Office 2007: Good or Bad?
79Overview: The Purpose of Office 2007
When Office 2007 finally came out, many users were disappointed, and many were satisfied. This is in stark contrast to previous Office releases, which have all been largely accepted by the Office-using community. However, the major changes that took place in the new version of the software were largely misunderstood as an "unnecessary makeover" or an "extreme overkill" of perfectly good software. If you take it upon yourself to do a little research and get down deeper into WHY the changes were made, you begin to understand a little better about the software and realize that your opinion doesn't mean as much as you thought it did. This is especially true for users that haven't been forced to use the new versions--my advice for unhappy critics of Office 2007 is that if you don't like it, don't use it!!
So, it's time to answer the question. WHY was such a big deal made about the new version? WHY did so much extra work go into the user interface? WHY did it have to be so different from the old versions?
The answer is that Microsoft wanted to "reveal" features to users rather than have them hidden behind endless menus, submenus, and dialog boxes, forcing the user to have to look in a different place for each option. Instead, they developed a rather clever "tabbed" look that sorts all available options into similar tabs, so that you can see pretty much everything you can do, and don't have to navigate a maze of menus to get to anything. You can, of course, invoke dialog boxes for certain aspects of your documents if you prefer, which adds a slight amount of traditional feel to the application. This can be done in any "pod" in the ribbon that has a tiny icon in the lower-right corner. Clicking on this icon will bring up the traditional dialog box for the options in that pod, if there was one.
If you look at this from a purely statistical point of view, it makes even more sense. Every version including and preceding Office 2003 used the menu system rather than the ribbon. All these "pre-ribbon" versions had, for the most part, the same exact features you can use in Office 2007. In other words, not much was added to the software feature-wise. The difference is in how many features users are able to find and use. On average, the basic (non-tech-savvy) user will use 23 or so different features on a word document in Office 2003 or a previous version. With the new Office 2007, that average has risen to nearly 70 features per document. That's a lot of extra feature usage! Why bother to even program the features if no one is going to use them? The whole point of Office 2007 and the new ribbon is to make it easier for users to find the features they want to use, but do not necessarily know about. In fact, after Office 2007 was released, statistics show that most of the "new" features that users were trying out had been available in the past, but the users just didn't know about them, or couldn't find them.
Now that you know WHY Office 2007 is the way it is, let's look deeper into various parts of it and see what has really been done.
The New Look
Obviously, the user interface has undergone the most drastic changes. Again, this is mostly to allow the user to more easily find features that he/she wants, as well as find by accident features that the user didn't know about.
The main source of frustration for users switching to Office 2007, at least in my experience, is the Office Button. Why this is such a problem is a mystery to me--the office button was the very first thing I saw when I opened the program. I'm not sure why--it could be that it was flashing prominently, that it was 20 percent brighter than the rest of the screen, that it was the biggest button in the interface, or that it was right in the upper-left corner (which is the first place my eyes go to anyway!) So if you somehow missed all that, let me just put it to you straight: yes, you can click that, it's a button. It's basically the equivalent of the file menu in previous versions, but more interactive. It has two halves--the left half is the commands, such as new, open, save, yada yada yada. The right half is a nifty recent file list, which you can also pin files into so they always stay there (click the little thumbtack). Also at the bottom of the right half are the "Options" and "Exit" buttons.
Next we have the two customizeable bars: the quick access toolbar (at the very, very top of the screen) and the status bar (at the very, very bottom). The quick access toolbar is, basically, the toolbar from older versions of Office. It's just a lot easier to customize. Also, the status bar, which used to be an amalgamation of various who-knows-what gizmos all bunched up down there (where no one ever looks anyway) is now a sleek and efficient second toolbar. It's more for displaying things like word count, line number and page number, and the lock key states as well as insert or overwrite mode. It's as easy to customize and as helpful to use as the quick access toolbar.
