Word 2007? It's a mess!!

[Howard Leighty]

I am stunned at what I found today while working to configure a new computer
for one of my clients. This client bought a new HP DV9000 laptop (nice
machine, intel duo-core, 2G Ram) with Windows Vista Ultimate installed.
Vista is not so nice but it is at least manageable, and I was prepared for
Vista's problems after I read the article at Tom's Hardware at URL
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/29/xp-vs-vista/.

But what I was NOT prepared for, and what really stunned me, was what I
found when I installed and activated Microsoft Office Professional 2007.
Although Outlook is more or less under control, Microsoft Word 2007 is an
atrocity. Excel is almost as bad. I was so traumatized by what I found
(and what I didn't find) that I haven't yet looked at the rest of it.

I've been using Microsoft Office products for at least the last ten years
(probably a bit longer) and I used to think it was an excellent product.
Each new version incorporated new features that were actually useful but
they always retained the basic look and feel in the GUI and the basic
architecture of the program. But that's all in the past now and I'm not
happy about it. I don't even recognize it anymore. I surely don't want to
buy it, nor to recommend it to my clients. This is the best thing that ever
happened to Open Office 2.0. Sales of Office Pro 2003 are bound to surge on
eBay.

This miserable product that appeared on myscreen is almost unusable.
Everything that was familiar and useful is now either gone or in hiding. I
can't imagine what those morons at Microsoft were thinking when they took an
axe to what used to be their excellent office productivity suite.

I am wondering if anyone out there in this newsgroup can explain to me how
and why this happened and why anyone should like it.

I also want to hear an explanation of how experienced users of Word and
Excel are supposed to learn where all of the useful Tools disappeared to.
Is there any way to make the GUI revert back to the classical menu
structures?

Why did this happen and What can anyone do to cope with this mess if they
want to actually get some work done?

Is there some book or website out there to help people cope with this mess?

Please, somebody, tell me how to find my way out of this nightmare.

This is a serious inquiry and a genuine concern. My email address is real
and is not munged. Serious and helpful replies by private email are
welcome.

 

[John F]

Like you I am absolutely dismayed with this product. I've been using it now
for six months and still cannot intuitively find what I need to find to do
the most simple things.

I have used the Microsoft Office suite for over 10 years and have upgraded
with minimal disruption to my work routines.

I have fallen so far behind in my work because of the difficulties in
working with Office 2007 that I can't take on work that I should be taking
on.

I keep thinking as time goes by that I'll get the hang of it but that day
never arrives. The Help feature usually returns irrelevant answers to my
queries and I have to go to Google to try and find an answers to some of the
simplest questions.

I hope that you get an answer to your question on recommendations for books
and tutorials to help us cope with this situation. What is out there in the
way of tutorials begins at such a basic level and moves so slowly that
people who have been using Word for 10 years become too frustrated to sit
through it all to discover an answer to some detail that they might be
looking for.

I am just dumbfounded.

 

[Davy]

As a Word user of some 15 years I am also dumbfounded as to whats
happened to the menu system in Word and Excel 2007. There is going to be
a lot of secretaries with years of experience out there who felt they
could just manage with their computer - who are going to be reduced to
tears by Office 2007. I used to work for an IT support dept and I would
NOT recommend rolling out Office 2007 to an enterprise.

I have found that the best way to use it is to switch off the ribbon
toolbar entirely then use help to find the tool you want. Sounds
cumbersome but much faster than browsing through the ribbon menu.

I think that Microsoft must have given the menu design to a group of
teenagers to come up with something 'cool'.

For me the biggest problem with Office 2007 is the lack of compatibility
with colleagues using earlier version. You can save
documents/spreadsheets in a version which is compatible with earlier
versions but you get a warning that some of the things you have put into
the doc will not survive the conversion!

Oh well,

Davy

 

[Steven M (remove wax and invalid to reply)]

I still use Windows and Office 2000 at home (hey, if it's not broke,
don't fix it.) However, at my day job they switched everybody to
Office 2007.

It's probably not too bad for beginners and less sophisticated users,
but for a power user it's the pits.

For example, the Ribbon doesn't remember that I'm in a table. If I'm
doing a few things in a table -- adding highlighting and changing a
font, then combining two cells -- the Table layout section of the
Ribbon goes away. It takes an extra click to bring it back. WHY?

I like to create new toolbars for certain jobs, float them anywhere on
the screen, add new buttons, sometimes create my own icons or use a
short word (usually the macro name).

One example: Word doesn't capitalize titles correctly. So I wrote a
macro that does, and I run it by clicking a button labeled "TitleCor".

