Another great example of how Word 2007 "brings commands closer to the surface"

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Word MVPs have provided feedback to MS, individually and collectively,
throughout the development process. It's not as if this UI had burst upon an
unsuspecting world: Jensen Harris started documenting it in his blog
(http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/) in September 2005. The only thing that will
change Microsoft's direction is massive failure of corporate America to
adopt the new version. But, given the reluctance of many corporations to
upgrade early in the product life cycle, it may take a while for this
failure to become evident.

 

[Terry Farrell]

Like Suzanne, the first customisation I make to my Toolbars (both main
toolbar and the right-click toolbars that I use regularly) is to remove the
Cut/Copy/Paste commands - along with italic, bold and underline). I always
use the keyboard: a lifetime's habit (along with Control+S, Control+P and
other windows-wide keyboard commands).

In Word2007, I am particularly annoyed that not only is the Clipboard Group
given so much prominence on the Home Ribbon, but the Paste button is HUGE
and the Format Painter uses a humungous area of screen real estate because
it has been anointed with the words 'Format Painter' - which cannot be
turned off. Just how much in your face is that? That's not bringing a
command closer to the surface: it's slapping you in the face with a wet
kipper.

I understand that for most 'normal' users (read unskilled Word users) the
Paste button is the number 1 button. So what: why should that stop a skilled
user from having the choice to remove it?

Let's redesign the keyboard layout and put the skilled users keys underneath
to make more room for bigger keys for the unskilled users on top. There
could be a whopping great big return key to make sure that the unskilled
users are able to put in loads of space between paragraphs and an equally
huge spacebar so that the same users can line up their columns of text...

 

[Terry Farrell]

My main bitch is that it is so difficult to customise the new ribbons. I'm
not arguing that the ribbons are not an improvement over toolbars: my
argument is that they have been made really difficult to customise -
virtually impossible for most users.

I really like the idea of having a 'Groups' such as the Paragraph Group, but
I'd like complete control over which commands are displayed in the group.
For example, I never use Fill but I use ParaPageBreakBefore extensively:
where is it? [Buried as always, so that one is on my QAT.] Likewise, my
spacing is set up in the styles I use: I rarely need to use the spacing
button.

Similarly on the Font Group: I rarely use any of these preferring the
keyboard shortcuts for all of those commands except for the Colour command,
but where are the Character Spacing, Keep with Next and Keep Lines Together
which I do use regularly. [QAT getting busy already.]

So to repeat what all the others have said, it is the lack of out-of-the-box
customisation that is missing.

And why when I double-click a Table select button doesn't it open the Table
Properties dialog like it did in previous versions? Now it does nothing. Is
this an oversight or just another 'that's only for skilled users, let's take
it away in case a normal user accidentally double-clicks on it'.

Terry Farrell

 

[Terry Farrell]

You cannot add attachments in these newsgroups: can you imagine users
attaching 10MB documents that they cannot open?

Terry Farrell

 

[Larry]

I understand that for most 'normal' users (read unskilled Word users) the
Paste button is the number 1 button. So what: why should that stop a skilled
user from having the choice to remove it?

Ah, but there's a deeper purpose here, which you haven't discovered yet.
You must accept on faith that that deeper purpose exists, and drop your
negativity and your complaining, and then, after several months of immersing
yourself with an open mind and a positive attitude in this environment, the
true sense and worth of it will become clear to you.

And this is what we all must do.

Larry

Like Suzanne, the first customisation I make to my Toolbars (both main
toolbar and the right-click toolbars that I use regularly) is to remove the
Cut/Copy/Paste commands - along with italic, bold and underline). I always
use the keyboard: a lifetime's habit (along with Control+S, Control+P and
other windows-wide keyboard commands).

In Word2007, I am particularly annoyed that not only is the Clipboard Group
given so much prominence on the Home Ribbon, but the Paste button is HUGE
and the Format Painter uses a humungous area of screen real estate because
it has been anointed with the words 'Format Painter' - which cannot be
turned off. Just how much in your face is that? That's not bringing a
command closer to the surface: it's slapping you in the face with a wet
kipper.

I understand that for most 'normal' users (read unskilled Word users) the
Paste button is the number 1 button. So what: why should that stop a skilled
user from having the choice to remove it?

Let's redesign the keyboard layout and put the skilled users keys underneath
to make more room for bigger keys for the unskilled users on top. There
could be a whopping great big return key to make sure that the unskilled
users are able to put in loads of space between paragraphs and an equally
huge spacebar so that the same users can line up their columns of text...

 

[Larry]

But as has been mentioned, there is software which will allow you to
customize the Ribbon, move or delete groups, move or delete an entire tab,
and so on. MS doesn't provide this with Word, you have to pay a third-party
company $30 for it.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The "third-party company" is a student, Patrick Schmid, who is also an MVP.
He has put in over a year of work and research in learning to use Ribbon UI.
And $30 is a darn good price for something you need/want. Or you could
become as adept at Ribbon UI as you are at VBA and write an app yourself.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Well, you can't post attachments through the Communities interface. You can
post attachments via NNTP, but very few end users will see them because
they're mostly reading the NGs through the Web portal.

