Slashdot Mirror
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."
in soviet russia, the joke wants you back
Seriously, why do people fear change so much? The new Office design is much better than any previous version, in my opinion. No more hunting around in nested menus trying to find features - everything is right there in plain sight. Sure, there's a learning curve, but is it really so steep?
.*x format, which has tripped my fiancee up more than once in trying to print papers at school after typing them at home), but the design shouldn't be one of them.
I think there are valid complaints about Office 2007 (namely, the new
Although I keep defaulting back to MS Office - Open Office just isn't quite enough and isn't quite interchangable enough with people using Office - I still hate the the damned thing. It's like software designed by Terry Gilliam.
I hate the way it formats stuff whether I want it or not. I hate that it automatically changes URLs and e-mail addresses into links, even though I'm creating print documents. I REALLY hate that copied text from elsewhere is pasted in with whatever format it had elsewhere, not with the format of the text on the page that I'm editing.
And I hate that it is invariably difficult or impossible to turn this crap off.
I sincerely fear every new release of MS Office specifically because I need to beat it into submission to make it behave as if I'm in charge.
I don't even know what a "ribbon" is, but I'm sure that I'll hate that too.
Three Squirrels
I for one find your public support of Open Office in the face of slashdot's well-known anti-Open Office bias inspiring. You're not just putting your life on the line by boldly supporting software with a great many zealous supporters, but your karma too. You, sir, are an American Hero. A hero sir. Your example of courage will outlive us all.
I'm pretty much cool with having the ribbons set as they are. There a a number of reasons:
Firstly, I seemed to spend ages pulling the whole lot apart and making it just the way I wanted it. Then I'd change it. Then I'd change it again. By the time I'd got it right, I'd made it so different from the standard menus that if I used another PC, I couldn't remember where the heck I'd put anything.
Secondly, this also goes for supporting users. How many times have you told people exactly where to find something in an OS, only to find they've moved it/deleted it/ lost it? Happens all the time with Office. People regularly seem to lose whole toolbars, or end up with a little grey stub.
Thirdly, it's contextual. In older versions, none of the command were contextual at all. The rest of the OS is - right click, drag, etc. but toolbars weren't. Those years of sorting out the new ribbon seem to have pretty much got the whole lot in just the right place. For instance, I absolutely hate PowerPoint, but in 2007 putting a new presentation together was a breeze. It looked pretty good too.
Just my twopenneth. I know a lot of people out there hate the idea of being told where their icons and menus are going, but to be honest, I just don't have a problem with it at all. It's all there, it all makes sense and it's progress as far as I'm concerned.
Personally, I'd just like an Office suite that does simple basic things without any fuss. Currently I use AbiWord for word processing as it does everything I need easily and with no fuss. Unfortunately, if I want to do anything like create a spreadsheet or a presentation, I have to wait ages for OpenOffice to load and then trawl the menus for the command I want (before I switched to Abi, after every piece of work I wrote, I'd spend a couple of minutes trying to remember how to add page numbers...). Any suggestions?
Ubuntu Music Project: OSS for music tech geeks
Let's say what you're saying is true, then I don't find it all that strange. And neither should you since you answered the question yourself: They don't want the hassle of dealing with stupid customers.
/.), so they'd give it away for free... and in return get what? More complicated support.
Thing is, a third party company can *sell* the extension, Microsoft wouldn't be able to. It would bring heaps of bad publicity (imagine the fun we'd have here at
Now, like any good company that is in it for the money, they can brush you off with a simple "Oh, that is not our fault, call *them* about that".
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Friend, have you lost sleep worrying about whether you'll fail adapt to the stupendous User Interface innovations in the latest Monkeysoft Office?
How many times have you found yourself saying, "I could understand this global warming analysis model better if only I could see it on a Monkeysoft Powerpoint slide with those animated bullets that enter from the left or right of the slide"?
How many times have you found yourself thinking, "I don't even know what an OS is, I only need Monkeysoft Windows to run Monkeysoft Office, otherwise I could be using A Bantu or OS Ecstacy or whatever that piercing-faced kid in IS&T is using these days"?
How many times have you found yourself skipping a few StarCups coffees every week for a few months so you could buy yourself the latest version of Monkeysoft Office?
How many times have you found yourself thinking, "I don't get upset about viruses, they are an inevitable part of life even if they cost billions and are propagated by dimwits using Monkeysoft Office, soytenly not me"?
Don't worry, there's help. Join Slashdot's Monkeysoft Anonymous Forum, where people just like you are helping one another learn to live without Monkeysoft, one precious day at a time.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
You think Microsoft's bad? Try using OS X sometime.
Comment of the year
Can there be a "-1, Asinine" moderation?
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Fuck what the software design looks like. The actual function is far more important. One part of that function is consistency across versions.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Microsoft has setup interactive guides on their site that show you where commands are in 2007. You can find them half way down this page. The guides should help you get the ball rolling.
...so we may continhe to complain about it incessantly.
All this thread is is one giant continual flame war. You have people on one side arguing that the new UI is better than before, and offering "reasons" why. You have people who argue that the old UI worked better before. Thing is, nobody is going to actually change anybodies mind. Those who like the old UI will find reasons why it is better, and those who like the new UI will find reasons why it is better. I know Slashdot is about the discussion, but this is nothing more than a blatant attempt set off a flame war. People like me read Slashdot because we look for insightful and interesting opinions and the occasional obscure but highly relevant fact on current tech and related topics. Mod me down, I don't care, I have Karma to burn. Doesn't make the thread suddenly more intelligent or important or insightful or anything other than garbage.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
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_200
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.
Insert-Footer-Blank is NOT a "footnote". It is a footer.
