I don't like Office 2007!

Eric_Pisch

poppy10 wrote: »

No it won't. In fact Office 2010 will be expanding on the ribbon concept.

OP, you are confusing familiarity with usability. You are used to the old system so that seems easier to you. If you actually give the new interface some time you will realize that it is much more powerful and user-friendly than the old system. I hated it too when I first got Office 2007, because I was so ingrained with the same interface that I had been used to since the days of Word 6.0. But within a day or two I was completely au fait with the ribbon and was able to do all my usual tasks much quicker than with the old menu system. Plus the more powerful features that were always hidden away in some arcane sub-menu before are now much more readily available to hand.
Just give it a chance, it'll be fine.

yep, took me a good few months to get used to the ribbon but now i find it far easier and more effiecent

ChiefGrasscutter

stevemcol wrote: »

Glad I'm not on my own. I just can't even bring myself to use it. It looks like a primary school teaching aid. :rotfl:

Presumably one of the objectives of MS.....to make it easier for non professionals to use and to find commonly used things, to make the office package easier to use for more people/occassional users and to get more people to buy it. This is the sector MS is aiming for.

Those who are using the office suite every day and are not using the commonly used items will just find the new interface just gets in the way of getting the job done ASAP. (MS does not care about them) Actually business is loathe to upgrade anything as any upgrading always has costs associated with it in terms of reduced productivity/incompatibilities/bugs etc which will not be matched by any future gains in productivity from the upgrade.
This is why MS issues Windows 7 professional with the 'virtual XP emulator' in it wheras win 7 standard does not have it. Without support for business's legacy programs of old they would never upgrade from XP.

The other trick of MS to force you to upgrade is to change the file storage format such that files created by newer versions cannot be read by older versions of the programs so that users of older versions are "forced" to upgrade as they find files sent to them they cannot read and the senders unwilling to save/send them in the old format.

chunter

If it's not broke - don't fix it. I'll be using 2003 for along time to come.
For the normal user, what does Word 2007 offer that word 2003 doesn't?
I'm still waiting for that answer 3 years on....

It'll be a long, long time before M$ manage to kill off XP because there's a raging market for it..and 2003 works with Vista (and 7? - can't remember).

So until M$ come up with some super-duper version of office, any new version of office is going to largely ignored by most.

Eric_Pisch

chunter wrote: »

If it's not broke - don't fix it. I'll be using 2003 for along time to come.
For the normal user, what does Word 2007 offer that word 2003 doesn't?
I'm still waiting for that answer 3 years on....

It'll be a long, long time before M$ manage to kill off XP because there's a raging market for it..and 2003 works with Vista (and 7? - can't remember).

So until M$ come up with some super-duper version of office, any new version of office is going to largely ignored by most.

i have found a few things 2010 does that the others dont, mail merge is much more powerfull

if you only do dear sir letters then all you need is wordpad tbh

dizziblonde

I hate it - it was like a treasure hunt trying to find where they'd hidden all the useful functions and some of them seem to be in incredibly illogical places. I can deal with it though - and getting to learn that interface is a very small price to pay to get rid of that flipping paperclip!

Beast

chunter wrote: »

So until M$ come up with some super-duper version of office, any new version of office is going to largely ignored by most.

I think thats a bit of a sweeping and slightly silly comment.

[Deleted User]

chunter wrote: »

For the normal user, what does Word 2007 offer that word 2003 doesn't?
I'm still waiting for that answer 3 years on....

The 'normal user' probably takes advantage of less than 2% of the functionality of whatever suite they chose to use, so no matter what features and improvements are introduced they're unlikely to find anything that significantly improves their experience. They aren't the demographic that Microsoft target though.

Introducing the Ribbon was a fantastic move by Microsoft. When you're using a word processor, why should you have to take a hand off the keyboard to navigate the menus with the mouse, it's illogical. I'm guessing those who are most vocal about the change never spent a small amount of time viewing the massive amounts of learning resources that Microsoft made available to aid people in the transition. As some might say, a classic case of RTFM.

So until M$ come up with some super-duper version of office, any new version of office is going to largely ignored by most.

The 2010 version is now both 32 bit and 64 bit, which is significant advancement for Microsoft Office. The difference in performance is very much noticeable.

GetRealBabe

Hi

I really like Office 2007. Took a while to get used to where stuff is on the ribbon eg Insert-page number. I tend to save any letters/essays or other stuff as 2003/1997 just in case. (A friend sent a letter to a housing association and they couldn't open it as they don't use Office 2007).

It integrates well with Adobe Acrobat if I want to convert/save something as a PDF.

GRB

stevemcol

Thanks all.

Interesting opinions on both sides.
I'm sure in the long run, the new format might improve the package.
I was just so comfortable at operating the old interface quickly and I didn't need any enhancements or more powerful features. I don't really want to donate any more of my time than necessary to learning how to drive Mr Gates's products.

Sublime_2

I didn't like office 2007 either, but am finally getting used to it after over a year of having it. Its usable once you have used it a while, and so not worth the expense of upgrading for me.