Microsoft Announces Office 2016 and Office For Windows 10 Coming Later This Year

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Microsoft Announces Office 2016 and Office For Windows 10 Coming Later This Year

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday January 22, 2015 @10:38PM from the coming-soon dept.

An anonymous reader writes At its Windows 10 event yesterday, Microsoft unveiled the touch-optimized version of Office. Today, the company offered more details about that version, and then snuck in another announcement: the next desktop version is under development, it is called Office 2016, and it will be generally available "in the second half of 2015." Office for Windows 10 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook), meanwhile, is also slated to arrive later this year, though Microsoft has shared more about it and plans to offer a preview in the coming weeks. These new Office apps will be pre-installed (they will be free) on smartphones and small tablets running Windows 10. They will also be available to download from the Windows Store for other devices.

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No! by MagickalMyst · 2015-01-22 22:53 · Score: 2, Insightful

I don't want to buy a new computer!

--
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
1. Re:No! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-22 23:00 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Windows 10 is Windows 8.1 with a Windows 7 Start Menu - it really isn't a big change, so think of it as SP3 (Windows 8.1 was SP1 for Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 Update was SP2). It will be a free upgrade for Windows 8 users, and - given that MS is finally taking its tablet market seriously - is likely to have efficiency improvements rather than bloat.
  I'm still surprised how fast Windows 8.1 works on my low end HP Stream tablet - this isn't the company that brought you Vista any more.
  (Of course, few'll take the Metro interface seriously until there is a method to sideload Metro apps on non-developer machines without shelling out $3000+ for a volume pack of licenses - most economic activity does not take place in enterprise or hobbyist markets, but among small businesses, and MS used to understand this.)
2. Re: No! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 00:09 · Score: 1
  
  Then don't. No one really needs office 2016 (or even office 2007. Office 2003 still works great, so stick to that if you have it, or if not, Google Docs and/or LibreOffice generally works well enough for home use.
3. Re: No! by jbolden · 2015-01-23 01:40 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Lots of their customers use SharePoint which is a rather large innovation as compared with what your talking about in terms of Office Suites in areas like collaboration. SharePoint is very much like what CVS or GIT provide programmers but even richer.
  Things haven't stayed the same, but where they changed the most is in areas that their bottom rung of users don't notice. By linking more tightly with SharePoint they can easily show how far ahead Office is of the other office suites.
4. Re: No! by GoddersUK · 2015-01-23 01:47 · Score: 1
  
  If you just write the occasional letter, yes. If you're a heavy user of general purpose office software then you will notice the benefits of moving off anything pre-2007. While the 2007-2010 and 2010-2013 changes are more incremental I think the 2007-2013 change is definitely worth it for heavy users. I always get the impression people who say things like you probably haven't used a more recent version of Office than 2003 because the changes are substantial and worthwhile. People always go on about how wonderful LibreOffice (or whatever they're calling it these days) and Google Docs are. They're not. They can do the basics but they can't take the semi-pro market like Office can. Sure, if you're typsetting a book use Latex and if you're plotting publication quality scientific graphs use Origin/Sigma Plot/etc. But for everything in between MS Office has no competition.
5. Re: No! by Ol+Olsoc · 2015-01-23 02:15 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  People always go on about how wonderful LibreOffice (or whatever they're calling it these days) and Google Docs are. They're not. They can do the basics but they can't take the semi-pro market like Office can.
  THIS! I once tried installing LibreOffice on my computer, and my computer self destructed! Melted the damn thing, Before that it inserted "fuck " instead of "and", in every letter I typed. the spreadsheet couldn't add 2+2, then my dog ran away, my wife left me, the lower 40 got accidenatlly planted in Monsanto corn and they sued me, and my milch cows went dry.
  Actually, it has been a few years since I used Microsoft Office.
  Have they solved the cross platform compatibility problems yet? Office isn't even compatible with iteself. Used to spend a lot of time repariing documents and PowerPoints on the Mac that got balled up when coming from the PC side.
  If you are trading files between MS, MAC, and Linux systems, how does Microsoft Office do?
  
  --
  The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
6. Re:No! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 02:36 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  I'm still surprised how fast Windows 8.1 works on my low end HP Stream tablet - this isn't the company that brought you Vista any more.
  Right, it's worse than Vista.
  My quad core Haswell Ideapad laptop with 8 GB RAM and a hybrid drive grinds so achingly slowly with Windows 8.1 that I don't use it for anything. There's practically nothing installed, either, except Chrome and Firefox, but yet out of the box the thing does nothing but constantly thrash the hard drive, refuse to sleep, and blow out hot air. I guess Superfetch is never satisfied, but I almost took a hammer to that fucking machine more than once after hearing its hard drive chatter for hours while the damn thing was sitting unused, heating my office with the hot air it fucking constantly blows. I loved the bonus irony of only getting 75 minutes runtime off a full battery charge while it is on "Battery Saver" mode.
  It is literally the worst laptop I have ever owned, and I expected it to be the best.
  Just thought one good anecdote deserved another, you know.
7. Re: No! by Penguinisto · 2015-01-23 03:08 · Score: 2
  
  Not to drift too off-topic, but I noticed something WRT Sharepoint...
  In most companies that I've seen, Sharepoint runs the company site that has all the HR and official corporate stuff (schedules, forms, etc), but that's it. Usually only one or two departments take their chunk of it even halfway seriously, while the rest put up some perfunctory content (if they even bother) and ignore it. Individual user content? Unless it's a multinational corp, you won't really see any of that, if at all.
  Meanwhile, in the departments where the developers/sysadmins/engineers live, Confluence and JIRA dominate for content and ticketing, respectively (and before that, basic Wiki pages like TWiki held all the tribal knowledge). Sales departments usually turn to Salesforce, SAP, or similar.
  I'm really not sure if any company uses it any differently outside of Microsoft itself. I think the only reason any organization bothered with Sharepoint in the first place is because the beancounters think it's "free" (nevermind the OS licensing and infrastructure requirements).
  That said, Sharepoint has document versioning, sure... but that's about where the similarities to Git or Subversion end (CVS? Okay maybe, but only because CVS is outdated simplistic crap compared to SVN or Git.)
  
  --
  Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
8. Re: No! by Rob+Y. · 2015-01-23 04:04 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  LibreOffice has the potential to be fully cross-platform, and it would seem to me to be to Apple's benefit to make it seriously good. The reason iPhones and iPads were able to take off is that the web (and web standards) made it possible to do most of what you do with a computer without that computer having to run Windows. Macs have benefited from that - as well as the fact that the success of the iThings has accelerated the process.
  A successful LibreOffice would be the next step toward making the second biggest use of computers cross-platform. In fact, Microsoft's last best hope for success in mobile lies in the fact that Windows tablets can be bundled with MSOffice. Yes, they're coming out with iOS and Android versions - but that's just a desparation move. The minute Windows mobile devices gain some traction (or the iOS/Android versions outlive their usefulness in some other way), the non-Windows versions will become second-class. But if Libre got really good - and became available (and successful) on mobiles - iOS devices would continue to be able to compete on the merits. You'd think Apple would want to help that happen. Are they still afraid of losing the official MSOffice for the Mac? Google seems to have a difference of opinion about where document processing should happen. Much as a full-featured office suite would make Android laptops a viable - and even attractive - alternative, that doesn't seem to be their priority (though their use of Open Document formats in their online apps is helpful).
  Windows will continue to dominate in the business world. There's just way too much inertia there in terms of third-party apps. But mobile (and, yes, Chromebooks) have demonstrated that the general public doesn't need or particularly want it at home. A cross-platform, full-featured office suite would just solidify that trend.
  
  --
  Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
9. Re: No! by Curunir_wolf · 2015-01-23 04:47 · Score: 1
  
  Have they solved the cross platform compatibility problems yet? Office isn't even compatible with iteself. Used to spend a lot of time repariing documents and PowerPoints on the Mac that got balled up when coming from the PC side. If you are trading files between MS, MAC, and Linux systems, how does Microsoft Office do?
  I use Office 2007 on Windows and Office for OSX on the Mac (Maverick). I write technical documents, using plenty of advanced formatting features, for publication using Word, and they render exactly the same in the office and Mac version. That's using the .docx format. So that seems to work well, anyway.
  As far as Linux, there is no MS Office version, and Libre and related systems have formatting issues in both directions.
  
