Why do we "hate" Microsoft Office so much?

[diehldun]

I have no problem...

I use Microsoft Office EVERY day (Word, Excel, PowerPoint...), even though I just got iWork '05 w/ Tiger.

I'm just so used to the layout of Microsoft Office; I'm very comfortable using it, and I know where everything already is. In my opinion, Office has the best applications avaliable (Word, Excel), although I wil confess Keynote is probably a better presentation program than PowerPoint.

I think that Pages is an utter disgrace to Apple, given the other "remarkable" applications Apple has made in the past. It is counter-intuitive to use; I've given up trying to use Pages, and I'll only use it as a Microsoft Publisher replacement.

Who cares about "fighting against the enemy- Microsoft"? It's not like you're going to be able to stop sales of Microsoft Office by boycotting it. I'm very pleased to be using Microsoft Office on my PowerBook G4.

 

[plasticparadox]

Care to elaborate?

Hehe.. I had typed out a long rebuttal to some of the stuff that has been posted about what the Mac Business Unit has put out. But did a quick readover and decided that I would be flamed and crucified for it. So I just put down my vote for Office

 

[x86isslow]

Sure, but Apple does too.

Regardless, I think Office 2004 is one of the better application suites ever made for the Mac, behind iLife, Creative Suite, and Studio MX. I can't think of any other set of applications as well done.

I personally am a fan of the Omni suite (Outliner, Graffle, and Web).

 

[~Shard~]

Hehe.. I had typed out a long rebuttal to some of the stuff that has been posted about what the Mac Business Unit has put out. But did a quick readover and decided that I would be flamed and crucified for it. So I just put down my vote for Office

Fair enough, sounds like a smart move. But never be afraid to voice your opinions, that's what makes these Forums interesting.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

I don't really hate MS Office, but I wouldn't really use it if I didn't have to.

* I think Word is a bloated piece of sh...oftware which is overkill for most writing tasks.
* Powerpoint is slow and not very user friendly (and I rarely use it for anything but opening (bad) jokes received in Mail).
* Excel is maybe the, relatively, best program in the suite. I really have very little need for spread sheets, but when I do Excel is my first choice.
* Outlook/Entourage gives me the creeps, there is so much junk incorporated that you loose track of what you wanted to do before being able to finish, I love the solution with separate Mail, AddressBook and iCal (even if I have some complaints about iCal).

Overall I would love to get rid of MS Office all together, but since
a) there's no real substitute for Excel,
b) MS Office is de facto standard for many usual file formats and as long as I receive .doc (.xls) and .ppt/.pps files which there really is no good way to open without Office and
c) I still have to deliver assignments online at University (one more to go), which although theoretically can be delivered in many formats but in practice only works in Word format, I haven't found a good substitute.

I know TextEdit can open very simple Word-files, but with a bit formatting, forms, etc the result is often very bad. Keynote 1.x can also convert and open some .ppt (and .pps when renamed to .ppt) but only the simple ones without any extras. AppleWorks (which came with my iBook) can off course in theory open many Office files but in most cases the result (e.g. with Excel files) is a joke.

I Have tested some OO ports, most recently NEOOfficeJ, and although that impressed me and was miles ahead of other OO ports I've seen, they still have a LONG way to go before being usable.

I haven't tried iWork (Pages and Keynote 2), yet, even if I got a trial CD with my Tiger pack, but I look forward to - some time in a not very distant future - try a complete Apple Office Suite, with Pages and Keynote with a good spread sheet app and some easy-to-use database (like FileMaker). I would love to have an all Apple suite with the Apple look and feel, but they need a couple of more apps and, as I understand reports, to get rid of some beginners mistakes before iWork can be taken real seriously.

EDIT: I'm also learning Norwegian and I can get that spell checker to work. Figure that one out. I do absolutely nothing different between the two.

Well, one advice if you're using Word to help learning Norwegian: Do NOT trust Microsoft's grammar check, that's notoriously bad...

Ellers, lykke til med norskundervisningen.

 

[GFLPraxis]

Yes, those are all examples of MS software that sucks too. Which doesn't negate the fact that someone there can write good software (such as Office). We just need to clone that someone and salt the ground out of which the people who are developing MSIE arose....

But they still can't think of original ideas

PowerPoint was bought, and Excel was copied IIRC. Not sure on Word, though I doubt Microsoft thought up the idea of a word processor.

Still, I can't deny that Word and Excel are written very well. At least, the Mac version. They've started to just pile on features on top of features in the Windows version nowadays.

 

[Macaddicttt]

Well, one advice if you're using Word to help learning Norwegian: Do NOT trust Microsoft's grammar check, that's notoriously bad...

Ellers, lykke til med norskundervisningen.

I'll keep that in mind. Tusen takk.

 

[iGary]

I use Word daily - I'm a writer, there is no choice. Period.

I use Excel occasionally, but probably use 1% of its capabilities.

PowerPoint blows.

Entourage blows.

Nuff said.

 

[IanC]

I like MS Office.

So do i.

The Mac version anyway, i swear the Windows version does somethings differently just to annoy me.

