Comments on: Edit the Office 2007 Ribbon Bar

By: Paper Doll

Paper Doll — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 03:43:55 +0000

I work in various offices in Sydney NSW Australia doing a variety of administrative duties as I am a temp and have tried using Microsoft 2007, it took me hours to do what I wanted and figure out were everthing was. It is a total waste of my time and money to re-learn a whole new menu bar. Thus, I do not have the time nor money to re-learn 2007 and many organizations and business would agree with me as a whole office would have to be trained to use this product which is very unproductive, not cost efficent or effective to have. It was inconsidered to rearrange the menu bar without evaluating the effect if would have on business. Hence, anyway I see a lot of business and organizations sticking to the classic menu.

By: Anon Emouse

Anon Emouse — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:31:19 +0000

“Inventing” a useless, annoying baby-blue “ribbon” is arrogant and asinine enough, but to NOT implement a way to use Office 2003 classic style menus and toolbars is a textbook case of Microcrap’s arrogance and forced, hardcoded UI mentality. Idiots.

By: Ocean Gyre

Ocean Gyre — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 06:54:02 +0000

Both Excel 2007 and Word 2007 have a CUSTOM TOOLBAR icon in the big icon zoo that you use to add icons to the QAT (pick ALL COMMANDS to see the complete list of icons). After adding this icon to my QAT, I can click on it to reveal an empty toolbar. One would assume that this CUSTOM TOOLBAR can be populated per the general method used for Office 2003. However, I cannot figure out how to actually add icons to this toolbar. It was so simple in Office 2003 . . .
Any ideas?

By: NIk Pfirsig

NIk Pfirsig — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:00:33 +0000

What is wrong with the Access2007?
1: Low contrast color schemes with no option to create user custom scheme., these cause incredible eye strain.
2: The interface is very inconsistent, it is great for ashowing off the cpu wasting graphic effects, Generally, a user must click through every tab while looking for a menu with the right item, then if it is not found, click on the bubble to get a different styled drop down box with a list with out the necessary options only to notice a tiny box under the right pain which lists a very limited set of checkbox and preset options.
3: along with this the actual functionality of the system have gotten much worse. ex. Ineed to retreive some fields from a remote database throughodbc. The remote tablehas about 7 million records, and with the table linked through odbc, the select query runs for for a long time to return a partial set of results. I need unique falues in the returned sate, so aftwersearching for several munites for the query properties sheet ( this peice of shit keep pulling up the table property sheett, I set the unique values property and rerun the query. after 15 minuteas it fails with a timeout error. So I change it to a passthrough query and edit the SQL syntax to the standard SQL syntax. This time it runs, but I need to append the result to a different table, so I save the query, create a new query using the passthrough query as input and it fails on the query I previously saved. I reopen the first quwery in design mode and find that it was saved in the MS proprietary syntax.

Microsoft, if you are reading this and actually give a shot about your customers or their employees who have to put up with your useless shitware, please take not that optimising your application to run the northwinds example doesn’t do a hell of a lot for those of use in the rank and file that must try to make our bosses happy

By: William Seville

William Seville — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 03:13:15 +0000

I’ve spent a billable hour trying to find a single PPT instruction. That’s a lot of dollars. In ten minutes I’ve found two Office ‘classic menu’ plug ins . And both sub $50US. Time to kill the ribbon.

First the idiots at Redmond forget to include classic mode, (never mind actually skinning office). And then they put the idiot who developed the ribbon in charge of the NT 7 UI!

Steve Jobs and Tux will be laughing – if I am going to learn a new UI it’s _not_ going to be on Windows

By: Laura

Laura — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:49:02 +0000

I agree with those who are completely dissatisfied with Office 2007. All of our office computers in the past have run on XP with Office 2003, but we recently had to purchase some new systems, and of course they came pre-loaded with Office 2007. It is a shame that Microsoft has lost their business sense. ANY time you market a new product that is completely re-formatted you should provide the option to retain the formatting from the old version for those customers who use it in a business setting. We povide a service that depends on our CSR’s being able to work swiftly, and they had customized their toolbars with the options that best enhanced their productivity. Now, not only do they have to search through endless “ribbons” of nonessential garbage, once they do finally find the tools they’re looking for, they have no way to customize for quicker access in future. Sure, you can go online and buy a program to customize the interface so it resembles and functions like Office 2003, but it is assinine that we should have to PURCHASE another program written by some other disgruntled user in order to restore the functionality of the program as we had it before MIcrosoft in its infinite wisdom decided what was “best” for us. Just my two-cents’ worth, after spending an hour searching online for solutions.

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:39:11 +0000

Shawn:

“…I have learned that it is the rare person that actually uses custom toolbars, non-default floating toolbar windows, dockable panels, etc….”

Wow, what a monkey – and what a complete, misleading falasy. Written like a true programmer. Maybe Chris should go back to his locked, dark, windowless room and continue programming without any sense of the end user who will ultimately have to use it. The Programmer always knows best, right Chris? What a Dick.

Office 2007 is HORRIBLE!! What a gigantic leap backwards.

By: Tamie

Tamie — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 18:28:34 +0000

Shawn:

…I have learned that it is the rare person that actually uses custom toolbars, non-default floating toolbar windows, dockable panels, etc….