The newest part is called "The Ribbon", which is the long, thick part just underneath the tabs that has all the options and buttons and everything in little pod-like containers that glow when hovered over. This is quite different from the bland, menu-driven interface of past versions. No longer do you have to find the exact submenu, dialog, and tab for only one option; instead, all options are displayed directly on the ribbon, and can be easily and quickly accessed. Some users complain that the ribbon takes up too much space--however, if you double-click on any of the tabs, the ribbon will hide itself until you open another tab (or double-click the same tab again). There are also three "themes" that you can use: Blue, Silver, and Obsidian. To change the theme, click the Office Button (again, it's that huge, flashing circle in the upper-left corner, you can't miss it) and go to "Word Options" at the bottom next to the exit button (or "Excel Options" if you're in Excel, and so forth). Click the "Popular" button on the left, and change the "Color Scheme" option to whichever of the three schemes you want.
The Features
Okay, so the user interface has been completely revamped. But is that IT? I mean, is that ALL they did to make Office better? Thankfully, the answer is no.
Many new features besides the UI have been improved, including backwards compatibility, document formatting, visual styles, live previews, and better drawing tools called SmartArt.
Backwards Compatibility
You can still open and save documents in formats from 97 to 2003 versions of Office. This is a great help for those who don't have 2007 and still need to use the old formats, or for more reliable backups.
Document Formatting (*.docx, *.xlsx, *.pptx, *.mdbx)
The new document formats are not only compressed so that they take up less than half the space of old formats, but they are saved using XML, a new tool that is becoming increasingly popular, especially in web design. These new formats will give you a level of quality never before seen in Office documents.
Visual Styles
You can now use and define custom styles for any Office document, and use them again and again. These are similar to the old "header / normal text" styles that could be found in the font toolbar, but they can now be redefined to your needs, so that you'll always have the styles you want.
Live Previews
Didn't you hate having to apply a change to a whole document, realize that it wasn't what you wanted, change it all back, and then reapply a new one? I certainly knew, when it happened to me, that there were better ways I could have spent five minutes. Now this problem is gone with the introduction of live previews--see what the changes will look like before you make them! A little window will pop up and show you a preview of what the new style or text will look like before you actually change anything.
SmartArt
Remember all those shapes and different things on the drawing toolbar? Now, this has been standardized and dubbed "SmartArt." It's a little drawing that you can put all those shapes and lines and things into, and it functions as a unit that can be easily moved from one application to another, or copied among other documents.
The Verdict: Good or Bad?
Office 2007 may not be right for you, but there's no arguing the fact that it is a huge improvement over previous versions of office, at least feature-wise. This may not hold true for the user interface, but that's simply a matter of preference. I, for one, could not be more satisfied with any of Microsoft's products. The changes to the user interface are exactly what I wanted to see. I have always been annoyed with the old menu system and having to navigate through it all only to encounter an enormous dialog box that you have to wade through. The new system is so much more sleek and flowing, and it exposes everything so that there's no navigation or searching required. It's all right there at the click of your mouse.
So, the verdict is, Office 2007 is good for users who can put forth enough effort to get used to the user interface, but bad for those who prefer the traditional menus. I would encourage you to at least give it a try on computers that have it before deciding to buy it or not. If this isn't possible, you can download a 30-day trial version from Microsoft's website. Chances are that if Office 2007 isn't for you, you already know it. The only catch is, if you want to take advantage of all the new features, the ribbon comes with it. No matter what you choose, I hope that you can benefit from and enjoy your choice as much as I enjoy Office 2007.
PrintShare it! — Rate it: up down flag this hub
Comments
I actually find Office 2007 much more difficult and frustrating to use. The features I most use have been hidden away behind the ribbon when they used to be right there where I could get to them. Additionally, I used to be able to create my own floating toolbars with the commands I need and then I can hide the built-in toolbars completely if I want. I can then move these custom toolbars around to the place at which I am actually working in the document.
Unfortunately, this powerful capability was removed in Office 2007 -- evidently, Microsoft feels they know best how I should be working.
Consequently, my productivity in Office is much lower now that they have switched us over to Office 2007 at work. And I have been trying for over a year to get used to it. The Ribbon is confusing, dumbed down (it was designed with the novice user in mind), and takes longer to get to the same features that used to be quickly accessible in previous versions -- that is, if I can even find what I am looking for. It took two weeks for me to figure out where Word had hidden Heading 2 style. I couldn't find anything in Help (that's a mess too).
