Thursday, April 15, 2010
I THOUGHT WINDOWS VISTA WAS BAD UNTIL I 'UPGRADED' TO OFFICE 2007
I started this blog in 2007 with a moan about how half-baked Windows Vista was and why did Microsoft feel they had to move familiar things around every time they upgraded their operating system. Now the various service packs and security patches have come out and it's running properly, more or less - although it still takes an age to boot up - and device driver developers have finally caught up.
Mind you, I hear it's practically back to square one yet again with Windows 7 - you can't even upgrade simply from Vista, apparently - you have to format your hard drive and start all over again, which means moving everything you want to keep off your PC first - how useless is that, especially when you consider how big today's hard drives are and how many thousands of photos and MP3s etc they can hold?
But anyway, these gripes pale into insignificance when you 'upgrade' (and I use the term advisedly) from Office 2003 to Office 2007 and find that you've been dumped in a maze, or perhaps more accurately the Alaskan wilderness without map, compass or GPS. While wearing a blindfold and earplugs.
In an attempt to make Office more intuitive and user-friendly (love that expression) Microsoft did away with the toolbar we all know our way around with our eyes shut, and gave us the 'ribbon' - a grouping of popular tasks that's supposed to make it easy to get straight to what you want to do.
Well it doesn't.
I've been using Office 2007 for several months now and I still find myself searching fruitlessly for such basic functions as a document's properties in Word so I can check the word count or how long I have been working on it.
It's no wonder that many businesses have shied away from migrating to Office 2007 - they fear the loss of productivity by their staff and the support overload for their IT departments as a deluge of completely unnecessary questions about where things are is unleashed.
I actually found a bit of software on the 'net that uses the add-in function in Office to give you back your original toolbar, more or less. It speaks volumes for how hopeless the ribbon is that someone felt it worthwhile coding software to restore the conventional toolbar. If you're tearing your hair out with Office 2007, you might want to give it a try - there's a free but functionally-limited evaluation version.
And of course, no new version of Office would be complete without changing the document format yet again, so old versions can't open documents created in the new version without a bit of MS software that allows the benighted users to read documents from the new version being installed. It takes a bit of digging on MS's website to discover there is such a thing, mind you - more time wasted - even if it is free. $29.95 seems a small price to pay to get your sanity - and productivity - back!
I do hope that Microsoft comes to its senses with Office 2010 and restores the toolbar, exactly the way it was. Perhaps the development team should ask itself why no other leading software developer has gone down the ribbon route, as far as I know.
It's because it's crap and doesn't work.
Now I see that Microsoft has had to come out with the Ribbon Hero game, which I see as a backhanded way of admitting that the ribbon is useless and that users need extra software just to teach them how to use it. So much for intuitive software!
Remember, Microsoft: if it ain't broke there's really no need to try and fix it. So if you don't want to lose everyone to Open Office, put the toolbar back - just the way it was.
Oh, and put the mailmerge function back the way it was in Office 2000 while you're at it, would you - you completely wrecked it in Office 2003?
Thankyou.
I started this blog in 2007 with a moan about how half-baked Windows Vista was and why did Microsoft feel they had to move familiar things around every time they upgraded their operating system. Now the various service packs and security patches have come out and it's running properly, more or less - although it still takes an age to boot up - and device driver developers have finally caught up.
Mind you, I hear it's practically back to square one yet again with Windows 7 - you can't even upgrade simply from Vista, apparently - you have to format your hard drive and start all over again, which means moving everything you want to keep off your PC first - how useless is that, especially when you consider how big today's hard drives are and how many thousands of photos and MP3s etc they can hold?
But anyway, these gripes pale into insignificance when you 'upgrade' (and I use the term advisedly) from Office 2003 to Office 2007 and find that you've been dumped in a maze, or perhaps more accurately the Alaskan wilderness without map, compass or GPS. While wearing a blindfold and earplugs.
In an attempt to make Office more intuitive and user-friendly (love that expression) Microsoft did away with the toolbar we all know our way around with our eyes shut, and gave us the 'ribbon' - a grouping of popular tasks that's supposed to make it easy to get straight to what you want to do.
Well it doesn't.
I've been using Office 2007 for several months now and I still find myself searching fruitlessly for such basic functions as a document's properties in Word so I can check the word count or how long I have been working on it.
It's no wonder that many businesses have shied away from migrating to Office 2007 - they fear the loss of productivity by their staff and the support overload for their IT departments as a deluge of completely unnecessary questions about where things are is unleashed.
I actually found a bit of software on the 'net that uses the add-in function in Office to give you back your original toolbar, more or less. It speaks volumes for how hopeless the ribbon is that someone felt it worthwhile coding software to restore the conventional toolbar. If you're tearing your hair out with Office 2007, you might want to give it a try - there's a free but functionally-limited evaluation version.
And of course, no new version of Office would be complete without changing the document format yet again, so old versions can't open documents created in the new version without a bit of MS software that allows the benighted users to read documents from the new version being installed. It takes a bit of digging on MS's website to discover there is such a thing, mind you - more time wasted - even if it is free. $29.95 seems a small price to pay to get your sanity - and productivity - back!
I do hope that Microsoft comes to its senses with Office 2010 and restores the toolbar, exactly the way it was. Perhaps the development team should ask itself why no other leading software developer has gone down the ribbon route, as far as I know.
It's because it's crap and doesn't work.
Now I see that Microsoft has had to come out with the Ribbon Hero game, which I see as a backhanded way of admitting that the ribbon is useless and that users need extra software just to teach them how to use it. So much for intuitive software!
Remember, Microsoft: if it ain't broke there's really no need to try and fix it. So if you don't want to lose everyone to Open Office, put the toolbar back - just the way it was.
Oh, and put the mailmerge function back the way it was in Office 2000 while you're at it, would you - you completely wrecked it in Office 2003?
Thankyou.
Labels: Microsoft Office 2007, Office 2000, Office 2003, office ribbon, Office toolbar
