Discussion on:

10 cool features to look forward to in Office 2010

I like what I see a lot. I am a big fan of One note and seeing it get more attention this round is really nice.
I do have one question though for the last feature (Which is really great and about time) will this work for all documents such as access, excel, word or will it only work with certain ones?

No matter how much you tell them you don't like the "ribbon" they are going to shove it down your throat. It is almost like a pi$$ing contest to see who gets their way and who gets to lick it up. "Thank you, oh master, for the ribbon interface, may I have some more?

HI.. I am facing some problems with opening the ODX file in MS office.. I need solutions fast.. I need to view that file and it's urgent. thank you...
sugar land dentist

I am using the Office 2010 "Technical Preview" and it is, as the author stated, very much to Office 2007 as Windows 7 is to Vista. Everything that is changed, is changed for the better;.......BUT! The main things that REALLY needed to be changed have not been changed enough. I thoroughly despise the inefficiencies of the ribbon interface and it has only been expanded. The triple height ribbon that replaces the traditional toolbar is nothing more than a waste of computer screen that is made more conspicuous by the wide-screen format that has taken over the monitor market. Give me desktop space to do my work on! I do hide the ribbon, and that helps the screen robbing feature, but the ribbon is simply inefficient and non-intuitive requiring 3 to 5 mouse clicks to do what was done in 1 or 2 with Office 2003 and prior.


edit: One feature that I do like with 2010 is the picture background remover. This will make for more professional looking documents that contain pictures as illustrations. While this is not on the level with the background remover add-on in Photoshop, it is a handy feature.

MS made a real mess with MS-Access in 2007. Somethings seem to take twice the effort. I'm always resizing the query grid when I create a new query. It seems to take about 15 minutes to turn off all the new creature comforts (such as tabbed interface instead of MDI).

Are they doing anything to fix that?

I also would like to hear abut any new features for Access, but I disagree on the evaluation of Access 2007. It added some nice touches like saving repeated imports and exports. That was a real time saver.

I do a lot of ad-hoc analysis and scrubbing. It may have made your life easier, but they did it with something I don't need much.

They did a lot to make my life purgatory if not hell. I've heard the same from other analysts. One was on an evaluation team in Oregon and said that MS ignored half of their input. I can only imagine that they're trying to cut developers out of making applications (a fair point). In the process, they're also cutting out the analysts.

There are several big features in access 2007 that really help. The report designer been re-done. With stacked controls (control layouts) you can now delete, or insert new columns in a report without having to painstakingly move all controls over to fill the space when you delete a column in the report. The old way had us deleting a text box in the detail, then moving all the text boxes from the right over to the left (a hard and slow task). You then delete the text box in the heading, and then move all the heading labels over left to fill that hole. To say this was tedious was an understatement. You also have to constantly flip between design mode and view mode.

In 2007, you can do the above change by clicking on the collum and hitting delete key (about a 200 times less work). You save HOURS of time in the report writer. And you don?t even have to flip between design and view mode anymore. This is without a doubt the largest developer time saving change in access 18 year history.

We also have a new picture control that allows pictures to be displayed in continues forms. That means you display a country flag icon besides a persons name. Or have a partnumber and part picture. Or you can have a task with a graphic folder icon that shows the task open or closed. This can all be done without code and thus means we don?t need to use 3rd party controls (like a listview). And we FINALLY have transparent buttons, and buttons now allow graphics + text. And there is a built in date picker.

And, now email (sendobject) and reports can produce PDF files without any 3rd party add-ins needed. And also 2007 has email forms in which you can send out a form as HTML to any HTML email client, they fill out the form and then when then sent it back to you it automatic goes into your database. I could write on for many more paragraphs about new features in 2007. Anybody who doesn?t think there?s an amazing amount of features in access 2007 for developers hasn?t played with the product enough.

Funny how some people are debating there seems to be few features in 2007 (it was one of the largest releases in the history of access and my above feature list was limited). I am testing 2010 right now and it continues this tradition.

The feature set of new things in 2010 even dwarfs access 2007. So this product is a serious roll these days.

Albert D. Kallal
Edmonton, Alberta Canada
kallal@msn.com

I have to resize windows far more in 07 than I did in any previous version. They open new windows to take up the entire screen. (Never mind that it may occupy two monitors.) All new query grids leave acres of space for the table or two that I put in most queries, and put the column grid way at the bottom of the page. It took a week or two to get the settings right so I *could* do MDI properly.