But you can't do any of that in Word 2007. You're limited to one
so-called "Quick Access" toolbar. You're limited to two choices about
where to put it: above the ribbon or below the ribbon. No floating.
You can only pick built-in icons to put on the button. At work, I
have to remember that the "cloud" button corrects my titles. I have
dozens of custom macros that make my life easier, but danged if I can
remember the totally arbitrary button icons that Word made me pick.

They screwed up things all over. For example, the Find and Replace
dialog. If you ever search for matching formatting (styles, character
or paragraph formatting) you'll appreciate (NOT) the new "suffix"
option. Not sure what that is, and don't care, I just want it GONE.
Takes me three or four keypresses just to erase the formatting
selections from the search boxes. It used to be ONE.

Used to be, when you were deep inside a dialog box, you could press
Esc to get out of it. Be careful, if you're editing a header or
footer, Esc knocks you out of there and back to the main document.

There are a couple of add-ins that are supposed to restore the
toolbars. However, like I told somebody: For years I have been
driving models of MS Word that had a steering wheel. Now, MS makes me
use my feet to steer, and my hands to operate the gas and the brakes.
I'm not as accurate with my feet, and I object to paying extra to
restore the old functionality.

Oh, let's not forget ... Normally you can tell which of several
Windows programs is the active one, by the color of the top bar. Not
Office programs. The color shift is so subtle you can hardly see it.

And the Help system ... not that previous versions were very good, but
they were fricking perfect compared to this monster. Plus the lines
have something like double spacing, so you HAVE to scroll down, you'll
never find anything in the first couple of screens. And a lot of the
detail is hidden, you have click tiny plus signs to see everything.

And if you work in different languages, well, at home I can switch
between languages and add or delete custom dictionaries using just a
few keystrokes. It lets me turn checkboxes on or off by pressing the
space bar. Not in 2007, it forces me to use the mouse.

Argh. If it wasn't for all my macros, I would probably switch to Open
Office.

Steven


Je Tue, 08 Apr 2008 07:57:04 -0500, Davy

As a Word user of some 15 years I am also dumbfounded as to whats
happened to the menu system in Word and Excel 2007. There is going to be
a lot of secretaries with years of experience out there who felt they
could just manage with their computer - who are going to be reduced to
tears by Office 2007. I used to work for an IT support dept and I would
NOT recommend rolling out Office 2007 to an enterprise.

I have found that the best way to use it is to switch off the ribbon
toolbar entirely then use help to find the tool you want. Sounds
cumbersome but much faster than browsing through the ribbon menu.

I think that Microsoft must have given the menu design to a group of
teenagers to come up with something 'cool'.

For me the biggest problem with Office 2007 is the lack of compatibility
with colleagues using earlier version. You can save
documents/spreadsheets in a version which is compatible with earlier
versions but you get a warning that some of the things you have put into
the doc will not survive the conversion!

Oh well,

Davy

--
Steven M - (e-mail address removed)
(remove wax and invalid to reply)

"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor
freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without
plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning, they
want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may
be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and
physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and it never will." - Frederick Douglass

 

[Steven M (remove wax and invalid to reply)]

Je Tue, 08 Apr 2008 07:57:04 -0500, Davy

For me the biggest problem with Office 2007 is the lack of compatibility
with colleagues using earlier version. You can save
documents/spreadsheets in a version which is compatible with earlier
versions but you get a warning that some of the things you have put into
the doc will not survive the conversion!

Actually, that's easily fixed. You can have Word search for all the
features that won't survive and delete them. But it takes an insane
number of clicking and selecting. It should be just one click.

What's also weird is, you save as Word 97-2003, and close Word, then
open that document later. When you close it again, Word (again)
reminds you about the new features that you'll miss. Where did they
get stored? Why weren't they wiped out when you did a Save As the
last time?

A few weeks ago I accused a Microsoft MVP [1] of drinking the Kool-Aid
[2]. I apologized, she was trying to be helpful.

[1] www.mvps.org
[2] Actually Flavor-Aid: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jones



--
Steven M - (e-mail address removed)
(remove wax and invalid to reply)

"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor
freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without
plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning, they
want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may
be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and
physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and it never will." - Frederick Douglass

 

[Jerry Pinsky]

I have used an old Microsoft Office for years and was very happy with it.
I attempted to upgrade to Office Home & Student 2007 (shame on me) and was
very unhappy with it. I returned it to Microsoft and now wish to reinstall
Word 2001 SR1 from Microsoft Works and then my upgrade to Office. Every
thing else works (Excel, Publisher, Outlook) except Word. When I start it
I get only the banner and a white screen. If I open Task Manager is shows 2
copies of Word trying to open. Does anyone know what is happening? I would
be grateful for any help. I am using Windows XP SP3.

Jerry Pinsky