The Stupidity of Office 07

Well, first off you have to remember who you are dealing with here, Microsoft! If that alone doesn't say it all, I can think of quite a few beefs that quite a few people will have with the change. I stopped upgrading at Office 2000, as I thought that it had pretty much everything that '97 did with a few nice little 'extras', so to speak. My thought is that Microsoft should have never "abandoned" the code base for the Windows '95, '98 and ME only to replace it with a shaved down version of NT (2000) that is now known the world over as XP and now they've introduced Vista. Never used it myself, and I've heard many reports of its bugginess over the past few months.

In my opinion, Microsoft has done so many wrong things, it might not EVER have even a decent OS much less an office suite that will retain its familiarity for those of us who "cut our teeth" on the original Office's, even Office '95 was a fairly sophisticated system for its time. I thought that Windows 2000 was one of MS's best efforts so far, and again Office 2000 hasn't let me down too badly. I also think that MS has most likely replaced some of the best programmers it had with newer ones who all had/have their own ideas on how things should be, and I again think that that is pretty obvious. The thing about these newer programmers is that they have learned to use the higher level API's and languages, many of them probably never had to deal with things like memory management and machine-level routines, IO, etc., and just start changing things around that worked fairly well for the simple reason that they plain just don't understand the old code. All in all, the future will determine how all of the issues are resolved or dealt with, but in my opinion MS should have just stuck with what worked and COMPLETELY re-written what didn't rather than modifying old code to try and make it work better or give it an "easier to use" type of interface. It really burns my A** to try and re-learn a product I've been used to using for years. Granted, there are going to be a lot of folks who learn Office from the newest package, and if they ever run across an "old" copy of Excel or something they won't have a clue where to start just as it is the opposite.

Microsoft would have done well to keep or hire older programmers who could either learn or remember the code that worked and taken measures to make it better and debug it rather than trying to rewrite everything with younger programmers that (obviously) aren't experienced enough to make the changes a little more subtle so that new users can understand older versions of the software and old users can quickly pick up on the newer versions. It's insanity at best, and I agree with you if you think it's really that bad!

The simple consequence of the absence of competition and of sheep-like customers.
There is even no competion within Microsoft products:

- can you still buy Excel 2000 somewhere ?
- and how long will it still be possible to buy XP ?

And with the usual licensing, most people don't even have the right to move their old systems to a new PC.

What I really don't understand is that there are free and open-source alternatives that would fit the needs of 99% of the consumers.
I recognize that it might not totally suit my needs: I like to have the full MS excel solver available, although I use it only a few times per year. Most often I solve optimization problems with self-developped tools or external tools. Well there is one reason: my compagny preffers to pay, they feel more confortable in this way.

It seems that the less you know about Excel or MS office, the more likely you are to buy it.

An interesting discussion (=rant?) but I'm not sure that it really belongs in this section of the board (I'm not a mod so I can't move it).

I initially installed XL 2007 keeping XL 2003 as a fall-back for when I really could not find what I wanted in XL 2007. Some months back I ditched XL 2003 (but I still use XL 2000 at work). I now 'know' XL2007 and I think that overall it is a vast improvement taking into account particularly the greater range of rows and columns (although I did manage to exceed the row limit recently), removal of the 7 nested IFs restriction, vastly improved Conditional Formatting, ........ need I go on?

My main gripes with it are that the macro recorder no longer captures actions relating to shapes and this includes charts. Unless you are a chart guru like Jon Peltier you are unlikely to know the VBA syntax for use with charts. The macro recorder was particularly useful for this in earlier versions. And they removed Application.FileSearch - why

But overall I consider it an improvement. How long did it take you to become familiar with the toolbars and menu in XL 5.0 or whenever you started with it?

VoG II said:

(I'm not a mod so I can't move it).

Click to expand...

But like magic one did (Richard I presume - thank you).

I was reluctant to buy XL 2007 because of the negative reviews I read about it on the internet. But after speaking to people whom I personally knew that use it, I went ahead and upgraded to 2007.

I am glad I did. I love it. Yes, there is a learning curve as everything has moved to a different location. I still sometimes have to search for something that I instantly knew the location in XL 2003, but I love 2007's new features, and the learning curve was a small price to pay. It took me about a week to get comfortable with it.