I don't see why they had to force us into the side bar instead of a window for the list of objects.

I'm sure all of you are right that there are new things there. They didn't need to make other things harder to use in the process.

If they're following the same 'tradition', I expect they'll force us into a tabbed interface completely? I'll have to open separate MS-Access top-level windows to get any work done?

Oh, and they gave us no way to remove those auto-filter arrows in the column names. What a waste of space!

Why bother to even re-size windows? The new UI has tabbed forms just like FireFox. Everyone been ranting and raving about that browser!

If you want you can disable tabbed forms in access and go back to the old way. However, with tabbed windows you always get a full screen size form and they follow the size of the application size. If you run the application full screen then you can?t even re-size the forms. So, I fail to see your problem here (tabbed forms can't be re-sized).

You can still choose the old way if you hate a tabbed UI like FireFox.

And Tabs are ok for a web browser (even there I'd rather MDI though). Just so you know, comparing a database management software with a web browser is not the best of comparisons. I don't use Firefox or IE for database management. LOL

I'll look at five or six sheets of data at once, spread over two monitors. Tabbing does away with that.

And yes, I could and did turn it off. It took quite a bit of search and research to find how to do that. There is still no way (that I can find) to turn the 'Navigation Pane' back into a separate window.

From what I understand of Access 2007 it added some new functionality. Okay, it's functionality which I shall never use, but there are people for whom it will be useful. What annoys me about Access 2007, and in fact the whole of Office 2007, is that they've messed with the interface so I just can't find anything. I recently wanted to create a database with several relations, some lookups, multiple queries and some calculated fields. I decided to do it in 2003, and had it done in a couple of days in between doing the rest of my job. I have no clue how I would go about it in 2007!

Any chance of them putting a "Use classic interface" checkbox somewhere in the Options for those of us who can't stand that ghastly abortion of a ribbon thing, or are we going to be reliant on Addintools to do the job for us?

For those of us who have never used OneNote, could you either provide an idea of what it is best used for or provide a link to an article that explains what OneNote is all about? If Microsoft want folks to use it, it would be helpful to know what its purpose is.

I use OneNote like as a whiteboard on steroids for multistep projects. I take a clean OneNote page and start by jotting a project goal statement and vision statement (a statement about what the completed project should look like.) Next, I brainstorm ideas for the project. Each idea can be a separate floating text pane that is easily moved around the page for organizing thoughts. OneNote also senses when you?re making a list or outline and automatically formats. You can easily add screen shots from your pc or the internet to the OneNote page. You can also link in any supporting documents, videos, pictures, or mind maps you may have on your pc. Once you have organized components, priorities, and sequences you are ready to commit to defining a next action. OneNote seamlessly integrates with Outlook for calendaring and task management. You can think of OneNote as an electronic filing cabinet for projects as well.

Since I 'discovered' OneNote just a few months ago I've been raving about it to anyone who will listen!

Microsoft really missed the mark in not promoting it as a productivity tool. I've completely eliminated the post-it notes that cluttered my workplace by transferring all those odd bits of information and ideas into OneNote where they can not only be organized quickly and easily but, if appropriate, Ctrl+1 instantly tags an item as 'To Do'. At any time you can generate a list of all to do items that you have not checked off and with one click you can generate a ready-to-print page of them.

Other examples of what it can do include the ability to grab a screenshot at any time by using WindowsKey+S. If you copy some text and paste it into OneNote for future reference it automatically gives you a hyperlink to the source file or web page. Searches in OneNote also find text in pasted images. Think about the power of that!

And I'm only just scratching the surface here... It's worth spending 10 minutes going through the built in interactive tutorial first time you open it.

I think it needs a few tweaks (of course, it's a Version 1 product), especially with its handling of tables (and a "Paste Special" is desperately needed, especially for pasting from Web pages), but it has reaplaced the maintenance of dozens of 1 - 2 paragraph Word files for me in a very happy way!

J.Ja

Oh Goody, more useless bloatware

Looks just like 2007 to me.

Almost everyone touts the new stuff. What I'm most interested is the quiet 'kill-off' of features. So, what's lost in the new version? Better yet, let's see a paper showing the feature loss version to version. For those of us that must maintain backward compatibility, to retrieve old records as an example, not being able to pull up or edit an old doc or xls due to a feature drop can have huge ramifications (look at the changes to VB support in old xls files)...

B.

I am most curious about how the applicatoin will handle conflicts in simultaneous editing. For instance, if we are both editing the same document and I decide to delete a sentence while you decide to edit it. How will it determine what to do?

