July's mailbag: Microsoft Office upgrade angst

By Susan Harkins in Windows and Office, August 7, 2013, 2:44 PM

Susan Sales Harkins helps a couple of readers find features they thought they'd lost after upgrading Microsoft Office.

Upgrading is a nuisance, even if you're excited about the new features you're getting. Skipping a version makes it worse because doing so often exposes problems that users can't unravel on their own. Usually, it's a loss of a favorite feature or a macro that no longer works. However, issues often arise even if you don't skip a versions - it's seldom an easy change. Here are two upgrade snafus from a couple of readers and their corresponding solutions.

How to use KeyTips

Rachel skipped Office 2007 and upgraded from 2003 to 2010. Many organizations did that. In Word 2003, she pressed [Alt]+i+c+b to quickly insert a column break. That combo no longer works in Word's ribbon versions and discerning the new combo isn't exactly intuitive. Fortunately, helping Rachel gives me the opportunity to share a quick tip with all of you: how to follow an interface-based keystroke shortcut in ribbon versions. It's the same as before - following the commands - but if you don't know how to get started, you're lost.

To get started, hold down the [Alt] key. That's what's missing for most users. They're used to holding down [Alt] while pressing a second key. During the discovery process in the ribbon versions of Office, hold down [Alt] without pressing any other keys, and Word, for example, will display a set of KeyTips.

KeyTips are alphanumeric characters that represent the key needed to execute a specific command. The row of numbers along the top represents the QAT tasks. For example, you could open a new document by pressing [Alt]+3. The row of alphabet characters represents the ribbon menus: F for File, H for Home, N for Insert, and so on. In Rachel's case, she needs the Page Layout tab, so she would press P. Doing so displays the Page Layout tab and that tab's KeyTips.

Rachel wants to insert a column break, so pressing B for Breaks is her next step. At this point, she can use the mouse to click Column, or press C. Similar to earlier versions, the underscore in the command name indicates that command's shortcut key.

Rachel's new keystroke combo for the ribbon versions of Word is [Alt]+p+b+c. If you keep your eye on the KeyTips after pressing [Alt], you'll have a trail of breadcrumbs to follow. You can't get lost! In addition, it isn't necessary to continue holding [Alt] - just press it. Once Word engages the KeyTips, press the appropriate keys to continue.

Lost AutoFilter

After upgrading to 2010 from 2007 (no version skipping) Kersey couldn't filter by selection anymore. To filter by selection, you select data, click a button, and Excel displays only those records that match the selected value. This problem had me scratching my head because Excel doesn't offer this type of filtering.

What had Kersey lost in the upgrade? He lost a customization, not a built-in feature. Excel will filter by selection, but you'll have to add the feature to the ribbon. To learn how to add AutoFilter to Excel's 2003, 2007, and 2010 interface read Add AutoFilter to Excel and filter data by selection. The steps for 2013 follow (they're the same as 2010):

Click the File tab and then choose Options.
In the left pane, choose Customize ribbon.
Choose All Commands from the Choose Commands From dropdown.
Select AutoFilter in the resulting list.
To the right, click the Data tab and then click New Group.
Click Move Up to position the new group right after the Sort & Filter group.
With the new group selected, click Add.
Click OK and Excel adds a custom group with the AutoFilter option.

Whether you're upgrading faithfully or skipping a version or two, you might meet a few challenges. Usually, features aren't really gone; the route is just different or as in Kersey's case, it wasn't a built-in feature at all.

Also read:

About Susan Harkins

Susan Sales Harkins is an IT consultant, specializing in desktop solutions. Previously, she was editor in chief for The Cobb Group, the world's largest publisher of technical journals.

