Office 2007- What a horrible disappointment

[CMM]

I gotta say that I am profoundly disappointed with Office 2007. I'm still
trying to understand the ribbon... (it seems to basically be just an
"exploded" menu bar)... but in essense, this is nowhere near the
revolutionary release MS marketing is contending.

1) Excel and PowerPoint STILL have the same confusing, horrible MDI /
fake-sdi interface. How hard is it to get Word's true SDI right? Even
better, implement a nice TABBED document interface. Give the taskbar a
break. This is a showstopper.

2) Dialogs are just as unattractive- and more importantly, unintuitive- as
ever... in fact they look completely untouched. For instance, Word's Modify
Style dialog box (with the unintuitively placed Modify button in the lower
left hand side) is just as unweildy as ever. Excel's equation dialog doesn't
look like it's been touched since Windows 3.1.

3) Why does resizing the window not resize the view? How do we get a Text
Width view? Oh, now I have to go into dialog box to do it?! You gotta be
kidding me. Word's "view" of a document is just as distracting and annoying
as ever.

4) No *unified* Template Center / Gallery / Task Manager? Office has needed
an attractive, nicely designed Task Manager for a long time. The old New /
Open tools were a beginning but they were never IMPROVED. The idea wasn't
bad.... it just wasn't followed through on. Often, I'll need to create a
document but not sure which app to use (Word or Publisher... I don't know!!!
I'm so confused! Let me call IT.... wait I am IT!!!).

There's more... but these are biggies. So far, I don't see much in this
release that especially compelling. Same old Office..... with a new menu
bar.

 

[John Wilson]

I take it youre a beta tester and "in IT"

You should know better than to post in a public forum!

_____________________________
John Wilson
Microsoft Certified Office Specialist

 

[tohlz]

Hey John, Office 2007 Beta 2 has been released to the public already.
Check this out:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...&p=1&tid=cbebdbf5-78d0-42f5-b53a-4bd19cde12cd

and

http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00723.htm
--
Shawn Toh (tohlz)
Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP PowerPoint)

Site Updated: May 21, 2006
Added PowerPoint Movies.
http://pptheaven.mvps.org
PowerPoint Heaven - The Power to Animate

 

[John Wilson]

Apolgies (I just saw beta 2 here in the UK)
--
-----------------------------------------
Did that answer the question / help?
_____________________________
John Wilson
Microsoft Certified Office Specialist

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi C.,

In addition to posting to the peer newsgroups on this, you may want to post suggestions on the User Interface (UI) to the MS 2007
Office system blog for the UI at
http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/
You may want to include not just the comments on what you don't like but perhaps some specific suggestions on what would could be
done to make each item you listed better.

To some extent the 'unified template gallery' is available through File=>New as you can search for templates by name/keyword not
just by app and if you then selected a template for say Publisher, that would be the app that would open.

==========
I gotta say that I am profoundly disappointed with Office 2007. I'm still
trying to understand the ribbon... (it seems to basically be just an
"exploded" menu bar)... but in essense, this is nowhere near the
revolutionary release MS marketing is contending.

1) Excel and PowerPoint STILL have the same confusing, horrible MDI /
fake-sdi interface. How hard is it to get Word's true SDI right? Even
better, implement a nice TABBED document interface. Give the taskbar a
break. This is a showstopper.

2) Dialogs are just as unattractive- and more importantly, unintuitive- as
ever... in fact they look completely untouched. For instance, Word's Modify Style dialog box (with the unintuitively placed Modify
button in the lower left hand side) is just as unweildy as ever. Excel's equation dialog doesn't look like it's been touched since
Windows 3.1.

3) Why does resizing the window not resize the view? How do we get a Text Width view? Oh, now I have to go into dialog box to do
it?! You gotta be kidding me. Word's "view" of a document is just as distracting and annoying as ever.

4) No *unified* Template Center / Gallery / Task Manager? Office has needed an attractive, nicely designed Task Manager for a long
time. The old New /Open tools were a beginning but they were never IMPROVED. The idea wasn't
bad.... it just wasn't followed through on. Often, I'll need to create a
document but not sure which app to use (Word or Publisher... I don't know!!!
I'm so confused! Let me call IT.... wait I am IT!!!).

There's more... but these are biggies. So far, I don't see much in this
release that especially compelling. Same old Office..... with a new menu
bar.

-C. Moya >>
--
Let us know if this helped you,

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP

Pricing and Packages for '2007 Microsoft Office System'
http://microsoft.com/office/preview

 

[MerlinsWeb]

==============

I gotta say that I am profoundly disappointed with Office 2007. I'm still
trying to understand the ribbon... (it seems to basically be just an
"exploded" menu bar)... but in essense, this is nowhere near the
revolutionary release MS marketing is contending.