Deb -

That looks really nice, thanks!

BTW, the "quick steps" bit looks like the Macro Recorder, which a LOT of people miss. I recently wrote a macro which can be replaced by it, for example ("Mark as Read and Delete").

J.Ja

There is no need for anyone to buy Microsoft Office, and there hasn't been for several years.

"Office button (now implemented as a Ribbon tab)" Come on, just say they gave up on the dumb idea of putting a circle in the upper left hand corner and calling it a button!

I think I will wait for the much more useful much more stable open office, and mozilla versions. Why give Microsoft hundreds of dollars for a product that will take year to work correctly?

Yet another overblown overloaded over complicated programme for tech-heads. No attractions there for the dedicated word-smith. Long live Word 1997. Gives me all I want, and more...

I'd like to the the option to select multiple items during a Paste Special, e.g. Value, Format, Column Width, etc.

Both of these should be included in the new Office Package (or at least a "professional" version).

I HATE the Ribbon.

If the fact that the hate of the Ribbon interface is soo strong that it spawned third party products to remove it from Office isn?t a clear and LOUD message to Microsoft that the Ribbon it isn?t the end all to interfaces nor is the hatred of it by existing office users is NOT just a phase that they will be over after using the Ribbon for a short while then I don?t know what anyone could do to make this clearer to Microsoft. I have co-workers who think the Ribbon is genius but they also believe anything new by Microsoft is absolutely perfect. I imagine the pro-Ribbon users also believed Microsoft Bob was going to be the next revolution in Windows computing. HAH!

Personally I've got no problem with Microsoft pushing a new & revolutionary interface onto its users that is confusing and at best, awkward to use, so long as it's an option. Users shouldn?t be stuck with the Ribbon. I?ve been using Office 2007 since it was first released and after many months of daily use I found the Ribbon no better or easier to use now then when It first used it.

QUESTION - If the Ribbon were the next best thing to sliced computing then why haven?t all other software vendors integrated it (or something similar) into their products? Better yet, why hasn?t Microsoft moved all their products to using the Ribbon? After all Microsoft Office isn?t the only software Microsoft puts out that has been successfully using the Menus & Toolbars interface for many years. Why haven?t they pushed the Ribbon into other product families outside of Office?

ANSWER - We see the Ribbon?s use restricted primarily to Office products because Microsoft HAS realized their mistake and so to do damage control and without admitting any mistake on their end, they are trying to make the Ribbon less hated by making it as customizable as possible. After all if the Ribbon was all it is touted, shouldn?t we have seen it in more use outside of the Office product line?

Change for the sake of change is dumb; If it ain't broke then don't break it by trying to fix what ain't broke in the first place. All the Ribbon did was demonstrate just how arrogant Microsoft?s Management & Design folks are.

Like Vista - all bling - no function.

If they wanted to improve Office they SHOULD have -
1. Made outlook open multiple e-mail accounts as full exchange -not an additional mailbox with some functionality or pop/imap with very limited functionality but two seperate exchange profiles simultaneously from multiple exchange servers.

2. Full OLE support for pictures in access - umm wasn't that functional with Office XP - why take that out? Why should someone have to code to add pictures to a personal database? Might was well use oracle or a real database if you are going to have to use code. Adding Office XP photo editor is the work around but why not just add photo editor back into office if that is the solution?

3. Offer the old menu bar for people (most of my clients) who don't want to learn the new menu bar. You can finally modify the ribbon to some extent in 2010 however my clients just want their old ribbon bar. Frankly I have no issue with the new menu bar but I'm one person and most of my clients don't like it so prefer to stick with office 2003. MS could make money selling the new version if they just offered the old menu as a choice with the new ribbon.

> Why should someone have to code to add pictures to a personal database

You don't have to.

They have added a new picture control. Not only can you bind it to a path URL path name, but you can bind that path name to a collum. Also, if you store pictures internal, there is now no bloat. The new picture control can be used in continues forms (something you could never do before with the ole control).

So this new fantastic native picture control would allow you to display a open or closed folder icon to display the status of a project for example. Or you could even show a picture of part in a parts catalog, or a country flag next to a persons name.