Upgrading to 2007 is like moving to a new city. One has to learn where the grocery store is, where the gas station is, etc., but once this is learned, we again become comfortable in our surroundings.

Upgrading to 2007 is like moving to a new city. One has to learn where the grocery store is, where the gas station is, etc.

Click to expand...

To further your analogy:
If the city you move to does not have a grocery store or a gas station, then it is not worth the move. That is what is keeping me from upgrading. I tried a trial version for three months, was glad when the trial was over. Yes, I could eventually find my way around, but there were too many issues with VBA code that no longer worked.

And they removed Application.FileSearch - why

Click to expand...

That was a mistake. (Really). If I recall there was a misperception that it wasn't used anymore so it was removed without checking. I think it's supposed to be back in Office 14.

As for the other comments I agree that it is a radical change, but in Microsoft's defense it is a step forward and a product line that doesn't evolve will die. And before anyone goes and condemns Mr. Gates too quickly, I'll point out that he was against the ribbon UI (or at least the ability to revert) for many of the reasons mentioned. But the voice of reason lost out to a younger generation of programmers.

I can see how this is much more in tune with a younger generation of users for whom changes like this are necessary. It certainly doesn't mean that it doesn't **** me off to no end and I really don't want to learn the new UI. I also think it blatantly alienates seasoned users. For those of us who eschew the mouse it really sucks.

On that note I have Office 2007 Ultimate on my new home laptop because there are people who use it, as evidenced by more board questions popping up about it, and I have customers who will upgrade. From a corporate perspective we will not upgrade to 2007 anytime soon. Hell, I got upgraded to Office 2000 in 2006!

But think about the switch over to .NET and the havoc that wreaked, yet now it's the standard. Do older non-.NET programmers still ***** about it? Absolutely, and so will Ribbon UI users. I guarantee I will long after moving over to it.

Could Microsoft have done a better job with communicating the changes or made it easier to switch back to the old view, sure? Do they know that? Believe me they do. The MVP's do not give them an easy time.

Just remember that their 80,000 employees don't always get it right either. And for all of the changes it's still the the best spreadsheet alternative there is. (All 1 million+ database rows of it ).

All of these arguments are excellent, and I don't allow myself to get a grudge because of stupid things that one may argue about. However, I still agree with the OP because of the hastiness of how MS is moving things along so fast. And, even with the newer Office alternatives, I've still seen nothing more easy and fast than the MS Office applications. The bad thing is that they are making it more difficult for "legacy" type apps to run on the newer platforms, and that can hurt those of us that are so used to the programming style. I've been a VB and VBA writer for many years now, and I DO love .NET! I have noticed in very recent times that some of the code I wrote in VBA does not work as well (or not at all in some instances) in the newer OS or Office. Even Visio, which I've done extensive VBA work in sometimes has just the slight syntax differences that make it almost impossible to convert a good application to. On the good side, the one that I had the most difficulty with was able to use the converted code on the older Visio version and it was just "little" differences that you would never consider when writing the original program.

In the long run, us older guys will just have to adjust to it, but it's not a fun thing when you need to replace several hundred lines of code to work like it used to!

dcofer said:

I...Upgrading to 2007 is like moving to a new city. ...

Click to expand...

That may be the best description I have heard yet. I have only been using the new versions a few days but I can see a lot of improvement. Especially if I was walking into Excel "cold". I guess I have seen so many spreadsheet programs over the years and have had to re-learn interfaces so many times that I give it the benefit of the doubt.

I never used VisiCalc. I started with Lotus 1-2-3 (remember their macros). Then changed jobs and ended up having to learn and program Quattro Pro (damñed good product, that). So Excel was my third platform. Part of my advantage is that I was a keyboard speed demon (most of the fastest Excellers are). All I do is Alt+E, S & voilá, I'm pasting special.

Same thing with Vista. I was using PC's before MS-DOS. I can remember Windows 3.1. And I do not expect these will be the last interface changes I will see. Do you expect Excel 2014 to have the same interface as Excel 2000?

Ain't sayin' I'm thrill 'bout everything. I had customized toolbars so that all my most common actions were one click away. Now they're a minimum of two clicks. And I'm sure that when some of my macros explode I'll mutter a bit of rudeness. And I didn't know what Peter said about the macro recorder and certain objects. I too would use that to shortcut to the properties I needed when programming. Not gonna like that. But overall, I reckon it's probably a step forward.