Discussion on:

Office poll: Which Office 2007 application would you love to downgrade to 2003?

I enjoy 2007 and would't like to go back to 2003. Once you get used to the new interface, it's so much easier to use. I think some ppl do not like it because it demands them to change and learn how to use the ribbon.

Thanks for responding -- some folks are completely happy with 2007!

Me! I'm happy with all the main Office 2007 applications and wouldn't go back at all.

However, I still use Visio 2003, which I felt wasn't worth paying to upgrade.

I went straight from 2000 to 2007, so I don't even know what I must've been missing.

Some things in 2007 could be tweaked but I have no desire to go back to 2003.

I am in full agreement that there is no way I would go back to 2003 for any of the suite. Now, if your needs are more in the Notepad league, by all means use it.

Must say, I can't imagine going back to Office 2003. So many things were fixed in '07 that had been glaring errors and inconsistencies for years in the Office suite. And some of us just love all the new Excel functions...

I completely agree 2007 is the most stable and potent version of Office yet... why would I want to go back?

Excel 2007's new features and functions alone make this the top version of Office yet...

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome at a minimum. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. That's assuming one really does know where a function is, and that it hasn't been deprecated.

Then there's customizability, productivity, uniformity of interface, and so on and on.

Fortunately, I was allowed to continue with 2003 when the rest of the company switched to 2007. I was the guy who easily finished the work and fixed the problems the rest of the place brought to me, because they couldn't do it themselves, even with their official Microsoft Here's-Where-the-Function-Went cheat sheets.

With respect folks, whilst it may be pleasing on some people eyes, from a business prodctivity point of view, in my and many other persons experiences, it really makes no sense to radically change the interface that people have become used to over 20 years +

The scenario is similar to completely overhauling the dashboard and controls of an auto / car. No sane designer would do it in one fell swoop.

For sure the standard Office 2003 interface could be better, and items buried away behind countless menus could be much easier to find, but the Office 2007 is a really poor and even lazy implementation. It shows a lack of understanding of real (as opposed to theoretical) ergonomics and how people work...even if an employee has learnt a sub-optimal method over 20 years, it can't be unlearnt overnight and especially by implementing another sub-optimal interface!

Both Lotus and Star/OpenOffice have had their own method of dealing with the interface issues.

Office 2007 could still preserve the 2003 layout whilst adding context sensitive functions. In fact Lotus Symphony (now based on the Openoffice core) does it this way. I know from experience most people would prefer it this way for MS Office and in fact there are one or two innovative companies who have created an add-on for Office 2007 which provides a toolbar and menus in the same layout as Office 2003 ! It allows a user to choose.

And that is exactly where MS have gone wrong, they should not have forced this change upon people and given them a choice.

So as an IT Director do I choose to upgrade my 2000 users from Office 2003 to 2007 at several hundred ?$? per seat PLUS very significant training costs PLUS accept errors and reduced productivity? Or do I alternatively avoid these costs and downtime by keeping to Office 2003 as long as possible, or switch to Open Office / Lotus Symphony? By the way I would not switch to Google Docs because I have major concerns about privacy and security despite all their (hollow) assurances, but that's another thread.

Ultimately it is my responsibility to ensure that company objectives are well supported through effective and efficient IT processes and tools and put simply Office 2007 just does not allow that.

And I don't subscribe to that school of thought that allows users to get what they want just because they have it on their home computer. If that's what they want, they can switch off their PC and don't bother coming back to work. We'll give them modern, even innovative tools to work with, but only where they add clear value e.g. Blackberry / Smartphones.

Hope you guys enjoy supporting users with Office 2007, you will be extremely busy! Any perhaps ultimately that may be your motivation, to remain the focus of peoples problems and generate workload in that way!

Take a good look at Office 2010 to see what Microsoft has decided with the ribbon. The new interface is much better, but it won't change your TCO for replacement. Symphony is looking much to you; IBM intended that and it is a cost savings all around. Realize you are still going to end up training, having productivity loss, and those silly "how do I" help desk questions when you change office systems. There is a very good chance you will save money, but you can't avoid the new user training cost or productivity hits.

BRAVO!

I depend on Word 2003 to earn my living. I have many macros, custom tool bars, etc., which I have been using for nearly a decade. They are unusable in Word 2007, so I would never change if I have the choice. I also notice that the international industry standard for document exchange is still .doc, not .docx - I get documents sent to me from all over the world, and 9 times out of 10 it is still .doc

Boy you got that right. Just install the 2007 Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Formats so that if you do receive 2007 files you're good.

