Why does it have to be so vastly different? As far as I can tell there’s not a lot of new capabilities, things are just put–excuse me, hidden–in entirely new places. Why does someone think that everyone who uses a tool must be sent back to being a noob on the tool every few years?
I’ve worked in Office for dozens of thousands of hours. I knew Word and PowerPoint to the very depths of their capabilities. Now I’m like a blind man trussed hand and foot and tossed in a vat of warm cheese. There’s no friggin File menu; it’s been replaced by a cute little button that has no name, no language on it. They don’t really have menus at all, per se: they have tabs now, with little icons. If you want to format the font, for example, don’t waste your time digging around the Format tab. It’s not there. But you know what is? All the stuff that used to be in the Drawing menu. Which is now gone.
Anyway, aside from venting, I’m helping a friend with a huge PPT presentation he’s doing on Monday. I’m spending 2/3 of my time in Help, finding things, but a couple things I can’t figure out.
First, you know how you can format a PPT presentation with specific colors? Highlight, Text, etc. Is there a way to do that in Excel? There are hundreds of graphs in this presentation, and for various reasons (which at this stage we don’t have time to rethink), we’re drawing the graphs in Excel and c/p’ing them into PPT as graphic objects. (I know, I know, we don’t have a choice at this point.)
But they have to match the master color palette of the PPT doc. Can I give an Excel doc a master color palette for graphs?
How is change to the users benefit. It’s a word processor. Nobody really needs a program that tries to think for them. They need a program that does what they want it to do when they tell it to do so. Microsoft Word drove me insane formatting my dissertation. I think they make changes mostly to give people a reason to buy a program they already have.
Anyone know if Office 2007 can save a doc that can be opened in Office 2000?
Removing backwards compatibility is a common dirty trick to force users to update. I’ve been concerned a vendor or one of our insurance reps will call complaining their new version of Office can’t read a word 2000 doc one of our staff sends them. Or, we won’t be able to read their shiny new 2007 doc.
It’s annoying to say the least. I’m still looking to find how to changed selected text to Title Case and SMALL CAPS in word. I am growing very fond of Windows 7. It is stable and easy to use once I get used to the new places they have put things. Quite a change from XP.
Office 2007 can save in what it calls “Office 97-2003” format, so the answer to the first question is Yes.
The second is a bigger issue, unless you set Office 2007 to save in the old format (.doc) rather than the new (.docx), you can create documents that no-one using the older versions can read. Microsoft does provide aConverter Pack that will allow older versions to open the docx format, but not everyone will have that installed.
Personally, I have found the new layout fairly easy to adjust to - what I find most irritating is that I have to switch between tabs to do things now when the icons used to both be visible at the same time on two different toolbars.
After using it since its release, I’m a fan. The “hidden” features were a source of much consternation. It’s functionality is essentially the same which pisses me off as an end user. If I am to pay for an upgrade, I’d like it to “do” something that I couldn’t do before. The best part of 2007 is that it’s prettier.
I agree there’s not much reason for such a change.
But then, I recently went from Office 1997 to Office 2007, and it didn’t take much effort to figure out all the new and different ways to do all the things I’ve learned on the old version. And the new one does things that the other can’t.
If you want to pit Office 2007, then go to the Pit. We get a rant started about every 6 months about this horrible “new” software that’s been around for 3 years.
There was no need for a significant number of new features, the office suite already has a massive amount of functionality. Most of the features that were requested already existed in the products. That’s not to say there aren’t new features, rather that wasn’t the focus of Office 2007
Microsoft’s customer experience improvement program had been monitoring countless hours from countless users using the Office suite’s functionality to determine how people use the products and popularity and combinations of features
The reason for the design overhaul was to make the Office suites easier to use, for the most popular features to be more accessible and grouping the features used in combination. The idea is that ultimately the massive reorganisation would benefit all users, both old and new.
I know it’s a terrible shock, but once you get used to it, you’ll probably find overall it is easier to use and the new ribbon and features (such as live preview) actually do make it faster and easier to create great looking documents.
you won’t be able to read their 2007 docs. There are translators. They should be able to read your 2000 docs. As for OO, I suspect that is exactly why MS changed the look and feel. By forcing everyone to learn new ways of doing things, MS forces OO to either rewrite their entire package for no good reason or try to be different. Yes it is a pain, but it benefits MS in a few years.
Office 2010 will be released some time next year. It’s mostly like 2007, only more so. If you’re just now getting around to switching from 2003 to 2007, you’ll be all set to whine about 2010 when it comes out.
Funny that the OP’s actual concern was making consistent looking graphs in Excel which he/she can then integrate into PowerPoint. Providing easy & complete support for consistent styling across document types was one of **the **key adds in 2007.
>Removing backwards compatibility is a common dirty trick to force users to update.
Saving into the classic format means the document can be opened by Office 97 and newer.
Saving into the newer format means that person with the older version of office will need to install the free converter pack from Microsoft to open/edit these documents. They will need Office 2000 or newer to run the converter pack. That’s 11 year old software at this point. Not exactly a “dirty trick” here.
