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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."
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.
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.
No, it's not just "new features" but more importantly old features that they make work quite differently.
Go to Excel 2000 and put a column of numbers in columns A, B, and D. Hit CTRL-A to "select ALL" and do a sort.
Now do the same in Excel 2003.
You'll find that in Excel 2003, it tries to guess what you mean by "select ALL" and will only select and sort column A and B. If you sort your data, the data in column D is no longer associated with the data in A and B.
In this obvious example, you can see it didn't select all. But suppose you have an excel sheet that has many columns and you want to sort them like you always have... ctrl-A and sort. In excel 2003 you may end up breaking all of your data.
This exact thing happened to me and I lost almost a day of work because the file I was working on was ruined and I only figured it out after getting very strange results.
Why in the hell do they take something as long-standing and nearly universal as Ctrl-A and change what it does? Oh right, because if it's a standard, Microsoft will try to break it - even if it's their own standard.