==============

Hi CMM,

The first thing you have to remember is to breathe. I’m teasing you ;-)

I too was very much confused by the “Ribbonâ€, I tried for 30 minutes to
understand it… but it was too extreme a change. I was disappointed to say the
least. But then I decided to take a tour of the User Interface here:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/ui/video.mspx

I could barely contain myself while watching the video; the new features are
indeed revolutionary – at least for someone who works with documents every
day like myself. I honestly burst out laughing in amazement as I watched.

The video is a small download that streams from the source once opened. It
is well worth seeing.

Merlin

 

[CMM]

I watched the video. I'm not saying the ribbon is a bad idea at all. I'm
still adjusting to it... (and figuring out why my favorite Zoom in Word,
Text-Width, is now only available via a dialog box... am I missing
something?).

My disappointment is more that this is all really window dressing (pun
intended). At its heart the apps are incremental improvements and nowhere
near the big hoopla MS Marketing is making it (it reminds me of the
"rearranged" Outlook 2003 interface... where they forgot to address the
disasterous View menu Current View / Arrange By features and instead tucked
them away even further into the interface).

The fact that Excel and PowerPoint are still Classic MDI apps is a huge huge
huge (I said huge!) disappointment. I still see folks everyday (power users
included) struggling with this kludgy MDI + Fake-SDI (Windows in Taskbar)
thing.

Word gets it right. I'm not even a fan of SDI.... I think Tabbed Document
Interface is the way to go. But, CONSISTENCY is even more important.

 

[Jim Gordon]

Hi CMM,

I don't usually hang out in the Windows newsgroups, but I was passing
through and noticed your posting.

Microsoft has yet another version of Office that you can use: Office
2004 on the Macintosh. After reading through your comments I am pretty
sure you would be much happier with Office 2004. I'll put my reasons
within your comments"

I gotta say that I am profoundly disappointed with Office 2007. I'm still
trying to understand the ribbon... (it seems to basically be just an
"exploded" menu bar)... but in essense, this is nowhere near the
revolutionary release MS marketing is contending.

I haven't used the ribbon yet and have no opinion about it.

1) Excel and PowerPoint STILL have the same confusing, horrible MDI /
fake-sdi interface. How hard is it to get Word's true SDI right? Even
better, implement a nice TABBED document interface. Give the taskbar a
break. This is a showstopper.

By MDI I presume you mean "Multiple Document Interface" where each
document that is open has a tab button in the Windows task bar. By
comparison, Office 2004 has a Single Document Interface (SDI). You can
switch from document to document a number of ways. There's the
traditional Windows menu, or you can use the Dock icon (the dock is
similar to the Windows task bar in functionality). On Word Mac there is
a Window List feature that's available by going to VIEW > TOOLBARS >
CUSTOMIZE MENUS AND TOOLBARS and dragging it from the COMMANDS tab to
any toolbar. Mac Excel and Mac PowerPoint do not have a Window List
feature. WindowList is not available in Word 2003 for Windows.

2) Dialogs are just as unattractive- and more importantly, unintuitive- as
ever... in fact they look completely untouched. For instance, Word's Modify
Style dialog box (with the unintuitively placed Modify button in the lower
left hand side) is just as unweildy as ever. Excel's equation dialog doesn't
look like it's been touched since Windows 3.1.

Every single dialog box was re-designed for Office 2004. I think they
look better than the Windows dialog boxes, but that is a matter of
personal taste. Equation Editor and Style dialog boxes are not the same
as Windows Office. I like the Mac versions better. You decide.

3) Why does resizing the window not resize the view? How do we get a Text
Width view? Oh, now I have to go into dialog box to do it?! You gotta be
kidding me. Word's "view" of a document is just as distracting and annoying
as ever.

In Word's customize dialog (see above) there's a "Fit To Window" command
that might be just what you are looking for. Give it a try. This command
is available in both Mac and Windows versions of Word.

4) No *unified* Template Center / Gallery / Task Manager? Office has needed
an attractive, nicely designed Task Manager for a long time. The old New /
Open tools were a beginning but they were never IMPROVED. The idea wasn't
bad.... it just wasn't followed through on. Often, I'll need to create a
document but not sure which app to use (Word or Publisher... I don't know!!!
I'm so confused! Let me call IT.... wait I am IT!!!).

This request is for a very elaborate feature set. Fortunately, it is
available in Microsoft Office 2004. It is a Macintosh-only feature and a
major one at that. Check this link and click on the "Project Center" and
"Project Gallery" tabs
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office2004/highlights.aspx

There's more... but these are biggies. So far, I don't see much in this
release that especially compelling. Same old Office..... with a new menu
bar.

If you are really serious about getting a version of Office that has
been designed differently from Windows Office and Sun's OpenOffice then
you should give Microsoft Office 2004 a high priority on your list of
things to try. It already has many of the features that you are wishing for.

-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

 

[CMM]

The project center (if it is indeed intuitive and designed properly) is
quite possibly one of the most compelling features I have seen in a long
time.