of academic research over a period of years indicating that affective agents and adaptive UIs improve performance. Unfortunately, you need an entity the size of Microsoft to get that stuff out into the wild to see how it works in real life. And if it happens to work not all that well, it’s Microsoft that ends up getting lambasted.
FWIW, I hate Clippy as much as the next guy, but I do think that adaptive menus are a good thing overall. If I want to see the full menu, I can always just hover over the little arrow to make it show up. And if I always want to see the full menu, I can set that option so it’s persistent.
The problem is that the personalised menus are on by default. So the non-computer literate people don’t realise that some menu items are hiding. These are the people least likely to be able to figure out how to change it to the full menu. It should be full menus by default and then those who like the extra features can set it to hide shit they don’t use much.
It still sucks though. Because you don’t use those hidden menu items much, when you do need to use them, you can’t remember what menu they are under and have to spend more time to search for it than you would if it was a full menu.