  --
  "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
  --- Jerry Garcia
10. Re:No! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 04:48 · Score: 0
  
  "Windows 10 is Windows 8.1 with a Windows 7 Start Menu - it really isn't a big change, so think of it as SP3 (Windows 8.1 was SP1 for Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 Update was SP2)."
  Along with forced integration with Xbox Live. Joy.
11. Re:No! by boskone · 2015-01-23 05:37 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  wow. umm, I disagree.
  I think Windows 10 is the most important release since I've been in IT (20 years).
  It fundamentally changes what windows is and how users will access technology.
12. Re:No! by spire3661 · 2015-01-23 05:58 · Score: 1
  
  All i can say is "its a Lenovo, what did you expect?"
  
  --
  Good-bye
13. Re:No! by davester666 · 2015-01-23 06:09 · Score: 1
  
  What?
  The primary change with Windows 10 seems to be that Microsoft has finally agreed with Apple that a desktop UI must be different from a tablet UI [as in, desktop mode and tablet mode].
  Or maybe the idea that developers can create a single executable that can work equally poorly across a wide variety of device sizes [been there, done that, vast majority of developers either do the UI so it works well for one specific device size and crappy on all others, or so-of-ok across most device sizes]. Nothing about Microsoft's announcement indicates this time it will be different.
  
  --
  Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
14. Re:No! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 08:40 · Score: 0
  
  Let this be a lesson to buy a quality laptop next time. Lenovo laptops, along with Toshiba and HP are notorious for having overheating problems. That is probably causing yours to throttle, hence the low performance.
15. Re:No! by drinkypoo · 2015-01-23 09:00 · Score: 2
  
  It fundamentally changes what windows is and how users will access technology.
  That's what Microsoft's been telling us about every new Windows release that has come along since ever. So far, the only thing that's changed is that bluescreens came into being, and then were hidden.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
16. Re:No! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 09:40 · Score: 0
  
  No, that doesn't explain why I have to disable Superfetch and the Indexing Service on the goddamn machine in order to keep it from thrashing the empty-except-for-Windows hard drive for literally days on end and refusing to sleep while it sits there and blows heat.
  We haven't even discussed the abortion of the UI.
  And I already *did* buy a quality laptop to replace it: a nice Haswell based MacBook Pro Retina that has none of these problems and gets 6+ hours of battery life instead of almost 1 (with real usage patterns).
17. Re: No! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 09:48 · Score: 0
  
  Speaking of which, somebody should implement GIT integration for GIMP users for collaborative creation of that flame war imagery.
18. Re: No! by jbolden · 2015-01-23 10:00 · Score: 1
  
  SharePoint has versioning for Office documents. Git can't meaningfully do that.
  I agree the heavy office users tend to love SharePoint. My experience it is clerical. I've seen it be used heavily for Sales for example where PowerPoint versioning matters (huge collections of decks) or contract management systems are being used. For developers I've seen it used for project documentation (not program documentation). Though the heaviest users are developers who develop for Excel / Office extensions.
19. Re: No! by Ol+Olsoc · 2015-01-23 10:28 · Score: 1
  
  LibreOffice has the potential to be fully cross-platform, and it would seem to me to be to Apple's benefit to make it seriously good.
  I do run a couple networks that consist of LibreOffice on Macs, Linux boxes, and a Windows machine.
  LibreOffice is seamless across all three Os's. Which is more than I can say for PC to Mac in Microsoft Office.
  
  --
  The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
20. Re: No! by david_thornley · 2015-01-23 10:31 · Score: 1
  
  Microsoft has to come out with Android and iOS versions of Office. There's just too many Android and iOS users out there, and lots of them are going to do office-type things with them (works best with tablets with keyboards, and you can get lots of different keyboards nowadays). Apple puts office software on iOS devices by default. I haven't checked, but I don't think I can easily remove Keynote, Numbers, or Pages.
  This means that lots of people are going to be using office-type software on their tablets (and sometimes phones). If they have to do this without Microsoft Office, they will, and some of these people are sufficiently powerful to demand that other systems work with their iPad. This means that (a) people in general will realize they don't need Microsoft Office, and (b) Microsoft Office will have to work reliably with other office software.
  Traditionally, a lot of people got Microsoft Office because they needed to do document interchange with Microsoft Office installations. Change that and MS Office turns into a high-end office suite that lots of people have, not the suite everybody needs, and MS Office has to compete seriously with others.
  This is likely at least as important as getting Windows a decent share of the mobile market. MS would have to get a large market share to pull MS Office from Android and iOS - and those devices are not going to simply outlive their usefulness.
  
  --
  "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
21. Re: No! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 19:40 · Score: 0
  
  No one really needs office 2016 (or even office 2007. Office 2003 still works great, so stick to that if you have it,
  no, don't. for the same reason you don't run windows xp anymore. like xp, office 2003 is a dead horse, too, with unpatched security holes. support for office xp and office 2003 ended at the same time as for windows xp... except it is windows xp that has short term (and not inexpensive) subscription plan for further updates, not office. so switch to newer nicrosoft office or to openoffice or one of its derivatives.
22. Re:No! by toddestan · 2015-01-25 03:20 · Score: 1
  
  I would say that Windows 8 is the version that tried to fundamentally change what Windows is. It was arguably the biggest change in the user interface since Windows 95, and the whole Metro thing is a whole different way of interacting with the computer. It of course flopped, and all that Windows 10 is (and to a lesser extent, Windows 8.1) is Microsoft making Windows look and act more like it how it was in WIndows 7.
23. Re: No! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-27 06:21 · Score: 0
  
  You must not be using a semi-recent MS Office, then. Office 2010 and beyond haven't given me any problems, besides occasionally not transferring embedded movies well (but that's more likely to be the fault of the computers I presented on).
24. Re: No! by Ol+Olsoc · 2015-01-27 14:02 · Score: 1
  
  You must not be using a semi-recent MS Office, then. Office 2010 and beyond haven't given me any problems, besides occasionally not transferring embedded movies well (but that's more likely to be the fault of the computers I presented on).
  Dunno. I stopped using Office after 2007. To me, continuing to use it would have been like the person who keeps going back to a spouse that beats them senseless a few times a week, but "has completely changed now", so goes back to get beat again.
  The open office suites serve me well, and I have complete and full compatibility no matter what platform I am on. and more options. Considering they still have the Ribbon, I don't even consider MS Office at all.
  I have zero need for Redmond's offerings.
  
  --
  The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-22 23:05 · Score: 1, Informative

I wonder, if Microsoft will produce anymore a desktop optimized version of Office and or Windows? Those Word screenshots look absolutely horrible. Are they really removing the existing features so that soon the Word is similar to Notepad? Why would I buy a office suite that does not have the features I use, or the features are hidden behind ten layers of ribbons? I bet on next version all the buttons are replaced with hamburger-button, perhaps even the text color is fixed to light gray, so the UX guys almost get the plain white screen they thrive to.
1. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by ArmoredDragon · 2015-01-22 23:25 · Score: 0
  
  I wonder, if Microsoft will produce anymore a desktop optimized version of Office and or Windows?
  Probably not. I think Microsoft is trolling their Office customers. I mean look at this:
  
  These new Office apps will be pre-installed (they will be free) on smartphones and small tablets running Windows 10.
  So they start a parade telling you its free and awesome, but then totally JK you by sticking it on a product that nobody actually buys. The tablet war is already over (tablet sales are dropping FAST) and nobody wants a Windows Phone except for Microsoft employees or die-hard fans.
2. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by bemymonkey · 2015-01-22 23:35 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Apparently the screenshots in the article are the full-screen "touch" versions. I'd expect the regular versions to have the full ribbons just like 2010 or 2013 (which I've actually grown to like, because they expose keyboard shortcuts for practically EVERYTHING).
3. Re: Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 00:16 · Score: 0
  