If there really is a 10% that actually customizes toolbars, that should be reason enough to keep the option available (so says the person who knows nothing about business).
I mean, for those who don’t use it, the option to customize is certainly low priority. But for those of us who do, it is important enough to influence purchasing decisions.

Look, I created an entire Word template, for use mainly with my fiction, but I also use it occasionally when working on homework.
Isn’t the idea of a toolbar to have the commands we use most readily available at all times…rather than sifting through menus and dialog boxes to find them?
That template depends heavily on the four or five toolbars I created for it (plus something like three different styles, but they’re less of an issue).

We don’t have to be a majority to be very loud. The fact that some people want the ability to customize should be reason enough to make it available; the rest of the world, who doesn’t want to use it, doesn’t have to.
As a for instance…I’m using Office 97 on my computer, all so that I can still use my customized toolbars. I would be using Office XP, but the license on my dad’s copy isn’t good for two computers.
For me, that’s reason enough NOT to use Office 2007. And I know I’m just one consumer…but we don’t have to be a majority to be very loud. And from the looks of this webpage, those of us who dislike the 2007 layout are very loud indeed.

By: Pamela

Pamela — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 22:07:24 +0000

Yes the old ribbon….kind of makes me think of visions of oversized – gaudy – hideous and unnecessary tangled bit of fluff stuck to a fat bridesmaids ass!!! Similar to the ribbon in Office 2007.
Sorry but I am not fooled by this marketing BS. As one of the more skilled MS persons in our office I would like to thank MS for making me the designated rep who will most likely get stuck helping those find the print set up or some other basic task now hidden somewhere in that dame ribbon…too bad I don’t reap the financial benfits of re-training competent, well experienced staff how to “format” their documents.

By: ASHOKKUMAR

ASHOKKUMAR — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 08:29:59 +0000

Hi All,

From Classic VB 6.0 i’m unable to put my icon on the command button on office 2007.
Could you please guide us? Your prompt reply would be appreciated

Looking forward your reply.

Thanks & Regards
Ashokkumar P

By: pdumas

pdumas — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 19:54:43 +0000

I am just so pissed I wish I could yell at some MS designers.
Thanks for making me lose so much time.

By: Jojo

Jojo — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 07:09:38 +0000

I’ve been using Office 2007 most of this year. I’ve grown to like the ribbon as it reveals options that were more difficult to get to under the old 2003 menu system. On my work computer, the company is still using Office 2003 and it is clearly INFERIOR to 2007. Also .DOCX files seem to be smaller than .DOC files.

I just wish they would provide more choice in changing their color schemes for Office 2007. Right now I think all that is available is black, silver and blue. None of which I think look real good.

Sometimes, you need to clean house, get rid of the old junk before you can move forward into the future. That is what MS has done here. I wish they would do this with Windows! Write a whole new code base from zero. I bet the system would be 1/3 the size of what Windows is now and orders of magnitude faster.

By: Chad

Chad — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:21:44 +0000

This is all marketing. Do you think Microsuck really cares? This new product will justify millions of dollars coming as people will need to update themselves with.. guess.. “Microsoft Training”!!

You create a product and a service system that produces even more revenue. It’s got nothing to do with actually ‘satisfying’ people. The only satisfaction is the bank account for Bill Gates swelling even larger.

Windows XP Pro and Office 2003 Pro are difficult to improve upon (for Windows users). They then release a confusing OS (Vista) and office package (2007) that requires even the experts to have to plunk down the dollars and register for new and updated training. (side note: the new OS is so bloated that IT departments even have to plunk down dollars on new hardware).

Hey people.. It’s nothing personal.. It’s business!!

By: Jerone Anderson

Jerone Anderson — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 04:21:43 +0000

Office 2007 is an abomination. It is slower for me to do basic things and nearly impossible to do more complex things. I need a formatting toolbar at all times, and having to click everytime I want it and watch a new menu scroll into place is just plain stupid when the buttons used to be there all the time. Rolling buttons and menus create visual confusion. I liked office 2003, why can’t they keep a similar layout and have a new file format if that is an improvement? Now I keep office 2003 and 2007 on my computer so I can always go back to 2003 to edit a document when I can’t find the function buried in 2007. What a waste of time and space…. not to mention I still have the macintosh version of office 2004 running natively outside my windows virtual machine to deal with native mac files which don’t read correctly in 2003 or 2007….

By: Dave Jenkins

Dave Jenkins — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 14:30:03 +0000

I’ve been using Office 2007 since some time in the Spring, and I don’t ever want to go back to the old menu-only model. I spend a significant portion of my billable time creating VBA enhancements to PowerPoint, and I’ve added ribbon support for all of my old menu-driven functionality. It looks great!

All that having been said, however, I find the Custom UI Editor to be really clunky. That, in conjunction with the Save As facility of Office (or at least PowerPoint, for sure) makes working on VBA kind of cumbersome. Every time you do the Save As *.ppam, it wipes out the custom UI xml that was paart of the previous .ppam file. Then you have to load the Cusdtom UI Editor, copy in your own custom XML (you *did* save it, didn’t you?) and resave the .ppam. None of that seems to be very well-thought out. Or am I missing something obvious here?