Office 2007
To those who are using company computers the issue of upgrading to Microsoft Office 2007 may not be in your near future, especially as larger companies are not climbing over each other to upgrade. I recently bought a new Dell to replace the IBM ThinkPad that I complained about in a recent post and decided to go ahead and add the latest version of this software.
The first impression that I got when opening the various programs is that the interface has been dumbed down to the lowest common denominator with the “ribbon” toolbar being locked in place. I had made quite a few changes to the standard toolbars to allow quick access to functions that I use frequently and even after several days of using the new programs I am still having trouble coming to grips with how to do things that had become second nature with the older version.
The rationale behind the new interface is that many people were confused and intimidated by the older interface and the new one makes a lot of options readily available for new users. This is definitely a good thing for those who haven’t used the programs before (if such people really exist) but can be frustrating for those of us who were quite comfortable with the old menus.
I wish that Microsoft had found a way to allow switching between the new interface and the old but I have managed to find the next best thing at http://pschmid.net/office2007/ribboncustomizer/index.php. Ribbon Customizer is a program which has a limited freeware edition (which has the benefit of allowing the addition of a ribbon tab that contains the classic menus) and a paid edition which allows much greater customization of the ribbons. The only drawback is that you can’t add and remove buttons from the classic menus.
The free edition of Ribbon Customizer, at least, allows me to get to a familiar menu make any changes quickly when I am in a hurry to get something done and allows me the comfort of having a fallback while I am still learning to deal with the new interface. I may eventually have to purchase the full version of this software to allow me to get back to the same comfort level that I had before.
Here are some of the pluses and minuses that I have noted in the first weeks use of Office 2007.
Plus
- The new file formats are more efficient. I saved a document in the new .docx format and the size was reduced by about thirty percent.
- The ribbon should make for more consistent use of styles. The ribbon should reduce the number of documents I get from other people with literally dozens of different styles, most of which are redundant.
- Charts in Excel have a much better selection of formats. This includes better 3D styles with great blends and shadows etc.
Minus
- The new file formats can’t be read by older versions. This is fairly typical of each new version of Office and this version reminds me of the old 1997 version where Word documents were saved in a poorly done .rtf type document so that previous versions could read the files with some things not quite working and now, as then, the compatibility mode makes much bigger files.
- The ribbon interface is limiting. This is my biggest complaint about the new interface. Users should have the choice of using the old interface if they want.
- Performance seems slower. Opening and closing the programs, especially Outlook, seems slower than the older programs.
- Outlook files don’t always close properly. About one in three times when I open Outlook it tells me that a data file was not closed correctly. I figure that the program should be able to take care of that, the old version did.
I am planning on doing a follow-up to this post to let people know how it goes the first time I use the new Office in a work environment. Issues which are a minor irritation now may become major problems when things need to be done yesterday.
No comments yet.