  Office on a smartphone or tablet may be painful to write with compared to on a PC, but it's killer feature for business execs is to view/make minor corrections or changes to Microsoft documents on the go. Having this baked into the OS is quite nice for certain folks. Probably not as big a market as those buying Apple for status symbol or Google to save money, but still a pretty large market.
  And tablet sales are saturated for now, because most people can't really justify its purpose. Almost everything it can do can be done almost as well by a combination of laptop and smartphone, so people see a tablet as unnecessary. But as prices come down with time, new people will buy tablets, and others will have to replace old tablets with new ones. If MS makes a business friendly tablet with baked in productivity tools, I think it has a good shot of at least taking some of the tablet and smartphone market from Apple/android.
4. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Billly+Gates · 2015-01-23 00:41 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Name one function that was removed since 2003. Just because learning something new is hard doesn't mean something was taken away.
  My opinion maybe unpopular here with a large group of slashdotters but I actually hated the menu in Office 2003 and the silly menus to show more. My worst was the nested menus and options where I needed many mouse clicks to perform tasks.
  The ribbon was talked about and was cool back then in 2004 when MS R&D showed what it could do. Then of course people who were set in their ways whinned when 2007 came out and it and now it is uncool here.
  It took me 1 week back in 2007 to get the hang of it and yes I was a little frustrated at first. :-(
  After 1 month I got it and preferred it over the menus. That was 6 years ago! Today when I go on a coworkers computer with Office 2007 with Outlook which still has menus I am stomped as I do not know where everything else. Does this mean it is now inferior because *I* do not know where something is?
  With ribbons I can preview changes before I make select them. Keyboard shortcuts work better when I hit the alt key. Try it? Office on a laptop with no room with a mouse is so much better as a result with the alt key and the previews.
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
5. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by GrumpySteen · 2015-01-23 00:59 · Score: 0
  
  You know, I like my steaks cooked medium well and I hate broccoli, but I don't blather on like a self-absorbed idiot telling everyone to get over their own personal preferences and adopt mine.
6. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Billly+Gates · 2015-01-23 01:03 · Score: 0
  
  But the OP comment was IT SUCKS because I DO NOT LIKE IT and therefore it is the same as notepad. Who is the self aborbed idiot?
  R&D show people now use 80% of the functions of Office where before they used less according to Microsoft. This would show the ribbon was a success.
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
7. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 01:24 · Score: 0
  
  If MS shuffles the features behind random ribbons and the menus that open from those downward arrows, they are effectively removing features. Before the features were grouped with into hierarchical menus, so one could usually find even features that he had not used before. For a while I tried to use the newer Office, but after I had to use Google for finding the most features I used, it was just easier and more cost effective to install older Office version or Open Office instead. Why should one spend time and money re-learning the same things again? If MS was so sure their new UI is better, why don't they allow users to select between the old and new?
  At least on the company I work for, we have never used Office as little as today, and for most of us, the Outlook is the last piece of it we use daily anymore. All the documentation is easier now easier to do with a wiki based system. If we are forced to re-learn the usage of systems from scratch, why not jump into alternatives, as the cost of re-learning is the same.
8. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Richard_at_work · 2015-01-23 01:25 · Score: 1
  
  You seem to have replied to the wrong poster there...
9. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 01:26 · Score: 0
  
  What is this drivel? I came here to read people saying, "It's a trap! Use Emacs", followed by "No, VI is the Word and the Word was never the Word, and VI was with God from the beginning, and VI shall have dominion henceforth and forever." All I'm seeing is people evaluating Microsoft products like proprietary business apps are not a huge joke. I feel so lost. Help me!
10. Re: Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Billly+Gates · 2015-01-23 01:38 · Score: 1
  
  Nah. We just use SystemD now to do office work on Linux.
  It just comes with a crappy startup daemon.
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
11. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 01:39 · Score: 1
  
  I found it kind of amusing that people were convinced the tablet craze was going to pan out any other way than it did the last time.
  Remember the Palm Pilots? The Zire, when Palm realized that a Gameboy-like screen wasn't going to cut it any more? The Sharp Zaurus which could run Linux no less...where did they all go? In the trash bin, that's where. As it turns out there's a reason we're not still trying to type on postage-stamp sized screens like the Osborne 1, it isn't very pleasant. When Osborne announced that the newer models would have a larger screen (among other things), customers were so overjoyed that they held off on buying the Osborne 1 in favour of the Executive. How did that pan out? Sales of the Osborne 1 ground to a halt...right along with the company when they went out of business, about two years after they started.
  The second obvious problem is typing on one of these mobile devices at all...because we're still at the point where the most efficient way to input anything on PC's as we know them now is a mouse and a keyboard. It's an OLD formula, going right back to the Xerox PARC days, but it hasn't changed much...because it really doesn't need to. The most efficient way to type on a tablet is to buy a half-assed, foldout keyboard and type on that instead...just like the old days! When a low-end laptop that can do more than any of the current tablets out there only costs $100 or so more than the tablet itself...what's the point? By the time you've bought everything you need for a tablet that you need to make it as comfortable to use as a laptop...you've spent as much money as you would have on the laptop.
  As if that weren't enough, time has somehow looped back on itself to 1992 and we're talking about virtual reality again! Microsoft has their magical HoloLens, Sony has whatever they have...Nintendo will probably upgrade to waving the entire console at a shoddy motion sensor at some point, Oculus is still out there somewhere but now that they're owned by Facebook nobody really gives a shit. I can't really picture someone donning a VR helmet and trying to immerse themselves in Elder Scrolls XVIII when there's pokes and invites to Mafia Wars popping up in their field of view every fifteen seconds, probably with a nice ad banner across the top and a 30 second, unskippable ad during load times. All of these major companies seem to have convinced themselves that the way to the future is...gimmicky methods of input. Microsoft had their Surface (and still do have them, probably $500 million+ dollars worth of wasted electronics), their wacky-as-hell Windows 8 release that only served to point out how stupid the touch interface idea was to begin with. They had the Kinect, which irked gamers so much that unbundling the thing from the Xbone more than doubled sales of the console in North America. Turns out people don't like an internet connected device staring at them 24/7, with all of the sensory capabilities of some of the drones the US military is buzzing around out there, especially when all it gets you is a shoddy voice interface and flailing your arms around like a goon trying to play anything with it.
  Everything old is new again...and it still fucking sucks. Nowhere better does this show up than in tablet sales, which if you look at some of the figures are dropping like a lead weight...along with the prices of the things in stores, but it's a bit late for that now. People have already clued in...hey, this computer that I bought four years ago running Windows 7 does more than this shitty tablet. I can install what I want on it, I don't have to deal with a terrible interface for typing on the thing and hell, if I don't like the operating system I can replace that too. Imagine that, a computing device that doesn't treat you like an escaped convict. There's roughly about three classes of the typical IBM PC clones out there...gamers, "casual" users who browser around on the Internet, post some Facebook pictures, listen to some MP3's or watch some movies they downloaded from a torrent sit
12. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by jbolden · 2015-01-23 01:43 · Score: 1
  
  Billy -
  You are absolutely correct far more useful information shows up with the ribbon than with the menus. The number of menu items increased with the ribbons. Of course what Microsoft really needs to do is make the ribbon even more context sensitive and thus have many times more options than they did with standard menus and really take advantage of the medium. And I suspect that will happen with SharePoint and Azure's web enabled interconnections so that every web application managed though Azure can connect into the office suites.
13. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 01:45 · Score: 0
  
  I take it your primary language is not English, you seem to be talking bollocks!
14. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 01:55 · Score: 0
  
  Being able to preview changes before selecting them is nothing to do with the Ribbon, per se, it can be done with normal menus and dialogue boxes just as easily.
  The Ribbon is badly designed, plain and simple.
15. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Malc · 2015-01-23 01:58 · Score: 1
  
  Why go back to an old version of Office for that experience? Just install one of the main OSS competitors... it's like Word for Windows 2.0, but worse.
16. Re: Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 02:19 · Score: 0
  
