ARRGH! *tears his hair out, tears his eyes out, collapses*

[Rath Darkblade]

I am forced to use Windows Vista and Office 2007 at work because my boss says so and the IT guy installed it. Vista isn't too bad for what I use it for (accounts), but what the fudge did Microsloth do to Office??? Office had had exactly the same look-and-feel for nearly the past 20 years; I've been using Office since 1990, since the days of DOS and Windows 3.1. Now, suddenly, for no apparent reason at all, M$ decided to turn everything upside down and put every feature in different places, and I'm supposed to learn where everything is - while, at the same time, trying to do my actual job, the job I'm actually paid for. So my question is this:

WTF?!!? Does Microcr@p expect me to re-learn Office from scratch??? Doesn't Micro$hit realise that people who had been using Office for years and years (like me) and who know all the tricks (like me) didn't WANT Office to change this much? Why the fruck did all these changes come about anyway?!? *is particularly, exceptionally, and mightily cheesed off*

Micro$oft says that when this version of Office was developed, people said they wanted this because it looked more 'cool' and was a lot more 'user-friendly' - and I think that this is, in no uncertain terms, a huge mound of BULLCR@P. This version of Office is nothing more than a complete and utter pain in the bum, and if I ever catch whoever's responsible for this hideous abomination, a complete and utter pain in the bum is exactly what I'll give him. *evil*

As you can tell, I hate Office 2007 with a passion. Which is odd, because I'm a fairly laid-back sort of guy and I don't really hate anything else... but this collection of cr@p that masquerades as an Office product just makes me want to retch in horror.

There, I said it. I feel better.

[DeadPoolX]

I know Office 2007 has been redesigned and to be honest, I love the new format. It makes a lot more sense to me, given that the tools are laid out in a far more intelligent manner.

The trick is knowing which section everything is in, instead of looking for drop-down menus. That's actually pretty easy to figure out with a little experimentation. After doing that, Office 2007 quickly becomes very intuitive, especially since the layout offers everything for you instead of having to deal with idiotic drop-down menus.

Unfortunately, I only have Office 2000 Premium. I'd much rather use Office 2007. The cost is a bit prohibitive, so I haven't bought it.

By the way... I don't know if you've checked this out, Rath, but the Microsoft symbol on the left is where you get your "save," "save as," "load," "print" and so on. I've seen a lot of people confused by this, but they'd discover it with just a minimal amount of exploration.

Something that's important is you can save your documents as a DOC instead of a DOCX (the same is true for the other programs, but using their own format). DOCX is Office 2007's new format, but if you plan to use older versions of Office or give the document to people who have older Office versions, you'll want to save the document so it's compatible.

[Collector]

Office 2003 can open .docx and .xlsx by conversion. Earlier versions of Word were a little clumsy compared to WordPerfect, but each new version got better. I could get use to the Ribbon, but allowing users to have the menu bar would have been a very small concession to make to make it a much easier transition to the new GUI. There is a trend with Balmer's Microsoft to do away with the Menu bar in general. This is a real mistake. At least with IE7, Media Player and Vista the menu bar is just hidden and can be displayed. This is not so with Office 2007.

[DeadPoolX]

Office 2003 can open .docx and .xlsx by conversion. Earlier versions of Word were a little clumsy compared to WordPerfect, but each new version got better. I could get use to the Ribbon, but allowing users to have the menu bar would have been a very small concession to make to make it a much easier transition to the new GUI. There is a trend with Balmer's Microsoft to do away with the Menu bar in general. This is a real mistake. At least with IE7, Media Player and Vista the menu bar is just hidden and can be displayed. This is not so with Office 2007.

I suppose Microsoft could have made an "Office 2007" and a "Classic" interface, like they do with their operating systems. Although I don't know if Vista allows that (XP certainly does).

[Collector]

All they needed to do was to include a menu bar, even if the default was to have it hidden.

[Rath Darkblade]

DPX, I'm sorry but I'm well aware that the "Microsoft" button does all those things. It's like the old File menu, in effect. And I'm aware that I'll have to save it in .doc format, .xls format, .mdb format, .ppt format etc. to have it opened by earlier versions of Word, Excel, Access and PowerPoint. I've been using Office since the days of Windows 3.1; since Word v2, Excel v4, Access v2 and PowerPoint v4 (this would've been around 1991, or 17 years ago).