 

[Larry]

Uh, I was passing on to Terry information that someone else in the group had
given to me, that there is a way to solve the problem with the Ribbon he was
describing.

I was also pointing out that this solution is not provided as a part of
Word.

I hope that's ok with you.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

I could paste it into a Word document and e-mail
to you as an attachment if you like.

The tendency of people to think that Word makes a good wrapper to
exchange a single picture is symptomatic of the factors that landed us
with Word 2007--the idea that Word can and should be able to do everything!

 

[Terry Farrell]

Thanks Larry. I was aware of the utility: but like you, I don't see why this
shouldn't be an out-of-the-box, user-friendly feature. I hope Paul is well
on the way to become a dollar millionaire!

Terry

 

[Larry]

Well, I couldn't paste it into an e-mail, so Word was the next alternative.
What would you suggest that I have done?

The tendency of people to think that Word makes a good wrapper to
exchange a single picture is symptomatic of the factors that landed us
with Word 2007--the idea that Word can and should be able to do

everything!

 

[Larry]

So that's it? MVPs have provided feedback in the past, and MS did not heed
them, so the subject is closed and there's nothing to do but accept the
destruction of the Word interface?

I don't know anything about the relations of MVPs and Microsoft. But I
would guess that any feedback by MVPs during the testing period was on the
softspoken side. I would suggest that if MVPs as a group spoke out more
strongly now, really conveying the depth of unhappiness with Word 2007 and
how unacceptable it is, that there would at least be a chance that MS will
hear them and do something about it. It's the squeaky wheel that gets
greased. You have nothing to lose, and a great deal to gain, for
yourselves, and for all Word users.

Larry



something stronger is needed.

 

[Paul Ballou]

Attach it to the email

--
Paul Ballou
MVP Office
http://office.microsoft.com/home
http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/
http://www.ballousgiftshop.com

 

[Larry]

Attach a screen shot to an e-mail??

Again, I made a screen shot. It would not paste into an e-mail. So I
pasted it into Word, and attached the Word document to an e-mail and sent
the e-mail to Cicely.

I hope I have passed muster.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Feedback from MVPs is never soft-spoken. The MVPs who provided feedback were
mostly those who were using the beta. These include PPT MVP Echo Swinford,
who identified and documented more bugs than anyone else in the entire
Office beta (for those who don't know Echo, she's widely known around MS as
"the 'It sucks' lady"). But the number of Word MVPs is quite small in
proportion to the total number of Word users, and MS considers feedback from
a wide variety of sources, including large corporations with volume
licensing. In particular, many decisions were made based on CEIP data; those
who did not participate in CEIP could be argued to have only themselves to
blame, though, as mentioned here, CEIP data probably did not accurately
represent user customization.

MVPs are still providing outspoken feedback. We most recently did so at the
MVP Summit (March 12-15). And the product team *does* listen. But our
viewpoint is still a minority, no matter how vocal.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

No, you paste the screen shot into a graphics app and save it in a
(compressed) graphic format. If you have only Word to paste it into, you can
find instructions for extracting it as a graphic at
http://www.gmayor.com/extract_images_from_word.htm

 

[Larry]

What is the advantage of that--is it that the graphics app is smaller?

However, what if I accompany the screen shot with text? I guess I could
type that into the graphics app.

 

[Robert]

Well, I couldn't paste it into an e-mail, so Word was the next alternative.
What would you suggest that I have done?

Hi, Larry

Screenshots are essentially picture files.
As such, they can easily be attached to emails.
But in practical terms, it all depends how you make the screenshots.

If you use the PrintScreen key, the screenshot is sent to the Windows
clipboard as a bitmap picture. In this case, you have to paste the
clipboard contents into some application to be able to use the picture in
any meaningful way. You pasted into Word but there are better/simpler ways.
Word is a "word" processor. What you actually need is a "picture"
processor. Any would do, the most basic being the Windows "Paint" program
(which is still available in XP). Pasting into "Paint" allows you to save
the picture as a BMP, JPEG, TIFF, GIF, or PNG file.

Now it is often more practical to make screenshots using a screen capture
application. In this case, you can usually choose where to send the
screenshot to. You can send it to the Windows clipboard, but more aptly you
can save it directly to a picture file. I can recommend "FastStone Capture"
(http://www.faststone.org/download.htm). It is totally free and as
user-friendly as can be. Here is a description from the help: "A powerful,
flexible and intuitive screen-capture utility. It allows you to capture
anything on the screen including windows, objects, full screen, rectangle /
freehand-selected regions and scrolling windows/web pages." "FastStone
Capture" also allows you to edit the screenshot picture, add frames or
text, change size or colour count, email or print the picture directly.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

For those who want a dedicated screen capture utility that is really
full-featured (and still very affordable), I recommend SnagIt
(www.techsmith.com).