  Just curious, how do you manage to type so well when you've clearly had your mitts wrapped around the dick of whatever current CEO at Microsoft you're sucking on lately?
17. Re: Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 02:26 · Score: 0
  
  Choke on Nutella's brown dick you fucking shill.
18. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Ol+Olsoc · 2015-01-23 02:35 · Score: 1
  
  My opinion maybe unpopular here with a large group of slashdotters but I actually hated the menu in Office 2003 and the silly menus to show more. My worst was the nested menus and options where I needed many mouse clicks to perform tasks..
  I don't know about popularity, but it is uncommon.
  Microsoft continually makes the mistake of thinking that the main objective in computing is learning new and supposedly improved ways of getting the computer to work.
  Then you come along and declare anyone who doesn't like the changes as "set in their ways".
  If the ribbon actually improved operation, hey, that would be great. Ever sit in a meeting room with 30 execs, and they spend more time futzing with the computer than making their presentation or other meeting work? All of the keyboard shortcuts, all of the presumed superiority goes away when time gets wasted.
  I would propose that Microsoft do what Apple did. Which was to make their version of a Metro screen available (launchpad) Similar, but without the rectangular tiles. That way, the modern thinking progressive computing intelligentsia could use launchpad, while the get off my lawn crowd could stick with their silly old (and bad) menus.
  Then people could choose, right? Having a choice of interface from the manufacturer would seem like a good thing. The user would use what they like best.
  Then you would be happy with the new interface, that olde farte two cubicles down would be happy, Everybody happy, and there ya go.
  And by the way, Launchpad has turned out to be just about as popular as Metro. You just don't hear the complaints because if you don't like it, you just don't use it. And we can't tell the difference between work done with either system, just like you wouldn't with ribbon versus menu.
  
  --
  The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
19. Re: Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Ol+Olsoc · 2015-01-23 02:45 · Score: 0
  
  Nah. We just use SystemD now to do office work on Linux.
  It just comes with a crappy startup daemon.
  I hate Microsoft Office and it's Ribbons. GOt me to switch to the Open Offices
  I like systemd.
  Which am II - luddite or accepting of change?
  Hint, we sometimes accuse people who don't like something of being luddites because we like it. I like menus because it is a little more consistent when you work across a lot of different Operating systems and programs. I tend to use the menus more than keyboard shortcuts for the same reason.
  I really support users having the option of what interface to use. Then you have your ribbon, and I have a little more consistent ability to get in and out and fix problems, and the olde fartes can have their old school look.
  
  --
  The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
20. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by urbanriot · 2015-01-23 02:45 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  I was anti-ribbon back in 2007 as well, until I read a blog post by a Microsoft programmer that basically said, "look dummy, every single item you had access to with these cumbersome menus is available on screen." Certainly I wouldn't accept that at face value so I opened up Office 2003 and tried to find an equivalent function I couldn't find in 2007 and in doing that, I realized it really was 'all there' and shortly thereafter became a devout Follower of the Ribbon.
21. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by nine-times · 2015-01-23 03:17 · Score: 1
  
  My opinion maybe unpopular here with a large group of slashdotters but I actually hated the menu in Office 2003 and the silly menus to show more.
  I agree. I'm not sure if this is what you're referring to, but the worst thing was that Microsoft actually had a feature where it would hide menu items that you didn't use often. So you haven't inserted a page break in a few months? Well that's disappeared now, and you have to click some button to "show more options" in order to find it. It wasn't so bad if you understood what was going on, but as an IT support professional, I absolutely hated it because I would regularly get phone calls from people complaining that they couldn't find features.
  Ultimately, the ribbon is an improvement. It's compact, and it gives you a lot of options right on the screen, without clicking through a bunch of menus, in a fairly well organized design. I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but I think most of the resistance to the ribbon was simply because it was new, and people weren't used to it.
22. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by jbengt · 2015-01-23 03:18 · Score: 1
  
  . . . . but I actually hated the menu in Office 2003 and the silly menus to show more. My worst was the nested menus and options where I needed many mouse clicks to perform tasks.
  Couldn't you just have clicked on the buttons in the easily customizable toolbars?
  Or are you only talking about the auto-hiding menu items that popped out after a delay, which is the first thing I turned off whenever I got a new computer/office install.
  
  Name one function that was removed since 2003.
  There is one big thing that has seriously regressed since Office XP and Office 2003: help was actually good then. I find Google much better at MS Office help than the built-in help function nowadays.
23. Re: Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 03:25 · Score: 0
  
  Office 2007 removed the ability to record macros affecting chart format properties. I believe this was due to problems with the newer interface, specifically new semi-modal property windows. This glaring regression was fixed in 2010
24. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by jacks+smirking+reven · 2015-01-23 03:38 · Score: 1
  
  I don't know what 1990s you were living in but in the one I was in I sure wasn't able to own a compelling virtual reality experience for less than $500. All those developers who don't care at all about VR? I don't suppose they're the ones who sold out the Oculus DK2 for months? I know i'm never going to want to check out a HoloLens, the one I got 23 years ago still works just great over my parallel port. Sure there was VR in 1992 but there was also an automobile in 1886, not exactly accurate to say an Acura is just a rehash of an old idea.
25. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by smooth+wombat · 2015-01-23 04:00 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Except in Microsoft's recent pattern, FINDING those items is much more difficult and less intuitive. What was once a single-click to see all your options from 'View' (for instance), is now a "click and hope" funfest as you meander from ribbon to ribbon trying to come across what you're looking for.
  The layouts are not intuitive, they have moved items from where they used to be, have buried items in sub-entries and it takes longer to accomplish what you want.
  By any measure, that is not an upgrade no matter how many people wish it to be so.
  
  --
  We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
26. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 04:42 · Score: 0
  
  The ribbon would be good if it was ordered. as it is, some buttons are big, some small, some wide, some have an icon, some have text, some have subneus... it's an unstructured mess.
  And if MS wants users to use hotkeys (I love hotkeys), everything in the ribbon should have a hotkey and the key combo should always be displayed in the tool tip.
27. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Curunir_wolf · 2015-01-23 04:54 · Score: 1
  
  The tablet war is already over (tablet sales are dropping FAST)
  
  Yea, I wish that were the case. I've been looking for a Galaxy Tab 4 10 inch to replace my aging 9 inch android tablet the price on those things has been going up for the past few months.
  Smaller tablet prices may be coming down, but that's because they're just the wrong size for anything. Too big for your pocket, but too little screen real estate for anything I can't do with my phone.
  
  --
  "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
  --- Jerry Garcia
28. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 04:54 · Score: 0
  
  You have to be a god damn retard to not be able to work a freaking office UI. The secretaries and assistants in my office are using it like pros.
  Besides, "less intuitive" is a weak criticism. Anyone can say that. What UI have you designed?
29. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by timmyf2371 · 2015-01-23 05:19 · Score: 1
  
  I remember the joys of Microsoft Office 2003 (and earlier).
  It was great being able to select Paste Special from the Edit Menu and painstakingly selecting the options I wanted. It was so much more intuitive than clicking on the arrow under the paste and quickly selecting the appropriate option.
  Or how it was easier to go into the formatting box when all you wanted to do was to increase or decrease the number of decimal places, compared to the modern way of simply using the correct button on the home tab.
  If you had never used Office prior to 2003, would you instinctively know where to find the option to hide gridlines in Excel? Or that the option to group and outline was under the Data Menu and not the View Menu? I think not.
  If you feel that the ribbon UI is a "click and hope funfest", perhaps you need to spend more time using Microsoft Office and learning where things are. It took me a few weeks back in 2010 and now I fly through the ribbons far quicker than I could hope to find the correct menu.
  
