Hi Scott,
Wellll, for better or not, Office 2007 has been on the market for over 1 year now and Microsoft won't be 'taking it back' <g>. Many
of us may get to choose what product we use at home, but not at work, so in that case, learning it can be more helpful to a pleasant
day at the office than fighting the 'powers that be' over it <g>.
On some of the points you mentioned -
Some background on why the the change was made to set default to 1.15 line spacing is discussed here.
http://blogs.msdn.com/fontblog/archive/2006/05/17/600507.aspx
To change to the prior version settings in Word 2007 you can use the
Word Home tab=>Change Styles=>Style Set=> Word 2003 then use
Home tab=>Change Styles=>Set as default.
(In the same dialog use the Font Set 'classic' to give you the Times New Roman one and set it as default.
While your experience may certainly be valid for that area, there are a large number of corporate clients that have entirely
different 'standards' including margins and even paper size based on locale, font sets, styles, colors, there probably isn't a 'most
users' group that can be quantified to the point that everyone will agree, and even if they did the folks who are outside of the
'most' category may also not be happy
. All of those 'we want it this way' document defaults can be deployed as part of setup, or
shared from setup the way you like with others <g>. FWIW, very few of the folks I work with, be it home or coporate users use
'Times New Roman'. They consider it 'dated looking'
For using the new equation editor a new font was needed and while others
are in the works from font designers Cambria math is the only one that has all of the character support needed for that feature.
The 'why' of the interface changes are in the Office 2007 UI blog entries here
http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh
and how some of these changes can be used are shown in the video here
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA101679481033.aspx
(yep, it's a marketing thing, but it's from the team leader for the Ribbon interface and selling product is what it's about, eh
<g>). A lot of folks don't write things longer than one page documents or letters and find the new features you may find frivilous
to be useful and don't use the Office apps on a regular (i.e. daily) basis, so for those folks, perhaps the ribbon makes more sense?
[BTW that video can run to something like 43MB, so a high speed connection would be good <g>). There are other, smaller ones
available at
http://office.microsoft.com
Of course, there isn't any requirement *from Microsoft* that you upgrade if you like what you're 'familiar with' <g>, but as with
car models, once a new model is released, the old one isn't made much after that <g> or sold by the manufacturer. There are other
brands of office productivity products available
As a college student I suspect you may be able to get MS Office 2007 for
considerably less than the price you mentioned.
In both Word 2003 and 2007 if you insert a shape, you can use Ctrl+D, while the shape is selected to insert another, or use the F4
key to repeat the last action.
but as long as an inserted shape is selected the Drawing Tools ribbon is displayed and 'Insert
shapes' is there on the left side if you prefer using your mouse. If you're seeing Word 'jump' away from the Drawing tools when you
insert a shape you may want to see what add-ins you're running as some can interfere.
Many of the prior version keyboard shortcuts are still available along with the new Office 2007 ones. (and you can hide the ribbon
using Ctrl+F1 or double clicking on one of the tabs). You may find the
was/is/where'd it go
resources here helpful
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/HA102295841033.aspx
For keyboard shortcuts for Office 2007 tapping the alt key shows the next key needed for the new shortcut, and that continues as you
type each one, but with some exceptions, due to location, the old shortcuts are there and for the 36 galleries of Autotext building
blocks you can assign keyboard shortcuts to each one if you prefer (if there were enough keys to cover them all <g>).
Backwards compatible - you can save into the old file formats which restricts features in the new version and in the old version you
can install an addin to open and save files in the new format.
What tends to get overlooked by focusing on the interface is the collaboration and sharing capabilities from the Office 2007 server
products with the Office desktop products, larger spreadsheet capabilities in Excel and improvements in several 'behind the scenes'
features in Word and other apps.
BTW, neither 'techarena' where you posted, or the Microsoft discussion/newsgroups are direct lines to Microsoft although there
are, from time to time, MS folks who participate
You may want to post comments to the Microsoft Office team blogs when a new
article appears
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/FX102376791033.aspx
There are a number of 3rd party (free enterprise? <g>) add-ins available, some are listed on
http://office.microsoft.com/marketplace
many are free or have free trial periods.
On getting a page number to start on page 2, double click on the document screen in the footer area and choose
Page Number=>Format Page Numbers=>Start with
or without being in the header/footer
Insert=>Page Number=>Format Page Number
That's the same dialog as the prior version
=============
Seeing that MS has given all these 'new' users a troublesome default
setting with the installation of Office 2007 or Word 2007, couldn't MS
create a preferred user 'Normal.docm' and send it out as a patch fix or
'here's a 'Normal.docm' update. I also think that there should be at
least 10 main templates that when an absolutely new user opens it up,
it displays a pop-up or style sheet with the documents settings. Most
college students (and Most users) need the basic Normal.doc with 1"
margins, Times New Roman, Single spacing or double spacing. Only power
users will need to change these settings to fit their needs. (But with
Word 2007, MS has made that even difficult for Power users! )
Most users want 1 inch margins with Times New Roman; no spacing in the
'After' box in the paragraphs setting and single space as the default.
Why would MS change what users were accustom to?
Many of the changes in Word 2007 have been a nightmare. Why would MS
want to change what 30 Million+ users know and are accustom to from
Word 2000/2002/2003. Then, MS has to change the font setting to
Calibri something. What is up with that. Especially in a College
setting. Your programmers should have known that.
While I've got your attention, If WordPerfect(WP) can change it's
software's appearance for several previous WP versions and MS Word
95/97, why can't MS give power users the ability to keep the Word
2002/XP interface.
and I know that you crippled Word 2007 from using the full keyboard
menus from Word 2002/XP. If they work and bring up the paragraph
settings, they could also be programmed to work with drop down menus.
You just want to slap a label 'New and improved' for the $350 price
tag.
Well, thanks for giving 30,000,000 users a headache trying to use your
upgrade. I think that its a down grade in usability! Even a young
college student who had to find a way to start page numbers on the 2nd
page with page '2' couldn't believe the solution when I showed her.
You have to go to two tabs, 'Insert' and 'Page Layout' to get this
done. She said that is too much trouble. And the solution came from
Word 2007 help files.
Oh, another thing I found users: If you are inserting boxes or shapes.
The previous action would keep the Drawing toolbar active until you
moved on to typing... The new Word 2007 jumps back to the 'Home tab'
every time you insert a shape. what is up with that stupid trick.
What if you want to insert multiple shapes? You have to keep going
back to the 'insert tab' and clicking on Shapes, then selecting your
shape and then it will move back to 'Home tab'. Someone slip on that
programming.
Just sell us a license for Word or Office and let us keep the version
we want. Or some will jump to another word/ office suite solution.
Make it usable and backwards compatible. It will take many users 3-6
years to upgrade.
--
Scott2345 >>
--
Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP
*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*