10 comments

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billballew

It is extremely expensive to upgrade and more expensive to train users the new changes. The most often thing that happens is that functions they cannot find they do not use anymore. Thus Office Word is more and more becoming a typewriter. The employee gets on and types out what they need. If there is some formatting they need, it is just not done anymore. I found one person keying the doc, printing it and then using a paper cutter to remove the middle and tape it onto another piece of paper to look right, they then copied the document to a new paper and mailed it. Even the simplest change is expensive. Believe it.

Does Microsoft use their products? But then they are a huge company and can afford training.

gechurch

@billballew Are you suggesting that changes to Word were the reason this person could no longer work the backspace key?

billballew

I recently upgraded to two (2) NEW computers in our office. I was foolish enough to buy the product code download of O-2013 at local computer store. I did one a couple of months ago and it was an utter failure. The download version method from MS is a failure. I spent hours on the phone with Microsoft to get it up and running. I thought it was a fluke and bought these two. Same problems but worse. to wit:

I Follow directions precisely and download starter> enter my info so they can know me> then enter the product code and click OK > Next screen says an email has been sent to me and to follow directions. I AM LOADING O-2013 SO I CAN HAVE EMAIL! What idiot designed this? I went to another computer and opened up my email and clicked on the link. It tried to install O-2013 on the wrong computer - I aborted and went back to the new computer and never could get beyond the page of sending me an email. I went to MS help page and tried to download the backup version - Failed. 2 hours later (MS help desk) They will call me back int he morning. Next day it went to second level tech support to download (another copy and product code) and install O-2013 after cleaning up the mess in the Registry. Total Load time - 6.25 hours from my first start.

Second NEW computer I thought to use a gmail account for the email so it would be ont he same computer. Problem was identical. It opened up MS loading in a new window and the two do not talk to each other. I then went directly (called) to MS support and same issues - second level tech support cleaned up registry and loaded new copy with different product code. This time I only spent 3 hours loading the program.

Note that this was a preload and I had my IT guy configure it all for the MS server for email.

Bottom line: NEVER BUY THE PRODUCT CODE VERSIONS. - PURCHASE THE DISK. If you do it will load in about 15-20 minutes.

Since MS is in the clouds now, I presume this will be my last office computer load. When this version is too old we will probably go to an alternate set of office products so we can have products on our own computers. We are a very small business and the internet unreliable to depend on the cloud. We lost internet for hours twice this summer. Cloud is only good for big business that can stand lengthy interruptions. ( an hour is lengthy for us).
-Bill

gechurch

@billballew This sounds really strange. Do you not have webmail? If not, did you not think of forwarding the sign-up email to a Gmail/Hotmail/whatever account and loading that on the correct PC before calling support? Or saving the link to a USB stick from the other computer?

MS, like many other companies, are heading to the cloud. It's not a problem if you have an outage though. The Office 365 versions that include the full products do need an active Internet connection to install, but will run just fine without one during an outage (they do need to talk online every 30 or 60 days or so though, so can't be used long-term on a PC with absolutely no Internet connection.

ppg

Test comment

wwgorman

I tried Office Pro 2007 and even bought the 3rd party menu program but I found i was unable to find some of my favorite functions and switched back to Office 2003. I note that the menus WERE NOT removed from Office 2007 for Mac. I guess Apple has more influence than the Microsoft Windows users.

The title of your article is misleading. I thought it was going to be about people like me who think the office programs of 2007 onward are trash. I guess you'd dare not call a spade a spade for fear of Ballmer's wrath. Too bad you're chicken!

jred

The biggest problem we see is moving to Office 2013 removes support for Exchange 2003.

gechurch

@jred Yeah, that came as a surprise to me too. It was easily enough fixed since the client in question had down-grade rights (and they're no longer on Exchange 2003 now anyway). Microsoft seem to be trying harder to force people's hand re upgrading lately.

windroidblog

New Notification Centre for Windows Phone is here...check it out at...

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Mark W. Kaelin moderator

Have you recently upgraded to a newer version of Microsoft Office? Do you find yourself struggling to find a feature or tool that you use often? Maybe we can help?

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