Show Office 2007 Who's the Boss

jcatcw writes "Microsoft knows how you like your Office Suite. You like Ribbons ... they're a given, right? Well, if not, Computerworld reviews some third-party packages that allow you to customize the software's interface. Classic Menu gives you an Office-2003-like set of menus. It'll help you navigate old menu structures to find favorite commands, but don't expect to use all the familiar keyboard shortcuts. ToolbarToggle lets you customize the menus. However, Classic Menu has two advantages over ToolbarToggle: It's available for PowerPoint today, and it includes Office 2007 commands on its menus, a modification you can't make to ToolbarToggle menus. RibbonCustomizer works within the Ribbon's own constraints to let you change the display of icons and commands on existing tabs or any new ones you create."

Comments

Re:Man, just get used to it

[SEMW]

Ask anyone who has worked in an office environment (not geeks) and they'll tell you that most people use very basic functions like bold/font/size, bullets, formatting and mail merge. Looking at the only concrete examples you actually include in your post: bold, font/size, bullets, and all the rest of the formatting options are in exactly the same place as they always were, and all the old keyboard shortcuts to them still work. The only one out of your list that's changed is Mail merge, which is now in "mailings" rather than the old, generic "tools" -- much, much more obvious than before. And the old keyboard accelerator for it still works.

in which a 20-year Word vet learns about ctrl-z...

[Daltorak]

I'm calling bullshit on your post. Let's dig in.

As a Word user since 1986, who knows the program pretty well , I must agree that the ribbon is a jumbled mess with important stuff deeply hidden. It was a big disappointment. It took me quite a while to find even the undo command. The Undo command is directly beside the Save command, on the tool bar. It's always visible. The icons look exactly the same as in Word 2003. The only difference is that, unlike Word 2003 where by default it was buried in a mess of unrelated icons and commands (between paste and insert hyperlink, below the Window menu, above the Bold/Italic/Underline icons), it's given more prominence.

Oh, and if you've been using Word since 1986, you should know by now that Undo is Ctrl-Z, just like it is in every other Windows, Linux, and Mac application (s/Ctrl/Command/). You shouldn't ever have to use a mouse to undo or redo something.

Next!

Inserting a footnote now requires a whole series of mouse clicks as far as I can tell. Press Alt+S, F, and start typing your footnote. It's two mouse extremely obvious clicks (References, Insert Footnote) if you really need to go to your mouse to do it.

Next!

Go try something relatively obscure like turning on line numbering in a document and changing the style of the line numbers. It's a lot easier to do line numbering in 2007 than it is in 2003. In 2003, you had to go digging into the File menu -> Page Setup -> Layout tab -> click Line Numbers -> and click the Add Line Numbering checkbox. In Word 2007, you click the Page Layout tab, click Line Numbers, and choose from the drop-down list that appears how you want the line numbers to work. Easy peasy.

As for changing the style of line numbers, it's basically the same in Word 2003 and 2007: Set it up using the style palette. In both versions, by default, the "Line Number" style won't be shown in the palette until you are using line numbers. If you're planning on changing styles, you really ought to know how to use the style palette.

Next!

Damned, though, if I can see any really new major features that make it worthwhile. Here's a partial list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_2007 #Microsoft_Office_Word

One of the less obvious new features that's actually a really huge improvement, is the "Building Blocks" system. You can create and re-use "things"; for example, you can create a specific format, layout, and text content for a presentation of your company's mission statement, or maybe it's just a set of paragraphs you use over and over between a lot of documents. You can get a sense of how this works by going to the Insert menu and playing around with the Text Box and Quick Parts features.

I write user interface design documents as part of my professional work, and this one feature alone has saved me hours of time, and my documents look better to boot. Word 2007 has already paid for itself several times over.