As for line numbers - It's still easy to insert line numbers. However, What I WROTE was try changing the STYLE (e.g., font) of the line numbers - try it, it ain't that easy.
Alt-E-U doesn't work reliably either. Yes, there are new icons for undo and redo next to the Office button, if you notice them and realize what they are. There are an AWFUL lot of icons up there.
References->Insert Footnote (the big icon in the second group)?
As for line numbers - It's still easy to insert line numbers. However, What I WROTE was try changing the STYLE (e.g., font) of the line numbers - try it, it ain't that easy.I didn't even know line numbering was possible -- I've never used that before, nor felt a need for that feature. So, first I had to guess how I could enable them, and my first guess -- the Page Layout tab -- was fine.
Then I saw what you meant: there's no easy way to work on those numbers. But due to my knowledge of styles, I guessed there would be a style named "Line Number" -- and, again, I guessed it right. Maybe I was just lucky to find it in a few seconds; I guess an unexperienced user would never really find it -- but then again, I don't expect an unexperienced user (the kind that doesn't understand indenting, tabulations, margins, styles, etc.) to use automatic line numbers either.
But the way you say it, it seems on older versions it was easier. How would you change the style of line numbers on earlier versions?
Alt-E-U doesn't work reliably either.YMMV, naturally, but I have no idea what you are talking about... it seems to me it works fine. But I never use that shortcut, nor do I know anyone who uses it when there's Ctrl-Z, so I can't really say.
Yes, there are new icons for undo and redo next to the Office button, if you notice them and realize what they are. There are an AWFUL lot of icons up there.Huh? There's just three icons there by default: save, undo and redo/repeat. Any other icon has been placed by you (or by somebody else).
Yes, but if you had done *all* I told you to do, Adobe would be yours.
emt 377 emt 4
So should the "insert row" function be in the "insert" menu or the "table" menu?
Menus, in my opinion, never worked because inevitably the interface will be changed and a new function will be added. When the new function is added, a choice must be made on which menu it should appear and if a new menu is necessary. Eventually you end up with too many functions that were tacked on and a huge tree of functions burried in menus. That's what happened to office and now I can hardly find anything because the menus contain too many items are are unorganized.
I mean, even take practical restaurant menus: you sit at a table, the waiter hands you a menu and now you sit there staring at the thing for 5 to 10 minutes. Who in their right minds thought that this menu would ever be efficient unless the user studied and memorized the stupid thing. It's like reading a book except in the restuarant, at least you have the flavors and crapiness/goodness of the food to help remind you of what was good and what wasn't. In working with software there's no such experience. Click the button, it didn't do what I want, ctrl+z and the option never even had a shot at my long term memory unless it did something that undo wouldn't fix.
Now I haven't use the ribbon myself, but as I understand, Microsoft hired some big time usability experts and spent an awful lot of time trying to make the new Office 2007 interface usable. Note that usability encompasses many attributes of an interface, and learning curve and consistency (the topics that agrivate people the most) are just a few of the many things that need to be accounted for. The problem Microsoft has, and almost any software, hardware, gadget thingy today has is improving the interface without sacrificing consistency. The issue is, some time in the past, someone made a mistake in designing the interface, but because it was there in the previous version, if you take it away or change it in the next version, people immediately complain even though it is obviously a bad way to do it. Is the user correct? Absolutely, they learned how to do something and now that knowledge is lost and they have to relearn it. Is the vendor or designer correct? Absolutely, the method of doing that operation was stupid and required too much training or effort by the user to perform. But give it up, it was wrong to start, and it's going to take some pain to fix.
Now you say "give me my old interface." But I say to you, "tough luck, learn it over again." Chances are, at least with this version, Microsoft put a whole lot of effort into fixing it and getting it right. Had they left in the old interface, that would accomplish nothing. People would laugh at the ribbon and continue using the "old way" for the sake of avoiding learning something new when they could take the time to learn the new way, find out it is actually much more efficient than the old way, and embrace the change because it is actually helping them.
Why do I say this without even having tried the interface? I'm no MS shill, but I admit that their Office suite is unfortunately the standard among office suites because there is no competitor with a good enough feature set. I've tried open office, but often I run into some feature that was available in microsoft (even an older version) but still isn't in open office. Additionally, I've looked at this screenshot tour of Office 2007's keyboard shortcuts. The basic idea is now every function in Office 2007 can be accessed via keyboard. Furthermore, the interface even labels each function with a key or combination of keys to press in order to execute that function without the mouse. I would think Slashdot of all places would actually love this change; it's like the power of VI (in the sense that
You don't have to use a mouse to pull-down a menu.
Alt-F, Alt-O, etc work just fine.
Alt-I, B, N, Enter
Plus there is a difference between favouring keyboard use and never using the mouse. I don't throw the mouse out.
I used to try to sell people on GNU/Linux, Openoffice, Abiword, et al, but now I just wait. Every release by Microsoft is worse than the last. More annoying, more confusing, less compatible, and so on. People are starting to switch not necessarily because the alternatives like OSS or OS X are better, but because Microsoft is worse. MS is doing the evangelizing for us.
I had to write 170 pages of notes for an online course and using LaTeX (which I had only been dabbling with for a month or so) was much easier than Word would ever have been. I wrote the whole thing as an outline, and I can only imagine how crazy 170 pages of nested numbered lists would have driven me in MS Word or Openoffice. But \begin{enumerate}...\item{stuff}...\item{stuff}... \end{enumerate} is easy to keep track of visually, especially if you properly indent.
But if you're one of those people whose ground premise is "I will not learn a markup language" then continue enjoying the "help" that the GUI word processors give you. Some things are easier with a word processor (tables, for example) but for any complex or long document I'd prefer to use LaTeX.