I'm sorry, but I agree much more with Collector. For someone like me - I've been using Office for the last 17-18 years with the same menu bars - the user interface became intuitive, and I became extremely productive because I knew where everything was. Now, suddenly, I have to re-learn everything. Things that would've taken me a couple of nano-seconds now take me 3-4 minutes. EVERY. DAMN. DAY. I know the old Office like the back of my hand, so it's extremely irritating to have to re-learn Office just so I can be productive at work again. Bleh.

I also agree with Collector that having the old-style menus would've been a great help. I would probably have continued using the File menu, Edit menu, Format menu, Tools menu, Window menu, Help menu etc. instead of the new interface.

That new interface is so irritating to me that I wish I could hunt down the person responsible and kick him so hard in the nads that he would not be able to pee for the rest of his life. That's how I feel about Office 2007. It's a kick in the teeth for someone like me, who'd spent almost the last 20 years learning Office, only to have it whisked away by someone who thinks that the Office interface was 'uncool'. Argh.

[DeadPoolX]

DPX, I'm sorry but I'm well aware that the "Microsoft" button does all those things. It's like the old File menu, in effect. And I'm aware that I'll have to save it in .doc format, .xls format, .mdb format, .ppt format etc. to have it opened by earlier versions of Word, Excel, Access and PowerPoint. I've been using Office since the days of Windows 3.1; since Word v2, Excel v4, Access v2 and PowerPoint v4 (this would've been around 1991, or 17 years ago).

I wasn't commenting on your intelligence or technical know-how, Rath. I'd seen lots of people -- all of whom claim to have experience with previous versions of Office -- get lost when using the new interface. I can't begin to tell the number of times I've seen people fumble around. Very few, in my experience, actually know what the Microsoft button is or what it does. Even fewer are observant enough to realize the difference between the new and old document suffixes.

I'm sorry, but I agree much more with Collector. For someone like me - I've been using Office for the last 17-18 years with the same menu bars - the user interface became intuitive, and I became extremely productive because I knew where everything was. Now, suddenly, I have to re-learn everything. Things that would've taken me a couple of nano-seconds now take me 3-4 minutes. EVERY. DAMN. DAY. I know the old Office like the back of my hand, so it's extremely irritating to have to re-learn Office just so I can be productive at work again. Bleh.

I never said you had to agree with me. It's obvious you don't and that's fine.

I happen to like the new interface. No matter how many times I've used Office (and like you, I've been using it since the early days), I consistently forget where items are on the drop-down menu bar. It's basically a game of "hide and seek" and that, for me, is quite annoying and inefficient. I'm sure you feel the same way about Office 2007's interface, so you can probably understand my frustration and why I like the change.

I also agree with Collector that having the old-style menus would've been a great help. I would probably have continued using the File menu, Edit menu, Format menu, Tools menu, Window menu, Help menu etc. instead of the new interface.

While I like Office 2007's interface, I have to agree that the option to use the new and old types should have been implemented. I suppose they're treating it like Vista and since Office 2007 is intended for use on Vista (although it works on XP), Microsoft decided to make changes across the board.

[Tawmis]

Not sure if this helps if you're comfortable with add-ins/ons...

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/ne ... &sloc=&p=1

[Fender_178]

What I like about office 2007 is in word it has a built in Bibliography feature for research papers and its a really nice feature. Office 2007 isnt that bad It takes a while to get used to it if you used office 2003 or a previous version. I hear Windows 7 is going to be alot better than Vista.

[DeadPoolX]

One other option is Open Office. I haven't used it in a while (I still prefer MS Office), but I think it uses an interface very similar to the pre-Office 2007 programs. As an open source project, it has extensions as well.

[Rath Darkblade]

Yep, I use both Office and OpenOffice. I find that for me, OOO (as in OpenOffice.org) is faster than Office and easier to work with. The only problem is that if I create a table in a Word document, save it, open it with OOO, make a change, and save, it corrupts the Word table and I have to start again. Still, pretty good for open source.

[abyss]

My favourite version of office was office 97. My favourite word processor is the mac version of wordperfect 3.5. That version was released in 1995. It's old but it's the best.