  --
  
  Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
30. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by praxis · 2015-01-23 05:24 · Score: 1
  
  "look dummy, every single item you had access to with these cumbersome menus is available on screen"
  That is most certainly not true.
  A counter-example from Word 2010: "Kerning for fonts X Points and above" which is available in the advanced font dialog, as far as I could tell, cannot be added to the ribbon and is not there on a virgin install.
  Which brings me to another point, why is there no search on the customize ribbon UI? Why did I have to select "All commands" and then scroll around stuff that started with "font..." and stuff that started with "kern..." to try to find this command?
31. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by thegarbz · 2015-01-23 05:29 · Score: 1
  
  The layouts are not intuitive, they have moved items from where they used to be, have buried items in sub-entries and it takes longer to accomplish what you want.
  By any measure, that is not an upgrade no matter how many people wish it to be so.
  Except all the research shows that if what you say is true then you're an edge case for how you create documents. By all accounts most functions are actually one or more clicks closer to the surface now with context sensitive menus (ribbon), and functions popping up as a result of actions (highlighting, pasting, clicking on a table). You can say what you like but Microsoft is very good at tracking the number of clicks each task takes and all their UI efforts since windows XP has revolved around reducing the number of clicks or moves, despite how counter intuitive you think the new filing system is.
  p.s. After using it for several years now I never "hope" I just click to where something is. You learnt the old system by rote, the new system is no different.
32. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by nuckfuts · 2015-01-23 05:49 · Score: 1
  
  Name one function that was removed since 2003.
  Microsoft removed the ability to "Insert from Scanner or Camera". For subsequent versions, the workaroundis to scan to an image file on your computer, and then insert the saved image into the document, rather than scanning directly into the document as before.
  The removal of this menu item annoyed a lot of people, including myself.
33. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by spire3661 · 2015-01-23 06:01 · Score: 1
  
  Launchpad vs Metro is my biggest frustration. Launchpad is how Metro should have been. Sent from my Mac Mini.
  
  --
  Good-bye
34. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by nosfucious · 2015-01-23 06:25 · Score: 1
  
  I'd just be happy if I could move the ribbon to the right or left side of the screen. So much real estate there and it doesn't get in the way. But nooooooo, fixed at the top of the screen so I can't see more of my document.
  
  --
  Q:I was listening to a CD in Grip and it sounded horrible! What's up? A:Perhaps you are listening to country music
35. Re: Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by unixisc · 2015-01-23 07:35 · Score: 1
  
  I have all 3 - a laptop, a phone and a tablet.
  Laptop I use for work, and also, for getting on the internet and participating on sites like this one. Phone, I use for calls and FaceTime, as well as for shopping lists, Yelp! and a few others. Tablet I use for books and watching videos. All 3 platforms I use for different games.
  Also, since the laptop is not a Windows laptop, there are some apps, like WebEx, that I use on the tablet. In some cases, it saves me from the need to have Windows on the laptop. I'm not a heavy user of Office, so Calligra Suite works for reading the documents I need to read. Once Windows 10 is out, I might get a WinBook or similar Windows tablet in order to edit the documents I need to edit. But otherwise, a lot of the apps I'd have got on a PC on Windows are now available on Android or iOS, so my tablet or phone can work there.
  YMMV
36. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Ol+Olsoc · 2015-01-23 10:34 · Score: 1
  
  Launchpad vs Metro is my biggest frustration. Launchpad is how Metro should have been. Sent from my Mac Mini.
  I don't use it myself, but yeah, you're right. There are no specific program requirements for launchpad, you can fit a lot more programs on each screen, and it doesn't get in the way. All of which Metro fails at. But that actual choice is the best feature. Imagine a Mac User from say, system 6, magically transported to today. Sit him in front of a Mac running Yosemite.
  In a few minutes, he'll be computing like a boss. First by teh menus, then maybe settling into to something he likes.
  
  --
  The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
37. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 17:27 · Score: 0
  
  Name one function that was removed since 2003. Just because learning something new is hard doesn't mean something was taken away.
  
  Document summarization was removed from Word.
38. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by ArmoredDragon · 2015-01-23 18:41 · Score: 1
  
  My Nexus 7 fits in the front pocket of all of the pants I have (I never use my back pockets for anything.)
39. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-25 11:23 · Score: 0
  
  On top of that, there were plenty of commands I had to hunt for and add to the "ribbon" that I used to be able to find in the conventional menus. Granted, they aren't commonly used commands, but they weren't exposed in the default ribbon interface AT ALL. I had to find them and reconfigure the ribbon.
  This whole problem could have been easily solved by Microsoft having the ribbon UI as an option along with the familiar menus, and letting people choose between the two. But no, it was ribbon only.
40. Re:Office 2007 started the move into alternatives by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-25 11:27 · Score: 0
  
  It's not removed, it's HIDDEN. Hidden away because Microsoft thought it was unimportant, but I happen to use it all the time, so I have to hunt in Help and a long list of commands to add it back somewhere in the Ribbon where it can be easily found and accessed. The customization is nice, but a poor substitute for the *option* of a conventional menu. Experimental UI that some people like? Fine. The ONLY UI, take it or leave it? No thanks.
huh?? by aduxorth · 2015-01-22 23:07 · Score: 1, Interesting

WTF happened to Office 365 (the software) and their subscription model?? Not going so well on the corporate side??
1. Re:huh?? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-22 23:13 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Office 365 is not software per se, but a service that also happens to include software. It includes Office 2013, which surely will be updated to 2016 as soon as it is available. And as far as we can see, it has been and continues to be quite successful.
2. Re:huh?? by Richard_at_work · 2015-01-22 23:16 · Score: 1
  
  They have always had a subscription model (Open Value Subscription) for corporations alongside full license purchase, Office 365 never changed that in the slightest - many companies out there prefer capital cost to subscription, as subscriptions cannot go on the books as assets while purchased licenses can.
  Office 365 is more orientated toward the smaller business or home user that cannot afford or want to defer capital costs while using the software they want in the mean time. Anything above a few dozen users will probably go with a Microsoft licensing reseller and sign on to a VL agreement (MS allows you to have one single license on a VL, it has no bottom end in reality but it has benefits such as Software Assurance et al.
3. Re:huh?? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-22 23:18 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  Perhaps they overestimated the stupidity of their users? Not all corporations want to get yearly fee and forced downtime on network outages. At least the successful companies have people who can calculate the costs of renting software instead of buying it once per 8 years with the new computer.
4. Re:huh?? by bemymonkey · 2015-01-22 23:33 · Score: 2
  
  Near as I can tell, Office 2013 is exactly the same as the software Office365 subscribers are getting. I'd assume Office365 users just get auto-updated to Office 2016 as soon as it's released...
5. Re:huh?? by stooo · 2015-01-23 00:23 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  >> WTF happened to Office 365
  It will be renamed "Office 362" when the statistics will show 3 days downtime per year :))))
  Or perhaps "Office 363" on leap years :)
  
  --
  aaaaaaa
6. Re:huh?? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 01:09 · Score: 0
  
  No it is "Office Err#NaN" in leap years.
7. Re:huh?? by praxis · 2015-01-23 05:28 · Score: 1
  
  >> WTF happened to Office 365
  It will be renamed "Office 362" when the statistics will show 3 days downtime per year :))))
  Or perhaps "Office 363" on leap years :)
  And here I thought it would be named Office 6 to follow the Xbox 360 to Xbox One naming convention of subtracting 359 every major release.
Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-22 23:14 · Score: 0

Office wasn't the killer app to entice people to switch over from Apple or Android.
In fact, Microsoft had already admitted defeat by porting Office to iOS and Android.
There is no longer a unique selling point - if it were a selling point at all.
Also, desktop users are doing fine with earlier versions of Office.
Milk that cow by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-22 23:45 · Score: 0

"new" Windows and "New" Office, same old shite.
"Free" as in "free lunch" by Flavianoep · 2015-01-23 00:01 · Score: 4, Insightful

These new Office apps will be pre-installed (they will be free) on smartphones and small tablets running Windows 10.

It's not free if you have to buy something else to get it. Just my 2 cents.

--
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
1. Re:"Free" as in "free lunch" by jellomizer · 2015-01-23 02:23 · Score: 1
  
  Um yea...
  I didn't see Microsoft file as a Not for Profit organization yet.
  Right now Microsoft is just making sure existing customers don't jump ship, or worry about upgrading now, because the next OS will be out soon.
  The (Desktop/Laptop) PC is no longer the sexy device (The area where Microsoft is king). However it is a big market and you don't want them to go off your platform soon, as they are your main bread and butter.
  The (Tablet/Phones) Mobile Devices are the new trend however Microsoft is managing a far third place. With Google and Apple really giving them good competition. Right now for those who betted on Microsoft Mobile devices and many of them actually really do like their device, Microsoft needs to make sure they have a reason to stay.
  
