Free PDF - “First Look: Microsoft Office 2010”

[kacir]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

Am I getting old and chrochety about new software, or do you hate the "ribbon" also?

I strongly dislike the "new" look of Office 2007.
I am not against learning new UI, or a new software. I LOVE learning new computer-related stuff. I have used FreeBSD as my main home desktop for years and now I am using Mint Linux.

As a power user I struggle with Office 2007. An average user might find everything he needs just under his fingers, but I have to hunt for functions I need to use for particular jobs. In previous versions of Office I could customize menus, toolbars. I could even disable the abominable auto-hiding of menu items. In the new version I can not even change freakin' color scheme the way I want! Just try changing the default color of grid in the new excel. It is impossible.
The other day I needed to tweak a table in an old word document in the new office and the functionality I wanted to use just wasn't there.

[DixieGal]

Originally Posted by 13xforever

Now, that's debatable. Proof, please?
I think MS made their decisions not on a wink of their mind, but after extensive usability experiments. Moreover, extending this control further in their apps is proving this point even more.

I know, a lot of people dislike it, but it seems that they hate it on the basis of that "everyone hates it". It's the same story as with Vista.

Not for me. My new computer came with Vista, and I've enjoyed it after getting used to is.

Now we have Windows 7 (which in reality is simply a tweaked Vista) and suddenly everyone likes it. Now we have Ribbon 2.0 and I think a lot of people will switch their sides too.

For me, I don't think I will switch sides because it is better. I think that I'll be forced to switch sides when MS makes itself incompatible with earlier editions. Again.

One thing that I did for myself was use whatever feature it is that let me put a mini-toolbar up next to the round Windows logo. I parked a bunch of my most used items up there, such as "undo" and "save." I quickly got tired of wasting time searching the blasted "ribbon" for basic functions, when all that I wanted to do was finish a task and move on.

[Lo Zeno]

Originally Posted by 13xforever

I know, a lot of people dislike it, but it seems that they hate it on the basis of that "everyone hates it". It's the same story as with Vista.

Now we have Windows 7 (which in reality is simply a tweaked Vista) and suddenly everyone likes it. Now we have Ribbon 2.0 and I think a lot of people will switch their sides too.

Vista was indeed heavy on hardware, was bloated, it kept asking for administrator's authorization even for copying files, and had a load of compatibility issues with older software.
Windows 7 is less demanding (I can run Aero on PCs in which Vista refused to), uses less memory and is lighter on the processor, and can run old software that Vista couldn't. And, you can customize the level of security if all those Admin's Alerts annoy you. That's not a "simply a tweaked Vista", in my view.

Now, on with the Ribbon. It's a good idea in concept, but it's not really perfect in implementation. Office's ribbon, in particular, is tailored around the casual, home-pc user: as long as you are a common student writing your school essay, or you are writing an article for your local newspaper, it works fine and makes the most common functions easier to find. But as soon as you need specialized functionalities, or specific yet-not-so-commonly-used macros, you have to hunt them and they won't be where you were used to in older versions of Office.
Also, the Ribbon isn't as customizable as the old menus were: in old Office versions I could design my own buttons bar and delete those that I didn't need, and tailor the whole UI at my own needs. The Ribbon still lacks the same depth of customization.

It speeds up the most common of tasks, but as a side effect it moved the less common functionalities to semi-hidden places.

[danwdoo]

I like the ribbon in principle but feel it has a lot of implementation problems. I saw a study that 7 of the top 10 requested features for previous versions of Office were already included. People just could not find them so I certainly understand what Microsoft is trying to do. But there were plenty of problems with 2007 including the lack of consistency and the bloat some of the apps are showing these days. I'd like to see some of the performance emphasis in Office that was in Windows 7.

There may be some hope for Office 2010 according to the PDF:

You can use the Minimize The Ribbon button to hide the Ribbon so that you
have more room to work on-screen, and you can customize the Ribbon to create your own tabs and tool groups specifc to your needs

If they get the customization right, I think it could be a great feature in the end.

[rhadin]

I didn't read the PDF once I saw ribbons, but if the ribbons are easily customizable, that will be a major improvement. The ribbons in 2007 were customizable, just not easily and not something the average user could do. I ended up buying a book, RibbonX: Customizing the Office 2007 Ribbon by Robert Martin, Ken Puls, and Teresa Hennig (ISBN 978-0-470-19111-8), but it required much too much work for me to be bothered going through the effort. The book is 600+ pages of instructions on how to do what should be a simple task. It was much easier to stick with Office 2003.

