Office 2007 Ribbon vs Menu

available for .NET, Delphi, and even Silverlight developers, and the companies behind these offerings make sure to provide the checklist of features that are enumerated in the official guidelines. The ribbon component is still being met with a lot ofcriticismfrom the developers (and on a personal note, my wife disliked it so much that she reverted to Office 2003 even though i had two more installations). Realistically speaking, though, Microsoft is here to stay, at least in the near future, and while the

in word i like the classic menu, however i do find the ribbon useful. so i decided to see if i could have both. i found the following “Classic Menu For Office 2007.” http://www.addintools.com/english/menupowerpoint/default.htm i would recommend this program. easy install.

RibbonCustomizer has a free classic menubar for office 2007

(Its the free starter edition)

http://pschmid.net/office2007/ribboncustomizer/starter.php

Free addins old classic menu in office-2007 from http://in.geocities.com/shahshaileshs/menuaddins

Free addins old classic menu in office-2007 from http://in.geocities.com/shahshaileshs/menuaddins

Microsoft seems to love change for the sake of change. Would it have killed them to allow the person who buys their software to choose the interface they preferred?

The new ribbon is a productivity killer. I have used Office for close to 12 years and I routinely spend 5 to 20 minutes searching for functions on the ribbon that I had memorized in the old-style menus. Every change is not an advance.

Microsoft is not encouraging customer loyalty much less satisfaction by making these sweeping changes and providing long-time customers no option.

Hate it. Being a big Excel user in my company, I now find that I can’t change the ribbon to suit MY business needs at all. The one light at the end of this very dark tunnel – being able to customize the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) – doesn’t cut it. I’m told what the ‘popular’ options are (they’re not that popular with me!), nothing is grouped by function (but alphabetically and requiring you to know what you want before you can find it; and is tedious (to the point of frustration) to use.

Try finding the Insert Columns command for example (it’s now called Insert Sheet Columns), and then then enjoy scrolling down past 201 other commands before you find its partner, the ‘DELETE Sheet Columns’ command and then double click or point and click on ADD to see it next to your previous selection, in the right place on the QAT (hopefully). This kind of approach for customizing toolbars is a throwback to the 1990’s. Lotus had an almost identical method for their office suite – using a vertical bar to represent a horizontal one, clicking AT LEAST twice for every addition (or deletion for that matter, and that’s not including any scrolling you HAVE to do) etc. etc. – It’s simply not user friendly – whatever happened to ‘Drag n Drop’?; were Microsoft developers paid for every additional Mouse Click they could introduce? Is the plan to eliminate ease of use and genuinely useful functionality as far as possible and leave 3rd parties to fill the gap – at additional cost to the original product?

The QAT in Excel is also only permanently displayed as one line, cannot be split and certain commands (e.g. paste formatting) have lost their icon being replaced by what I can only describe as a ‘blob’ – WHY? oh why?

I shouldn’t go on… I feel the need to lie down in a darkened room for a while.

Ribbon, Excel 2007?… Hate ‘em, hate ‘em, hate ‘em.

Its awful… what a total cock up.

Are they planning on a return to menus…. PLEASE MICROSOFT!!!!

Whatever got into their little pointy heads at Microsoft that told them anyone WANTED something different? And, something so counterproductive to those of us who use the keyboard shortcuts rather than a clunky, clumsy mouse? I’m writing my own Menu Bar in VBA for all Office apps – it will definite be shorter and easier… First the Vista disaster and now this – so sad.

I’m still using Office 2003 for my PC and my employees’ PCs because this sounds like the “New Coke” debacle of 1985. Coke got it wrong when they thought they’d sell more Coke if they made it taste more like Pepsi. WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! Thus, they switched it back and called it Coca-Cola Classic (and has been labeled as-such ever since). Likewise, PC users are accustomed to a certain interface. PC users don’t want a “new windows” that “tastes” more like a Mac. They need a better experience without a steep learning curve, which in my case means lost productivity (in the short run, at least) for us as a company that I can’t afford right now. Maybe it will mean better productivity in the future, but I think I need to wait it out.

I don’t like it at all. Lost productivity goes the same in school as it does at work, and for me it amounts to suffering grades. However, I had to upgrade, as my teacher last year got the bright idea not to save any of her assignments in 2003 format and to only offer them online to save paper. So I was stuck with a decision: either cut my neck off to spite my head, or to literally slaughter myself gradewise. Now, I have one computer reserved for O2K3, and one for 2007. All in the name of productivity I guess.

I hate the ribbon so much ive converted to openoffice – and im glad I did!… its much better than MS Orifice..

this is crap

this is c ra p

It is totally frustrating to find simple stuff like save as, turn off: track changes. The pop up on right click is smarter; but why touch the menus is beyond me. Sounds more like, because they (MS) can, they did, not because it is better.

I’m with Russ. If I had to “Learn” something new all over again I might as well go with a software package that allows choices. I moved to Open Office 3.01 and haven’t looked back. The learning curve was also much lower than I expected as the “menus” are quite similar.

I have a VM with O2k7 in it just because work requires that I send in the new file format. I really hope that when we (my company) moves from Lotus to Outlook that I can use “menus”. If not then I’ll be installing Evolution to replace my Outlook client.

There is one thing I found very beneficial about the MS Ribbon bar. It put commands all over the screen that most of my colleagues were too LAZY to go and find/read up on/press F1 for in 2003. They now think that all of the features they are “finding” are NEW….so usability is better for the lame users. We power users….might just have been lost to MS.

I have owned and run a computer service business for 15 years. I have seen all of the so-called “UPGRADES” that software providers have tried shoving down our throats since the ’80’s. 9 out of 10 times, they will remove a useful feature and replace it with a ridiculous one. Don’t you software companies think it’s way beyond the time to start asking the users what they really want and recommend in a “new” version? Oh, and as for the ribbon bar… I only install Office 2003 on all of my clients’ systems. Does that answer your question?

One more voice crying out in the wilderness, “Give me back my menus”. I’ve been trying to like the ribbon for 9 months. Between hunting for things that make no sense where they hid them, having to fire up the help system to find a command, and the lack of keyboard shortcuts, the ribbon is a disaster. I’m heading off to go figure out if I can make a go of it with OpenOffice;.

Not only do you have to learn the locations of all the new menus all over again, but most of the advanced features are totally missing from the menu system. So no matter how much you search for the advanced function, you simply are not going to find it. There isnt even an ‘Advanced’ Menu allowing you to select the Advanced Feature you want which in turn adds the feature you use to the menu system. Nooooo. As David said, you now have to go and search for that Advanced Menu, with the added bonus that it probably isnt called what you knew it as in Office 2003.

I’m all for change so long as an appropriate upgrade is provided. I sure hope Micorosft is working on their own 3rd party add-on to fix this oversight.