This control works without having to write any code at all. Here is a video of an continues form with pictures in it. and, at the half way point, I switch to running the access application 100% in a browser, and again you see the new picture control work perfect in a continues form running inside of a browser.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU4mH0jPntI

I just got word from a co-worker who installed Office 2010 last night that the Sphere Button (object in the top left corner of an Office app that replaced the traditional FILE menu) has been taken back out and the traditional FILE tab has been put in its place. This may not be a complete step in the right direction of undoing the dumb change of the Ribbon Bar but it does show that there has been enough negative feed back about all of the menu changes that Microsoft is undoing some of the bad changes they made with Office 2007.

What I don't get, how can you ignore future conversations without missing something important? I mean different mails are automatically grouped together because of what is written in the subject line. But there are quite common phrases and words like "Invitation to my birthday party" which are used very often, what about these? Aren't they about to be deleted without me knowing it? This is the thing that disturbs me the most, no wait the search is still not good, no wait with my search tool lookeen this is no problem, okay I think that is all what disturbes me

Anybody know about the following?

In Office 2007, the SIZE of the ribbon elements (graphics, tabs, etc.) is tied to the "menu" FONT size in the Control Panel Display Properties (or whatever they call it today).

This replaced the earlier "large fonts" checkbox that users had to click in every application as resolutions increased and graphics elements "shrank". Even though I thought "large icons" should have become the default about 10 years ago, at least it was my own choice; I have some non-MS apps that even offer three toolbar sizes.

Because I need / like a little bigger menu font, I get even bigger and bulkier ribbon tabs.

I'm wondering if the choice of ribbon element size has been put back in user's hands in 2010 or if it will still be tied to the menu font size (which is still dumb).

Of course, part of the consequence of bigger ribbon elements is that the tabs are more likely to auto-compress (another annoying feature of the ribbon).

In 2010, even if the ribbon elements are user-controllable, if they're still "super sized" then they will still offer fewer choices than the 2003 and earlier toolbars.

As you say, the Office 2010 ribbon size is tied to the 'menu' font size set in Control Panel. However, apart from the basic options of large, medium and small, it is still possible to fine tune how various components of a window appears in Windows 7, and therefore in the Office 2010 ribbon.

It is not intuitive to find this:
1. Right click on the Desktop and select Personalise
2. Select 'Window Color' along the bottom options
3. Select 'Advanced appearance settings...'
4. Under 'Item' is a dropbox of options, starting with Desktop. By going through these, you will be able to customise each component of a default window. For example, on my PC, changing my Custom Text Size from Small (100%) to Medium (125%) resulted in the Font settings in this dropbox changing from SegoeUI size 11 to size 14. Set at 'Medium', my desktop icons were an ideal size for me, but it made my Office ribbons too large. I used this method to reduce the size of my Office ribbon. Obviously this method will also have an effect on all other windows, not just Office ones.

Hope this might offer you some options to try out.

Most are ok but I went to offline mode and now cannot get back to online mode. All of my searching just ends up with Office 07 stuff. Can any of the gurus hekp me? Even MS is vague if anything really. I sent a smile(frown) so that they could address the issue

IT look good and fast I dont think people will be disapointed with this john barker

it is good better and best............

As far as I am concerned, Office 2007 and 2010 are of no use if you cannot pull down menus with the keyboard. Going from keyboard-centric to mouse-centric is just a leap backwards - remember this is a word-processor, not any fancy image-editing software!! All functions must be immediately assessible from the keyboard, using keyboard strokes which used to be alt-? pull down menus.

It is not the Ribbon - though yes I hate that - but the lack of choice - indeed arrogance of MS. Old or new look should be a choice - lots of us high end users found the inability to customise and the number of mouse clicks to do what was a simple click on a custom tool bar item or a macro, incredibly destructive of productivity.
Sadly it has become another big reason a lot of my clients have stayed with 2003 or moved out of Office or even out of Windows.
Not good for the marketplace - and no good saying just buy an add on to revert the menus etc - most clients have tighly locked corporate systems where they cannot add anything.
Finally if I get any more docx files to convert I shall scream..... make .doc the standard - most clients say if they receive a docx they won't use it - which if it is a tender is a pretty ghastly fate!
Just listen to the community Redmond

I don't know what this author is smoking except he may be trying to show how smart he is that he is totally losing touch with reality.
Reality is Office is a tool. I have learned how to use this tool for many many years. If they want to add new features that I don't even care for - fine. But at least it needs to come with an option so that I don't have to relearn everything in order to use the tool. Imagine tomorrow the auto industry decides just for kick to design new breed of cars that basically all drivers need to relearn how to drive! Microsoft Office 2010 sucks big time!!!