[DawnFalcon]

Or if you really needed the other new features, it would of probably been cheaper to buy MenuOffice

[MelC]

We just switched to 2007 at the office because incompatibility was becoming an issue with respect to negotiating externally generated documents. In general I was somewhat afraid based on the negative comments I had heard about the learning curve and I ended up being really pleasantly surprised. I agree that it is geared towards the basics as opposed to the specialized but it does the basics exceptionally well. In particular I really liked the new Outlook format. Organizing by conversation just makes my archives seem much more civilized. Plus it integrates beautifully with OneNote now

Mel

[Daithi]

I'm with Dixiegal. I hate the new ribbons. However, don't load somebody else's copy of MS Word on your system to go back to the old style. I tried this and it worked great -- for a while. Then MS ran some kind of check and said I had illegal software on my PC and bricked it. I now use Open Office and Microsoft has lost a customer for life.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Lo Zeno

Office's ribbon, in particular, is tailored around the casual, home-pc user: as long as you are a common student writing your school essay, or you are writing an article for your local newspaper, it works fine and makes the most common functions easier to find. But as soon as you need specialized functionalities, or specific yet-not-so-commonly-used macros, you have to hunt them and they won't be where you were used to in older versions of Office.

My few attempts with O'07 were nightmares. Among the Word features I regularly use:
Custom page sizes
Custom margins
+/- font size for entire document
Change paragraph line spacing
Change font character spacing for a few words
Resize picture
Change from "in line with text" to "square" or vice versa
Adjust table settings: size of cells, rows, columns; borders/shading; alignment

I remember trying some of those in '07 and telling the person who was asking for my help, "I can be here for an hour trying to find the right settings, or you can give me a copy and I can fix it at my desk in five minutes." I suppose I could learn a new location/method of applying all of those. But I haven't heard what *advantages* Office07 has, that makes up for all the scrambled layout problems.

I'm not a casual, beginning user; I don't need the paperclip to tell me how to write a letter or format a report. On the one hand, it's nice that MS has created software for nongeeks who are now stuck using computers at work. On the other, the long-term geeks can't help them when they can't find anything.

[Laurentiu]

Well, I am a computer literate person and I like new software as long as it brings some valuable features. IMHO, Office 2007 is nothing but a piece of crap! I installed a trial version a year ago and I tried hard to like the Excel version (don't work too much in Word), but I was not able to find the things that I was using before! It was taking me sooo long to find them and it was a waste of time and, as a result, I uninstalled it. Well, although I opted for keeping the existing version of Office, M$ managed to screw it up! I had to go to our IT guys and ask them to reinstall the 2003 again, because PowerPoint refused to cooperate!

I have 2007 at home (my wife is forced to work on with it), but I refuse to touch it! When I look around I realize that the majority of the people like colourful things, and Office 2007 is one of them! It looks great, no question, but, hey... M$, can I, please, have my drop-down menus back, please?

[13xforever]

Originally Posted by Laurentiu

IMHO, Office 2007 is nothing but a piece of crap!

Even with all the UI issues, Office 2007 brought OpenXML and this tech alone worth a lot (at least the right not to be called "nothing but a crap").

BTW, Office 2010 will have a native OpenDocument support (I so hope that in the first SP they'll add OD2 support too).

[Idoine]

As a teacher on Office, I would propose to the reticent ones to change their approach.
As I say to my "students", don't try to remember how (and where) it was before, just think about you are doing right now. Insert ? Formulas ? Datas ? Just use the tab !

And by the way, with the 2010 version, you can customize the ribbon, very easily (I agree with you, it was a big mistake not to do it on the 2007 version, even if it permits you to use commandbars attached to a workbook for example, or to use the quick access bar...)

PS : And the popup menu (with a right click of the mouse) is always here, too !

[Elfwreck]

Haven't looked at '07 enough to know--how much of it is keyboard-navigable? One of the aspects I like about '03 & earlier is that I don't have to reach for the mouse to do formatting; I can alt and tab through to the settings I need changed.

[Laurentiu]

Originally Posted by Idoine

Insert ? Formulas ? Datas ? Just use the tab !

As a person who rarely uses the mouse, I am asking: what is wrong with typing the formula directly in the cell?

Plus that a simple pivot table was not backward compatible with Office 2003!

[Idoine]

Originally Posted by Laurentiu

As a person who rarely uses the mouse, I am asking: what is wrong with typing the formula directly in the cell?
...

Nothing at all, as when you type the name of your function, a list of all the functions (and names) starting with the same letters appears...