Of course I already have the compatibility pack. But in my work I make extensive use of macros and toolbars custom-built for Word 2003. They don't work in Word 2007, and the huge amount of work to rewrite them would gain me no benefit at all.

I use access more than the others. Word and Excel have been easy to learn with respects to the ribbon and location of options. It is taking me longer to find things in Access. I miss 2003...

ACCESS 2007, I think it is great for a Novice user but not so for a developer. Many things were added that made it harder to develop good forms and good codes. They are there but one really has to search hard.

Access 2000 was just fine for me. I was just getting the hang of SQL when they changed everything on me again.

It took me about 2 weeks to get used to the new look and feel. Now that I am used to it, I really like the interface and wouldn't want to switch any of it back.

Of course, I liked Vista as well... And, I'm a big fan of Windows 7.

I vote for 'none' as well. Ive been using 2007 for awhile and having to go to work and use 2003 because they havent upgraded was painful at best.

At first, yes, I was frustrated because I did not understand the logic of the layout, but now that I have learned the new layout, it is wonderful! I love it! However, I look forward to the next version with fear, probably because I have no idea about what it has to offer or how the layout is.

It is just stupid not to think of that. There is a saying a picture says a thousand words. That is so true but what most people don't realize that is can mean a thousand things as well. If the ribbon used text instead of icons i would use it daily it would be so much easier but they went with icons with a thousand meanings each.

I agree with Thomas....people need to stop whining about the ribbon and get on with it. When you see what's coming with Office 2010, ie; more integration with SharePoint & the Web you'll understand that Office 2007 was just the first step towards this increased functionality.

Maybe people who HAVE learned to use the ribbon dislike it because the majority of functions require AT LEAST one more click, usually two or three more clicks - just to reach the functions that used to be available in the original menus (and most of which could be brought to the tool bar for instant one-click use)

The ribbon interface collects a mishmash of functions into categories that are often completely unrelated to the headings where the function has now been tucked.

Some functionality seems to have disappeared, although most of the Office 2003 functions can eventually be found by searching 2007's so-called help function for the old menu command names.

What I particularly resent however is the assumption that "because it demands them to change and learn how to use the ribbon" isn't a valid reason to dislike Office 2007. Change for the sake of change is NEVER justified. EVERY CHANGE HAS A COST, and for the change to be justified, that change must provide benefit to offset its cost. The ribbon nonsense absolutely does not meet this test. The ONLY thing it accomplishes better than the classic menu/toolbar interface is that it provides some "pretty" stock formats so that novices can make their data look fancy.

Formatting borders for cells in an Excel spreadsheet used to be a one or two click operation for an experienced user -- three for a novice -- and even the novice would usually be able to find the function just by looking at the menu bar. Now, that same functionality is in the CELLS FORMAT menu, but incorrectly placed under the PROTECTION heading to get to the same menu that you would have had in 2003. BUT the help function tells you to look for it in the STYLE box, where the identical Cell Format menu is burried under Cell Styles; New Cell Style; Format, where Excel is then determined to define and save a new named "style"

I had to upgrade at least 1 machine to 2007 because some people do not know how to save things in compatibility mode; life was simpler that way. I survived the pain of 2007 by adding that command I just spent 10 minutes searching for to the Custom Toolbar. But I still save it in compatibility mode so that all can use it. Not everyone knows about the file format conversion package. I will keep 2003 on the remaining machines until I am forced to upgrade (which Microsoft has a tendency to do).

Besides being minimally useful, it was responsible for strange behavior on the 6 systems I installed in on. If you use it, and ever try to shut down or restart, and get the message "Winword.exe is trying to shut down" over and over...uninstall Search Commands (these are all XP Pro SP3 systems - doesn't seem to affect Vista or 7)

I have used 2007 for several years and have never wanted to go back, but I find the 2010 beta even better, especially (at this stage in my learning to use it) PowerPoint 2010 which has made some major advances such as cue points for sounds and videos.

I got the office installed and registered so Just kept it but I honestly use open-office

More bloated, incompatible without special effort, "Ribbon" is a disaster. After 6 months, I still waste more time navigating through the ribbon, to get to things I could do from the 2003 menu with 2 or 3 clicks.

The most frustrating thing was the dumb-smile trainer doing the "what's new" training, who kept telling us "this is new - it wasn't available in 2003" and I kept saying, "Yes, it was. You used to click ..." or "Yes, it was. It was an optional feature in 2003 that needed to be checked during install to make it available."