  --
  If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
2. Re:"Free" as in "free lunch" by Translation+Error · 2015-01-23 03:09 · Score: 1
  
  You may have a point, but on the other hand, how would you use the software without hardware?
  
  --
  When someone says, "Any fool can see ..." they're usually exactly right.
3. Re:"Free" as in "free lunch" by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 03:50 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Only slashdot turns a gift (from MS) into something bad, you guys are trying to hard
4. Re:"Free" as in "free lunch" by praxis · 2015-01-23 05:30 · Score: 1
  
  It's not really a gift, though, if one has to spend money to get it. Do you often fall for the "but if you buy now we'll throw in X..." deals thinking that X is completely free and not a planned part of the transaction?
5. Re:"Free" as in "free lunch" by Flavianoep · 2015-01-23 11:52 · Score: 1
  
  I've never had to buy any hardware only to use Opera. I just installed on the hardware that I already had. Who don't have any computer these days?
  
  --
  Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
6. Re:"Free" as in "free lunch" by toddestan · 2015-01-25 03:31 · Score: 1
  
  I would say that they are included with the purchase of the device. To say they are free implies that I can get them at no cost without buying the hardware and possibly use them on some other device I already own.
Is This The No-Access Office? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 00:32 · Score: 1

I read that a forthcoming release of Office will eliminate Access Completely, and integrate all Access functions into Excel. Does anyone know if this will come about in the announced release?
In-App Purchases? by drinkypoo · 2015-01-23 00:39 · Score: 2

If this is going where I think it's going, Microsoft is going to give away the razor for free but charge you for the grammar checker. Then they'll be able to claim all those free users as customers to inflate their credibility.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
1. Re:In-App Purchases? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 02:12 · Score: 0
  
  If this is going where I think it's going, Microsoft is going to give away the razor for free but charge you for the grammar checker. Then they'll be able to claim all those free users as customers to inflate their credibility.
  Where do you think they are going? Microsoft has changed a lot in the recent past and the new guy at the top is very clearly different than the two previous guys at the top. Knee-jerk reactions are not going to work with them right now, you actually have to sit down and think.
2. Re:In-App Purchases? by drinkypoo · 2015-01-23 10:22 · Score: 1
  
  Microsoft has changed a lot in the recent past and the new guy at the top is very clearly different than the two previous guys at the top.
  And yet, not clearly effectual
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
3. Re:In-App Purchases? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 11:55 · Score: 0
  
  If this is going where I think it's going, Microsoft is going to give away the razor for free but charge you for the grammar checker. Then they'll be able to claim all those free users as customers to inflate their credibility.
  Actually they have yet to announce final pricing for the grammer check subscription, but it will be available per sentence, or a five sentence pack, or for those customers who don't like subscriptions there will still be a perpetual licence, for as many sentences as you can write, however that licence will be non-transferable and limited to a single document.
no more ALL CAPS & BLINDING WHITE by Billly+Gates · 2015-01-23 00:43 · Score: 1

I have a 365 subscription and downgraded back to 2010 for that reason. I have an Asus gaming monitor which is very bright and it is like staring intensely at a florescent lamp with Office 2013.
Thank God color is back

--
http://saveie6.com/
1. Re:no more ALL CAPS & BLINDING WHITE by urbanriot · 2015-01-23 02:36 · Score: 2
  
  ... what you call downgrading, I call upgrading. I haven't experienced a bug in Office 2010 since SP1 yet Office 2013 is missing features and has plenty of bugs. Oh, and yes, the garish color as you relay AND THE RIBBON SHOUTING HOME AND VIEW, THAT'S FIXED WHEN YOU UPGRADE TO OFFICE 2010.
Ribbon by Liquid+Len · 2015-01-23 00:48 · Score: 1

Seems they won't let go of the awful ribbon. After all these years, I still hate it... So no thanks.
1. Re:Ribbon by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 05:28 · Score: 0
  
  ITT: Self-admitted-intellectually-superior IT drones bitch about how hard is to use some software that secretaries and beancounters OWN on a regular basis since 6 years ago.
Oh no... by Dekonega · 2015-01-23 01:01 · Score: 1

Windows 10 is not ready by a long shot. It's dysfunctional as hell as a product. It has a schizophrenia that is only getting worse and worse. Fuelled by the fact that Joe Belfiore doesn't seem to understand what people want from a desktop Windows... So go ahead Microsoft, release the Windows 10. Make year of the Linux on desktop happen sooner.
1. Re:Oh no... by PrimaryConsult · 2015-01-23 07:12 · Score: 1
  
  Windows 8 would have been the year of Linux on the desktop, if the Gnome project hadn't decided to radically change their UI at the same time. It would have been easy to get people to switch to Gnome 2. But by inspiring every distro to jump ship for something else, at the crucial time when we really could have convinced people to switch, there was nothing fitting the (worthwhile+easy to use) categories to recommend.
  We really were that close. I don't see us ever getting back to that, at this point. At least, I see Microsoft getting their act together again long before.
Why do they take so long to load? by cjonslashdot · 2015-01-23 01:16 · Score: 1, Informative

Can they please make the programs load more quickly? Why does it take 30 seconds (at least) for Powerpoint to start? Almost as long for Word? These programs took that long to load on my Mac in 1990. Today, they should load in the blink of an eye. What the heck is wrong?
1. Re:Why do they take so long to load? by Richard_at_work · 2015-01-23 01:27 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Get an SSD - Word 2013 loads in under a second here.
2. Re:Why do they take so long to load? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 03:13 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Get an SSD...
  The standard, ages-old "fix" for bloating, slowing MS-ware: buy new hardware.
3. Re:Why do they take so long to load? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 04:09 · Score: 1
  
  On my 5 year old computer (Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 @ 2.33 Ghz, 4 Gigs Ram, Windows 8.1), Powerpoint 2007 opened from a cold start in just under 4 seconds. As another poster mentioned, the problem is your computer.
4. Re:Why do they take so long to load? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 04:45 · Score: 0
  
  No, it doesn't. It loads that fast because
  1) You had already opened it previously and it's components are still in memory
  2) The windows Prefetcher / Superfetch has loaded the files into memory before you click to launch the app.
5. Re:Why do they take so long to load? by bradvoy · 2015-01-23 05:15 · Score: 1
  
  I've never seen any version of Word or PowerPoint since 2003 take anywhere near that long to load except when there are one or more slow-loading addins installed. Check your list of addins and disable or uninstall any you don't use.
6. Re:Why do they take so long to load? by thegarbz · 2015-01-23 05:32 · Score: 1
  
  Some people call it bloat, others call it adding features. You want fast the use Office 97, but good luck getting it to automatically interface with your OneCloud account let alone draw dynamic pivot tables which update based on selection drop downs within the spreadsheet.
  My computer does more now. I expect it would need more processing power to do it at the same speed.
7. Re:Why do they take so long to load? by thegarbz · 2015-01-23 05:33 · Score: 1
  
  What the heck is wrong?
  You have completely hosed your computer and windows installation and it's time to format. No really, my dad's 10 year old computer loads word in about 10 seconds. You've done something VERY wrong.
  Cut your losses and start over man.
8. Re:Why do they take so long to load? by cjonslashdot · 2015-01-23 05:44 · Score: 1
  
  I don't have any add-ons - at least, I have not installed any. I use these programs vanilla, via my Office 360 subscription. I am running them on a Macbook Pro.
9. Re:Why do they take so long to load? by cjonslashdot · 2015-01-23 05:45 · Score: 1
  
  I use a dual core Macbook Pro, with 8Gb of ram.
10. Re:Why do they take so long to load? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 07:52 · Score: 0
  
