I don't like Office 2007!

spud17

SneakyP wrote: »

I hate Microsoft Office full stop!

I binned it several months back after discovering Open Office which is completely free!

I can't post links as yet, but just go to Google and type Open Office.

Except, that even though I only do really basic stuff with Excel, and Open Office can't even handle that.

geoffgeoff

I've never had a problem with Open Office handling anything!?

I open all documents sent to me from work without any issue - and some of spreadsheets I get are incredibly complicated.

What issues have you had?

spud17

geoffgeoff wrote: »

I've never had a problem with Open Office handling anything!?

I open all documents sent to me from work without any issue - and some of spreadsheets I get are incredibly complicated.

What issues have you had?

When using Open office,
Unable to add/edit to charts written in Excel, and some formulae being shown as complete gibberish.

BTW this is using MS office 2003.

tomstickland

I've been using Excel 07 for a bit longer now and I still think it's generally flakey, half finished rubbish.

For example, today I have 4 charts that need identical x and y axis titles. They have different data series on each one. If I make the first a template and then apply that template to the other three it changes everything, whereas I'd like to cut and paste axis titles.
Cutting and pasting just copies the chart contents.

As an aside, there's unpredictable behaviour if you try to copy and paste graph series within a chart. It's near useless.

I've found a solution in some freeware. This looks very useful:
http://xltoolbox.sourceforge.net/index.html

sharkie

Ms should have put both interfaces in their product and let the end user choose. Personally at home I use open office and at work have a choice, but use 2003 - the quickest way is by travelling on the path you already know.

I still think they should have fired that person who thought of the ribbon front end, and decided the leave the 'old style' one off.

DCFC79

Ive never understood why people hate office 2007, easy to get used to after 10 - 20 minutes of use

TrickyDicky101

There seems to be a clear divide between those who have used previous versions and those who are new to MS Office products: because I have grown up with Excel since its 97 incarnation, I love the old menu structure and know where everything is. In contrast, I loathe the ribbon. It is better in 2010 because it is now customisable, but I would much rather have the choice between classical and ribbon UI. Such requests fall on deaf ears when put to Microsoft itself though. The team responsible for the ribbon are not tied to any one office application. This also means that the actual app designers (eg the Excel development team) may not necessarily like the ribbon themselves, but they have to implement it in the app as this is a design decision made elsewhere.

tomstickland

DCFC79 wrote: »

Ive never understood why people hate office 2007, easy to get used to after 10 - 20 minutes of use

Because you probably don't need to do the things that a lot of the regular users need to do. Excel 2003 could be cajoled to do them, in a lot of cases Excel 2007 has made it even more difficult.

For example, if I start with an xy scatter plot, adding titles to it could be done with one click and then typing into 3 text boxes on one menu.

Now I'd have to do the following clicks
1- Layout
2- Chart title
3-Above Chart
type text

4-Axis titles
5-Primary horizontal axis title
6-Title below axis
type text

7-Axis titles
8-Primary vertical axist title
9-Rotated text
type text

9 clicks versus 1.

So, I think maybe I can use another method to do it.
The design tab gives me 11 non configurable chart layouts that are a random collection of various titles, legends, point formats, data markers. So that's no use.
Custom templates formats everything, so that's no use either.

I've now started scouring around for add ins that might fix it.

If, for some reason, you want to do more than make "professional looking charts" easily , there's some freeware out there worth looking at.

1)
I found this toolbar
http://xltoolbox.sourceforge.net/

It's a rag bag of random tools, but does have a very useful tool in "xl toolbox, chart miscellaneous, copy chart format" which allows you to copy chart formats from one chart to any others in a workbook. Tick boxes allow you to choose what you're copying.
http://xltoolbox.sourceforge.net/chartformat.html

The formatting stuff might be useful, some of it is a bit rubbish from what I've seen so far http://xltoolbox.sourceforge.net/designchart.html


2)
Chart cleaner.

http://www.juiceanalytics.com/writing/fixing-excel-charts/
It tries to remove junk, sort number formats, font sizes etc.

To install it you have to:
1- Unzip the download and put it into a folder somewhere
1- Make the “developer” ribbon icon available (office button, excel options, popular, “show developer tab in the ribbon”.
2- Click on developer tab
3- Click on Macro security
3 - Go to "trusted locations"
4- Add the folder with the download in it to the trusted locations.
5- Close Excel
6- Open the file "Clean Charts Installer.xls"
7- Click on "install clean charts"

To use it go to "add ins" and "clean this chart"

spud17

Here's a thought, how about an MS Office Lite?

It would still have Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, but without all the power user stuff.

It would allow me to do my basic stuff, which even Open Office struggles with, see previous post.

littlepanther

I hear Microsoft are reconsidering the ribbon for Office 2013.

OpenOffice.org is an excellent choice and as everyone on the board here says does the job for free.

Little Panther