MS Word 2007 - What have they done to it?

[a456]

I was away from home and borrowed a PC with MS Word 2007 on it. What have they done to it? Rather than a format toolbar with style, font, size these elements are split between two parts of the 'ribbon'. The style has been blown up and now has square previews. Although it may have some very small possibility of making home users notice styles - it makes them less friendly for people like me because I have to open all sorts of panels to see what I'm doing. And not useful panels like in InDesign or Illustrator. Also things like templates (an integral part of styles) have been buried a few preference menus down rather than in the Tools menu bar. And goodness knows how to find the style area and its width - the help menus are so opaque and wordy that you have to click through 4 or 5 pages until you find out what you are looking for. Poor show MS. If you had (have?) put in a revert to the earlier toolbars preference then I'd be happy. But no.

 

[tersono]

Oh it's worse than that - a whole lot of stuff has been moved around for no good reason.

This is why a lot of corporates are sticking with Office 2003 (or even Office XP) on the basis that the retraining involved ain't worth it.

 

[nctalkinghead]

what has with MS Word 2007

I tried switching from 2003 Word to the 2007 package and the learning curve was pretty steep - and frustrating - even for someone who is pretty proficient with Word. The bottom line: I'm no longer using a PC and am loving my new iMac! Thanks Microsoft for sending me in the right direction.

 

[Mac In School]

It seems to be a theme with Microsoft. That's one of my complaints about Vista. They moved stuff that had been in the same place since 1995.

 

[Sky Blue]

Once you get used to it, the 2007 suite is pretty good, unlike 2008.

 

[a456]

Once you get used to it, the 2007 suite is pretty good, unlike 2008.

Pretty good, but is it better? Is it worth the learning curve?

When I put the energy into learning something new in an Adobe product I feel that my capabilities have been expanded. I also appreciate the conciseness of their help area. It took two people a considerable amount of time to figure out how to attach a template thanks to the lengthy help information and the ambiguity of which are the best links in the help to get you to where you really want to be and find out what you need to find out.

If people find out that the migration between Open Office and the previous versions of Word is far more intuitive then God help MS.

 

[reclusivemonkey]

Personally I find Office 2007 better than previous versions (I only use Windows at Work). Yeah, there is a learning curve but for me personally it took about ten minutes. There are a couple of oddly placed items but most thing are logically placed. Its a lot easier to handle styles in Word 2007 which means I can boilerplate most documents quite quickly. The Pivot Tables in Excel 2007 are very funky now, and again you can style them pretty easily and quickly. They've also ironed out a few of the problems with charts. Most people here at work, once they have got used to it, like the ribbon. Certainly Office 2008 on the Mac isn't anywhere near as nice as Office 2007 on PC for obvious reasons.