I have many customers who don't sing the Microsoft company song. "docx" and the rest of the incompatible formats are a real pain. "mdb" isn't the same "mdb" but you can't tell until it fails to open.

I just don't find any benefit to the bloat. It's all hype and fluff. I'm still doing exactly the same thing I was, it's just slower now.

no text.

I'd love to have the basic menus back so all my users stop complaining about how they can't find anything! In some ways it has a great layout but for most people it's very confusing with a huge learning curve.

Where's the 'none of them' I'd use open office?

I use Access a lot. So do a lot of people in my organisation. I create quite complicated applications some of which have lifetimes of years (my most successful app is now 13 years old and still going strong).

I NEVER use VB. I hate it. For complicated requirements I will use macros and queries. This is a good thing. It means that my apps will run in 'upgraded' versions of Access. Unfortunately, there are people in my organisation that do use VB, that do attach code to controls. Every time Access is 'upgraded', these apps break. And yes, it's me they ask to 'fix' it.

The lastest one I looked at had lots of totally blank VB segments - and of course none of the controls worked. If I had my way, Microsoft would find something better than VB that doesn't break on every 'upgrade', or make 'upgrades' backwardly compatible with their coding system. Failing that, bring back Access 2003 and relieve me of a stack of work I really don't have time for.

I have been using Access code since very early versions & they do not break with updates; but, I must qualify that, I do not use third party addons as these OCXs & such do break, often because their support files are forgotten in the image IT squirt on a new computer.

Office 2007 does have some very nice small improvements but the Ribbon definitely is not one of them. One thing I learned a long time ago was that users hate Tab controls on forms as it adds a layer in the navigation. I sympathize.

It is taking me a long time to find my way around the ribbon, too long despite know what to look for & an earlier comment about lost productivity is spot on the money.

Fortunately they have not mucked too much with the quick-keys which I use extensively.

Would I revert? I will use whatever is required by the customers &, by and large, they are sticking with 2003.

Say what you want about the ribbon but the real problem with Office 2007 is Outlook. At least with Word/Excel you can still do everything in 07 you could do in 93 (even if they moved your cheese). Try opening an html formatted email in Outlook 07. Aparently Microsoft thinks any email that won't render in Word is just not worth reading. I couldn't disagree more.

Actually Outlook 07 is the only app of the suite that I like. And believe me, I am old school. It took me forever to move from DOS to Windows 3.0. And from WFWG 3.11 to 95. And 98 to 2000. etc.etc.etc.

You seem to claim that Outlook 07 is better than 03. Why do you think this, I genuinely want to know.

Having used 07 now for over a year (and supported it for much of that time) the only differences I can find were a slightly more troublesome install process (we had 2 exchange servers and it would only see one) and changing HTML rendering from IE (in 03) to Word (in 07). Neither of these do I see as an upgrade.

Then again, you state it's the only app of the suite you like. Could that be due to the lack of a ribbon?

It isn't just that they replaced the menus with the ribbon (which makes many tasks take MORE clicks than before). In Office 2003 I used the colored flags to tag various email messages for different types of follow up (this would be interesting to look at later, this is urgent, this is a technical issue that may help me at some point, etc.). When I went to 2007, the colored flags went away (as in the items I had tagged were now all the same)!
Then I saw that they had added Categories by color. I thought "OK, I will use this going forward." Except that when I color-code a message, it clears itself within a few seconds! As far as I can tell, it is a completely useless feature.

Try reading: http://blogs.technet.com/dstrome/archive/2008/01/13/categories-in-outlook-2007.aspx

Ever since I loaded MS Office 2007 my outlook takes it into its head to hang. No reason. Just hangs and hangs and hangs. Then like all MS apps one has to close the whole computer down and restart from switch on. Not even the Task Manager can close it down. I might as well use a pigeon to send messages. It works better.

Wait until y'all use Office 2010! Even Outlook has changed for the better.

Nope. With MS history for mucking things up I don't think I will even think of "upgrading" my MS software. I would rather cross train onto Open Source and Linux. At least then I control what is happening in my documents and I don't have to beg MS systems to let me do my thing.

I'm resentful of Microsoft ( and other software creators ) taking away features I liked and attempting to force me into a direction of their choosing.

Try SoftMaker Office Suite 20xx - a useful alternative

From my experience, the only people that benefitted from the Ribbon were the nubies! Those of us that actually understand and fully use the Office apps simply get RSI from click, click, clinking through the Ribbon; a problem made worse by fixed Ribbon options. Roll on Office 2010!