I'm no dummy -- I develop software for a living and I simply cannot be productive in Office 2007. If they ever "ribbonize" Visual Studio, I'm screwed.
The article says "if you don't like it, don't use it", but a lot of people don't get the choice at work. However, at home I have the choice, and I will NOT be letting Office 2007 taint my home computers.
I agree that the custom toolbars was a definite loss. I, too, like to customize the locations of most of the toolbars, especially in Visual Studio as you mentioned. For word or excel I prefer the ribbon, but I doubt I would be very disappointed if they ever bring the ribbon to Visual Studio. I find it interesting that you called the ribbon "confusing" as well as "dumbed down" which seem to be opposites of each other. Generally when something gets dumbed down it becomes less confusing and easier to use, which is exactly what they were doing for Office 2007. I can't imagine anyone actually enjoying using the old office--the endless menus and dialogs. Custom floating and docking was about all the old system had going for it. By the way, customization is still available in Office 2007--more of it, in fact, than in the previous office suites. Now you can customize the status bar as well as the ribbon toolbar. I have trouble understanding how it took you two weeks to find one feature--within a day of using it I had already discovered about thirty new features in each program that I had never known about before, most of which had been available previously but were hidden in the maze of menus, submenus, and vast dialog windows. It looks so much more sleek and open that I don't understand how you can say that anything is "hidden." The goal for Office 2007 was to make sure that nothing was hidden, and as far as I'm concerned, they succeeded. Also you mentioned that I said "if you don't like it, don't use it." However, if you had read the previous statement, you would have noticed that I said that only applies to those who haven't been forced to use the new software, and since you have been forced to use it at work, the statement was not meant to apply to you. It's unfortunate that your company uninstalled the old versions--my college did not, so students can choose the Office version they prefer. I'm also surprised that you develop software--I thought that part of being a software developer was to be as efficient as possible in whatever software you have to use. It seems odd that you "can't be productive" just because of the new ribbon. I taught myself BASIC in two weeks when I was twelve years old, using Visual Basic 3.0 (for windows 3.1) because that's all I had. You'd be surprised what one can do with an ancient laptop and Visual Basic 3.0. Saying you can't be productive because of the new interface is like saying you can't ride a bike because it has training wheels. Also, if you'd be in trouble just because they ribbonize visual studio, then it's a shame you never devoted any time to programming in other IDE's. Trust me, there's a lot of good IDE's out there besides visual studio. I'm sure you could be just as productive in NetBeans, JCreator, or Dev C++. They're not going to be using the ribbon any time soon, that's for sure.
Its good to make a change in what you do this good to update and to known what's new
Office 2007 sucks. I hate it.
Ah well, we are all entitled to our opinions. Then again no one can please everyone, not even Microsoft (although they rarely do anyway).
Its the best
The disappointing thing for me is that many shortcuts have changed.
Ah, but David, the keyboard shortcuts can all be customized. You can change them all back to the way you liked them before. Simply click the Office button, then "Word/Excel Options" and then the customize tab. At the bottom of this screen, click the "Customize" button next to where it says "Keyboard Shortcuts."
"Ah, but David, the keyboard shortcuts can all be customized. You can change them all back to the way you liked them before." Uh, but this is the problem, isn't it? Why did MS require users who already knew Word to change things back to the way they were before? At worst, 2007 should have overlaid the standard menus on the ribbon, so that users familiar with Word 2003 and predecessors would not not have had to waste time futzing around learning to become efficient once again. What would have been lost? Nothing, since the persons who preferred using only the menu could have ignored the menus, and the persons who preferred using only the menu options could have ignored the ribbon. As it is, some programmer invented an overlay for the software that...restores the old menu setup. Except that you have to pay extra for this add-on. Where things go on the ribbon does not always seem all that intuitive to me either. What is "intuitive" is informed by previous experience or lack of experience with MS Word, but, again, this is the point. MS simply ignored the fact that many previous users of the software would not have wanted to waste time relearning it in order to be able to cope with Word docs that would be showing up in the new format.