  Posting anon because i modded.
  An SSD has nothing to do with microsoft and will enhance your entire experience. It is the number 1 performance increase you can do to a computer. Going from rotational to SSD is in my opinion required now as the logical best advice to give anyone who says their computer is slow.
  It is the single most noticeable performance increase in the last 10 years of computing, or perhaps 20.
  People never need a new computer to run a new edition of word. As others have mentioned an almost 10 year old core 2 duo with an SSD will load any program in a few seconds. So its great you are trying to be cute with 'har har time to upgrade', however the grandparents advice was dead on for the problem, while you are just trolling.
11. Re:Why do they take so long to load? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 08:43 · Score: 0
  
  That's likely your problem. Microsoft makes software for Windows computers not Macs.
  Or your hard drive is extremely fragmented. Or you have anti-virus actively scanning any file that gets touched. Or you've installed extra fonts. Or...
12. Re:Why do they take so long to load? by thegarbz · 2015-01-23 14:20 · Score: 1
  
  Then REALLY start over.
13. Re:Why do they take so long to load? by armanox · 2015-01-23 15:51 · Score: 1
  
  I just timed loading Office 2011 for Mac on my MacBook Pro (MBP 1,1, 2.1GHz Core [1] Duo, 2GB RAM, OS X 10.6) - loading and hitting Open Apple + N, and waiting for the new window to open took around 16 seconds.
  
  --
  I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
14. Re:Why do they take so long to load? by cjonslashdot · 2015-01-23 23:19 · Score: 1
  
  I just tried it and it took ~30 seconds. But then I closed it and opened it again, and the second time it took 15 seconds. I have other programs running, but not a huge number. After installing Yosemite performance did not change right away, but lately I have noticed the system performing very slowly. Still, these programs do essentially what they did ten (twenty!) years ago - and computers are so much faster and have so much more memory. These kinds of programs should load in an instant - there should be no perceptible wait at all.
15. Re:Why do they take so long to load? by armanox · 2015-01-24 05:21 · Score: 1
  
  Sounds like the wait is mainly HDD related, if I had to take a guess. That's the only explanation I can give for why they are so similar.
  
  --
  I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
16. Re:Why do they take so long to load? by cjonslashdot · 2015-01-24 05:33 · Score: 1
  
  It could be. My disk is only half full (out of 319Gb avail). When I installed Yosemite, I initially selected to turn on FileValt, but later I turned it off, so it had to decrypt the volume. I wonder if things got fragmented.
Microsoft did not reveal any upcoming features by sproketboy · 2015-01-23 01:35 · Score: 2

"Microsoft did not reveal any upcoming features it is planning for Office 2016." Except changes in the formats to break everything again.
1. Re:Microsoft did not reveal any upcoming features by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 01:43 · Score: 0
  
  And naming the phone, tablet, and desktop versions of everything the same in their quest to break Google. Just think, there will no longer be any way to specify which version of the software you are running the next time a Microsoft app or OS destroys your data!
2. Re:Microsoft did not reveal any upcoming features by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 10:20 · Score: 0
  
  Since 2007 the default office format is XML-based and fully documented, with full patent rights under the Open Specification Promise. All the specs are available for unrestricted free download. The file format hasn't changed in over 7 years. Office 2010 and 2007 sp2 and onward read and write ODF. Microsoft offers converters from older versions available for free download. OpenOffice, LibreOffice and iWork all support Microsoft's file formats and Microsoft Office supports theirs.
  
  What the fuck else do you want?
Re:They just move the menu items around by GoddersUK · 2015-01-23 01:42 · Score: 1, Funny

Yes, you keep using Windows 95. I mean I'm sure it's just as good to use as Windows 8.1, it's got complete feature parity and you're productivity will skyrocket from the modern interface and featureset.
microsoft by sameersan · 2015-01-23 01:44 · Score: 1

they take to long to load http://www.allthatewbstuff.blo...
Great news by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 01:45 · Score: 0

Maybe in this hmm.. 4th try.?.. they will actually make table styles in Word WORK as expected ?
Gee I wonder which by kilodelta · 2015-01-23 01:49 · Score: 1, Interesting

I wonder which new 'feature' will make O2K16 WORSE than it's predecessors thereby necessitating a mass flee to LibreOffice. As someone who develops on occasion in VBA I was pissed when they switch from dot notation to bang notation. Nice going guys.
1. Re:Gee I wonder which by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 04:45 · Score: 1
  
  VBA is an abomination unto, well, everything. Stop using VBA.
  Documents are meant to be static. Use a program to generate documents dynamically. That program can be written in whatever (real) language you choose. It can even take an earlier form of a particular document as input, and then overwrite it when it makes its output. But embedding that program into the document is stupid and terrible. VBA shouldn't be altered just enough to piss off its users. It should be scrapped entirely and the ex-users told that they should never do that again because it's a bad idea. The update should also administer some electric shocks to those ex-users so they get the point.
2. Re:Gee I wonder which by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 11:00 · Score: 0
  
  They have APIs for .NET that allow you to manipulate and generate office documents at a high level (somewhat like the HTML DOM) without even having office installed. This is a much more pleasant and safer way to automate stuff with office. Or, like you said, the file formats are now fully documented (they're XML based in a ZIP container), so you can manipulate them from perl on a webserver if you're into that kind of thing.
  Having said that, you really shouldn't think of Office Documents with embedded VBA as documents at all. They're applications, with all the security implications that implies. Office is not going to run unsigned VBA applications unless you go pretty far out of your way to enable it, and it's going to bitch at you even then.
  I don't think it's an inherently bad idea, just poorly executed in the case of VBA. After all the web (2.0) is based on the same idea: Facebook is an application running in your browser just like a VBA application runs in Office. A lot of hard lessons have had to be learned about how to make that work safely, but it seems to be working out pretty well for Facebook, Google, etc, etc.
No, its a bad design by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 01:57 · Score: 0

Icons by their nature are NOUNS, they are pictures of THINGS. Menus are VERBS, they are actions, cut, print, open....
So paste for example is shown as a clipboard, because the verb is difficult to show as a picture.
So the ribbon has a serious problem, by the nature of it, its trying to represent verbs as nouns.
Not all menus are simple verbs either, "Show All Bookmarks", how do you represent these 3 things as one icon?
So you learned it, and its great and blah blah blah. No, its crap, bad design, and by its nature its inferior to what it replaced. No matter, I switched to Open Office, so did the rest of the company I worked for, and that was the end of the matter, we never had to mess around with ribbon.
You want to sell us on it? We don't care.
1. Re:No, its a bad design by clodney · 2015-01-23 05:31 · Score: 1
  
  So the toolbar icon for things like open, print, save, etc. shouldn't exist?
  The issue of the ribbon showing nouns for things that represent actions has existed ever since the first toolbar was created. Toolbars display icons, and pressing the icon causes an action to occur.
  Like or dislike the ribbon as you wish, but don't pretend it has broken new conceptual design. I like it, but given the trend to widescreen monitors, I wish they would have laid it out as a panel on the left side of the window, rather than taking up precious vertical space.
2. Re:No, its a bad design by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 14:12 · Score: 0
  
  "So the toolbar icon for things like open, print, save, etc. shouldn't exist?"
  That's not what I said, I said the icons are difficult when representing menus, which is why they're shortcuts, 'extra's' and not the main interface. They focus on simple things used often for which a menu exists.
  "but don't pretend it has broken new conceptual design."
  I even explained why they are broken in conceptual design, something you did not address in your comment.
  If I took 50 designers and got them to draw 50 icons representing 'select all bookmarks' and 50 people and asked them what that icon means, how many do you think would guess correctly?
  The icon has its limits and should not be the main interface.
3. Re:No, its a bad design by clodney · 2015-01-26 09:11 · Score: 1
  
  My point is that the ribbon is just a glorified toolbar. People use toolbars all the time without being bothered by the noun/verb dichotomy, so the ribbon is no more difficult than a toolbar, which are utterly common UI elements. Add in the text on the ribbon, tooltips on the buttons, and grouping of similar functions, and I don't see the problem.
4. Re:No, its a bad design by mcswell · 2015-01-28 15:50 · Score: 1
  
  Agreed, I virtually never guess from the icon what it will do. I liken them to hieroglyphs. And there's a reason that we went 1500 years without being able to read Egyptian hieroglyphics--in fact, until we found an alphabetic representation of what the hieroglyphics meant. Likewise, with the ribbon I have to look at the label, which is written in alphabetic characters. Since I (and most other people I know) have to read the label anyway, why not do away with the useless hieroglyphs, and give us a ribbon with just the labels? Labels could be nested hierarchically, and...well, you get the picture.
Marketing by hduff · 2015-01-23 02:03 · Score: 1

The marketing drones have won. Style triumphs over substance.

