GIVE ME MY TOOLS BACK!

[plumtreeblossom]

MS Office 2007 is overflowing with FAIL. Nothing is where it's supposed to be. It looks like goddamn MySpace. It's a complicated and useless toy now, not a product for professionals who NEED TO GET STUFF DONE RIGHT NOW.

I can't find anything! You know, when I was job hunting and got tested on Office apps, I scored nearly 100% on Word and Excel, and about 85% on PowerPoint. That was, of course, on the previous and sensible version. If I'd had to test on Office 2007, I would have failed utterly and would never have been able to get a job.

And MS made sure to take out anything useful (like, um, the "Help" tab) and replace it with webby crap. If I wanted to be using Dreamweaver, that's exactly what I'd be using. I want the old Excel back and I want it now.

At least I still have the old version at home. I will use it until I am the last remaining user in the known universe and I have to run it on an antique computer at a museum somewhere. That's how much I hate Office 2007.

Comments

[ron_newman]

PC or Mac version?

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

PC. Oh how I have grown to hate the word "upgrade."

Are you allowed to change settings on this computer?

[rozasharn.livejournal.com]

I haven't tried MS Office 2007 myself, but they may still have customizable toolbars: it used to be Tools menu, choose Customize, and then you can put buttons on the toolbars for the commands you want, make buttons for commands they didn't supply buttons for, and remove buttons for anything you don't want. Plus, of course, choose which toolbars show, make the Standard and Formatting toolbars occupy separate lines, make the menus display in full instead of only recently-used commands, and so forth.

If it isn't in the Tools menu any more, try right-clicking one of the toolbars and see if you get a Customize choice.

Re: Are you allowed to change settings on this computer?

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Yes, those were the days.

Gone is the Tools menu. Replacing it are tabs that look for all the world like OKcupid. I'm in Word right now, and if you can customize the tabs, I can't tell because there no more Help menu. I guess click-down muenus aren't kewl anymore. You just get what they've put on the tabs and that's it.

A few bare-bones functions are now in the right-mouse click, for us old people. I am completely dependent on that -- it's the ony way I can navigate, and the functionality I get is little more than a 1980s word processor.

This bites it.

Re: Are you allowed to change settings on this computer?

[rozasharn.livejournal.com]

Hmph. I looked up Office 2007 to see if it was just hiding from you, and now I see. 'Ribbon' indeed. It eats way too much screen. It does say you can make the myspacey Ribbon thing relatively small (though this is NOT what any of us have been accustomed to think of as minimizing). Doesn't say anything about customizing tabs, though.

And you can add commands to the little toolbarrish thing by right-clicking the tool you want and choosing 'Add to Quick Access Toolbar', but you're right. This is horrible design. I can understand wanting to appeal to new users, but it should always have a 'revert to previous interface' choice. This is a nail in Microsoft's coffin.

[nepthytis.livejournal.com]

I hated 2007 with a white-hot fiery passion at first, too. Now I just don't like it much.

[billie0.livejournal.com]

I agree that it's very frustrating using Word 2007.

[msjann65.livejournal.com]

They have a nerve changing everything once we get used to operating it. However, now that I have office installed on my computer, I dont have to upgrade at all, so it stays reliably the same.
By the way, I learned computer(1990)on the old fashioned WORD program where you key everything, and boy was I mad when they went to the pull down menus which necessitated taking fingers off the keys and using the mouse. Now I dont know what I would do without the mouse.

[thorbol.livejournal.com]

Well, I already don't want Vista on the new computer we'll almost surely have to get in the next few weeks. I didn't think I'd want the Office 2007 crap, and that sure sounds right from what you've suffered--um--written.

[majes.livejournal.com]

I put 2007 on my machine last summer; when I did this, I was already an extremely powerful in my Office skills. On first view it was startling and confusing - especially since everything was so very different.

Now it is a year later, and I am a even more powerful user of Office than I was before. What I discovered was once I let go of my expectations and just looked at what was in front of me, the new design was far better organized in terms of day to day usage; it was also smarter in that the menus would adjust based around what I am working on (be that a graphic, chart, or table).
That's been my experience.

[jicama]

I had been using Office 97 for a long time, but lately I've just switched to OpenOffice.