I really would like to like Office2007, but after using it several months I must say that there are some problems with the user interface. I seldomly use the help feature in programs, but in Office 2007 i need to use it often to find the features.
Like to insert a page break? – Sure, go to the Insert tab.
Like to insert a section break? – Don’t look in the Insert tab, go to the Page layout tab….
Most actions now require two mouse clicks instead of one, first selecting the tab and then the desired function.
Of course there are nice things in Office 2007, but the ribbon interface is not one of them.
>The answer is that Microsoft wanted to "reveal" features
>to users rather than have them hidden behind endless
>menus, ...
Then it is a failure. Why are ribbons any better than menus and dialogs? IMO, as implemented, they aren't. My reasons for feeling this way are:
a) They are used inconsistantly. Some windows have ribbons, some don't.
b) They provide a less consistant display of information. Rather than a single vertical list of text, you get a series of icons (big and small) with text of different sizes and colors, which are sometimes horizontal and sometimes vertical.
c) Their actions are inconsistent. Some create child windows, some drop menu lists, some popup menus, some open a dialog, some show/hide panels, etc.
d) They don't display everything and repeatedly rely on the same navigation items which they are trying to replace - dialogs, more menus, etc.
e) Grouping of items is illogical. Say Outlook, why is HTML under a group called Format of the Options tab and not just under the Format tab?
f) Because they are trying to use ribbons rather than a menu or dialog, they run into real world space issues which forces them to not group things together. Yes, an options dialog might take some time to explore, but you are pretty sure it is there. An options ribbon can't display 50 options, so... it moves them to other ribbons, dialogs, and sub-menus anyway.
g) They often display multiple views of things and the default view is limited. For example, in Word, they show "styles" in a ribbon, but only some of them. You can spend hours trying to figure where the complete list is, trying to add them to this sub-list, etc. only to find a tiny (unlabeled) icon which displays the actual list of styles.
h) Because ribbons are limited in terms of space MS needs to make choices of what to show and what not to. And because ribbons are there, folks assume that if their option isn't clearly visible on a ribbon, it must be on another ribbon. i.e. you are looking for 1.5 spacing. You look under Home, look at all the Formating group and don't see it. Is your first thought to click on the 6 pixel unlabeled icon at the bottom of the group, or to assume that it must be in some other group or ribbon?
Sorry, if you access common items (which you know) it is no faster than an icon (and in most cases slower). If you know what you are looking for and it isn't on the default ribbons, it is much slower than menus or dialogs to find.
The key point is that it is for
BWO22, that is an excellent list of reasons why you don't like the new interface. I always like it much better when someone presents proof rather than just opinions. There isn't much there that I disagree with either, but personally, I am a more visual person and I like the new look a lot better. I would rather have to look around in the ribbon than in a menu because it is more pleasant to look at. However, I realize that's a rather shallow reason to like something better, but it suits me just fine. Add the fact that I have had to do a lot less looking for things when using the ribbon, and that's good enough for me. But it is obvious that Microsoft has put off a lot of customers with their decision not to include the old interface as an option. And that is a problem that only Microsoft can fix, if they are wise enough to do so.
Office 2007 is really the worst MS Office I have seen in a long time. The new ribbon is really stupid, is for novice, It's a toy office
office 2007 is good for elementary school kids. it is an offense to human intelligence to provide such a stupid interface. go 'openoffice.com' : it's lighter, safer and free!
I agree whole-heartedly with Mike - Microsoft always tries to make their software best for the novice which continually takes control away from the advanced user until they can find a way around Microsoft's control. It's very unfortunate that at work you rarely have an alternative to Microsoft. I am a certified master instructor in 2003 so this is not coming from an inexperienced user. Office 2007 is the first version that made me say, "I hate Microsoft."
Office 2007 is very very very bad!
Cybermouse says:
2 years ago
Neato! I'm glad you like it. I was kind of forced into getting it because my old office screwed up and I couldn't find the install CD, but I had no idea that the new Office I was getting would be this awesome. Thanks for the comment!