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"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
In-App Purchases? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 02:25 · Score: 0

no more like free or cheaper for consumers to leverage it because there big money isn't made from consumer office purchases but by corporate purchases.
So nothing for business, everything for mobile? by urbanriot · 2015-01-23 02:28 · Score: 1

Based on what I'm seeing on the topic of Office 2016, it seems this will be more of the same - rife with bugs for regular users and more gimmicky touch options for the small handful of people that use them? I wonder if they'll upgrade 2016 with a feature missing from 2013 that highlights folders hosting unread emails in bold with the total number of unread emails. Maybe this version will be a reason to upgrade from 2010... ? One can hope that after 6 years they can make a decent product that people might want.
The New Office by sycodon · 2015-01-23 02:52 · Score: 1

Primary new feature is all the menu items have been switched around.

--
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
What if you're emailed a 2016 formated docx? by walterbyrd · 2015-01-23 02:54 · Score: 1

Office-2003 may be okay for creating your own documents, but if people start emailing you 2013, or 2016 formatted? Will Office-2003 read those formats?
1. Re:What if you're emailed a 2016 formated docx? by ITRambo · 2015-01-23 07:19 · Score: 1
  
  Office 2000 through 2003 users can download Microsoft's Office 2007 compatibility pack to read and save in .docx, xisx, etc. formats. Here's the link: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us... Or, if Office 2016 format is changed, they could just install the version of LibreOffice that will be released just after MS Office 2016, which will open MS formats.
Aero? by Twinbee · 2015-01-23 02:58 · Score: 1

Will we get our Aero back so we don't go blind looking at Win 8's flat-land GUI?

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Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Touch Optimized? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 03:19 · Score: 0

"touch-optimized version of Office"
Boy, I want to work there...
Ongoing frustrations with Office and Windows by Molonel · 2015-01-23 03:53 · Score: 1

My main problem with Office, of any version, is the same problem I have with Windows. Every new version is simply a game of Hide the Hamster with all of the features I've known how to use for years. No, nothing has been "lost" in the sense that it's all still there. It's just reshuffled endlessly. Supporting different versions of Office just means doing a lot of Googling for stuff like "This or that feature, Office 2007" and "This or that feature, Office 365." It makes acquiring any sort of fluency in the technology almost pointless. Why bother? It's just going to be somewhere else in the next version of the software, which should roll around in another two years or so.
1. Re:Ongoing frustrations with Office and Windows by ledow · 2015-01-23 04:21 · Score: 1
  
  And as is my primary beef with MSCE etc.
  Why does it matter where they are? Who cares? Anyone skilled in the use of the software - previous versions, similar programs, competitor's products - will know what they were after and once they have found it, they've found it "forever" in that version.
  Rejigging the default isn't a problem. What's a problem is not having customisability. Why CAN'T I put the fucking mail-merge button into the toolbar I want, or assign it the keyboard shortcut I want? If you can't do those things, that's infinitely more annoying and important.
  And who cares where you have to right-click to find the Enable Account for a user account in AD? It's not important, because you can google that bit. What's important is knowing that it's possible, what the impact might be, why you would do such a thing, and can you actually safely do it to THAT account.
  That's the bit that people who run training courses miss, that people who set up training miss, that people who attend training miss, and that Microsoft really miss the ball on a lot.
  Who cares if it's under File, Edit, Insert or the Home tab? Why can't I have an "Office 2003" compatibility button that makes it the same layout / hotkey as it used to be, even if it looks "old and shit"?
  This is where MS falls down every time. Start Menus, Office toolbars, Metro, and even things like Server Manager. Separate design from function, and allow the design to be customisable. From that point on, nothing else matters.
It could fail. by yoshi_mon · 2015-01-23 04:47 · Score: 1

I just fired up Win10 in my VM to remember if I'd missed anything about it. And no...still is not that great.
As others have said it is just a SP to Win 8/8.1 with a lesser version of the Win7 Start Menu. And to boot it looks pretty awful for desktop users still. The flat/square theme might look ok on a tablet, I would not know as I've yet to use it on such a device, but it is pretty bad compared to the Win7 theme.
Also lost functionality is the local backup system that went away in 8.1 and Media Center. I've no problem with the idea of remote backup, provided it's done right, but not having local backup functionality as well is bad. And Media Center was actually a pretty nice thing that seems to have totally gone away.
So yeah, Win10 is more of the same bad that Win8 was/is and likely will meet a similar fate.

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Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
1. Re:It could fail. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 05:51 · Score: 0
  
  The real monster under the bed with win10 is the software rental aspect. Everything you do with it will be tied to you.
Optimized for Touch, just like Win8 by Hobadee · 2015-01-23 04:48 · Score: 1

2016: Optimized for touch. Look, when you click somewhere an on screen keyboard pops up, you then conveniently click the letters you want to type with your mouse! It's super-easy! (Disclaimer: keyboards are disabled.)

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...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
Re: No!- Libreoffice and sharepoint by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 06:00 · Score: 2, Insightful

Looking at the release notes for libreoffice 4.4.0 coming out next week. Direct connections to sharepoint nad onedrive are supported. Checkin, Checkout and versioning.
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/4.4#Connection_to_SharePoint_and_OneDrive
http://mihai-varga.github.io/sharepoint-20102013-connection.html
http://mihai-varga.github.io/onedrive-connection.html
Simliar to Apple by sethaw · 2015-01-23 06:43 · Score: 1

Microsoft isn't that much different from Apple for how long their 1st generation tablets worked with new OS versions. Here is what I pieced together from wikipedia of how long it took to get to unsupported for the different tablets.

Apple
ipad released April 2010
IOS 6 released June 2012 without support for original ipad.

Microsoft
Surface RT released Oct 26, 2012
Windows 10 planned to be released in 2015 without support

Google
Nexus 7 released July 2012
Supports latest Andriod.

Samsung
Galaxy Tab released Sept 2010
Andriod 3.0 Honeycomb released Feb 2011, not compatible.
Re:They just move the menu items around by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-23 09:15 · Score: 0

you're productivity.
You are productivity.
A garland of pickled ringpieces. by Hognoxious · 2015-01-25 10:30 · Score: 1

Cross platform? They haven't even solved cross version.
People used to give me Word 2007 docs to correct. I had Word 2003. After two attempts I started asking for a hard copy that I'd scrawl on with a pen. They thought I was mad until I showed them; If I tried to do it on the 'puter the editing used to happen in a random location. I say random, the one place it didn't happen was where the cursor was.

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Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
1. Re:A garland of pickled ringpieces. by Ol+Olsoc · 2015-01-25 10:44 · Score: 1
  
  Cross platform? They haven't even solved cross version. People used to give me Word 2007 docs to correct. I had Word 2003. After two attempts I started asking for a hard copy that I'd scrawl on with a pen.
  Adobe is known for that crap also.
  Perhaps the Open Offices are more compatible with Office than Office is itself, looking at it again?
  
  --
  The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Office 2013 to 2016 free upgrade for lic. users? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-01-26 04:39 · Score: 0

If you have already purchased a license version of Office 2013 can you use the same license key on this one?
I found some news and my question... is this true?
nissat.org/upgrade-your-old-microsoft-office-2013-to-office-2016/
Track changes in Powerpoint? by mcswell · 2015-01-28 15:57 · Score: 1

Where I work, the most requested feature for Powerpoint is Track changes (like Word has had for years). I realize the form factor is a bit different, but it should be possible.