 

[homerjward]

i hate office because it sucks.

ok, i don't like it cause it's a microsoft product. i'm sorry but yes, that influences my opinion. i also don't like the outrageous complexity of it--there's so many features i never use that get in the way of simply typing a paper. i just use textedit then copy and paste into word i honestly haven't used ppt since i got keynote, just export to .ppt, but i really don't like how hard it is to center stuff or w/e. in keynote i drag an image and the yellow axes show up to tell me its centered. done. in ppt it's a lot more guess and check, etc.
however, i will admit office is better than a lot of products out there like OO or appleworks, etc. and it's definitely better than WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS which is what my dad uses under windows 98. he was trying to show me how to use it one time but try as i might, i couldn't understand how to center text on a line...i guess even though i hate it there's not a lot i can do about it cause there really aren't any viable alternatives besides keynote.

 

[edwin.bossier]

I love Office. Like you said, I love the fact that the Mac version is better than the Windows version.

I hate Windows as well.

But I ALSO hate Microsoft. "Microsoft makes excellent software"...rofl. Sorry. The only good software from Microsoft IMO are Office, the PocketPC operating system, and MSN Messenger 6 and above for Windows.

Before someone points out anything for XBox, almost ALL of their good games are made by companies they bought, such as Rare, Bungie, Ensemble, Bruce Artwick Organization (the Flight Sim dudes), etc.

Almost all their products are either total crap, or just outright stolen or bought off using their monopoly power. I direct you to Windows Media Player for Mac, Internet Explorer for either OS, Windows, etc, etc.

Ever used Visual Studio, SQL Server, ASP.NET, Sharepoint Services ??? Fantastic software, a dream for every software developer. Microsoft has made some serious mistakes in the past (windows me, windows 98...) but they are doing tremendous things right now. Right now, it seems that all they produce to be of very high quality. I have never known a massive piece of software like Visual Studio 2005 being so user-friendly and stabile as it already is in its beta phase. Really. Hope Longhorn will follow this new way...

 

[swheeler]

I still use Appleworks 6 for my word processing needs, just save as Word files when necessary. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but I simply don't like the look and feel of Word. Maybe its things like that damn green underline it puts under perffectly good sentences, which won't go away no matter how many times you hit ignore. I know I can probably turn all that stuff off, but why bother when I have another program that works just as well for what I need?

I use Excel, but it definitely has its share of frustrating features. For example, on one of my most commonly used spreadsheets, I wanted two cells to show "(1)". So I typed (1), and it immediately turned into "-1". No that I've switched the cell formatting over to text, those cells have green corners that bring up a warning message any time I go near them, because it still thinks I want (1) to show up as -1. Annoying.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

I still use Appleworks 6 for my word processing needs, just save as Word files when necessary. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but I simply don't like the look and feel of Word. Maybe its things like that damn green underline it puts under perffectly good sentences, which won't go away no matter how many times you hit ignore. I know I can probably turn all that stuff off, but why bother when I have another program that works just as well for what I need?

I use Excel, but it definitely has its share of frustrating features. For example, on one of my most commonly used spreadsheets, I wanted two cells to show "(1)". So I typed (1), and it immediately turned into "-1". No that I've switched the cell formatting over to text, those cells have green corners that bring up a warning message any time I go near them, because it still thinks I want (1) to show up as -1. Annoying.

The easiest way to fix this problem is to prefix anything that might be interpreted as a number that you want to be text with ' (apostrophe), then turn off the warning about numbers stored as text.

 

[~Shard~]

The easiest way to fix this problem is to prefix anything that might be interpreted as a number that you want to be text with ' (apostrophe), then turn off the warning about numbers stored as text.

Yep, you're bang on. Starting a cell with a ' will tell Excel to display everything you type thereafter literally, without any interpretation. Works like a charm.

 

[GFLPraxis]

Ever used Visual Studio, SQL Server, ASP.NET, Sharepoint Services ??? Fantastic software, a dream for every software developer. Microsoft has made some serious mistakes in the past (windows me, windows 98...) but they are doing tremendous things right now. Right now, it seems that all they produce to be of very high quality. I have never known a massive piece of software like Visual Studio 2005 being so user-friendly and stabile as it already is in its beta phase. Really. Hope Longhorn will follow this new way...

Okay, I've got to say that their DEVELOPER software is pretty dang good. But their CONSUMER software is what sucks, sorry. The products they sell to consumers are the bug ridden filth. Their developer software isn't bad at all.


I have hopes for Longhorn too, but the last Alpha I am running and the new Beta (which is reportedly almost no improvement) are making me worried.

 

[Orlando Furioso]

In short: Once you tame office, it can be incredibly useful. The occasional battle for control (of your own damn documents), will still pop up of course. =)

I don't really hate MS Office, but I wouldn't really use it if I didn't have to.

* I think Word is a bloated piece of sh...oftware which is overkill for most writing tasks.
* Powerpoint is slow and not very user friendly (and I rarely use it for anything but opening (bad) jokes received in Mail).
* Excel is maybe the, relatively, best program in the suite. I really have very little need for spread sheets, but when I do Excel is my first choice.
* Outlook/Entourage gives me the creeps, there is so much junk incorporated that you loose track of what you wanted to do before being able to finish, I love the solution with separate Mail, AddressBook and iCal (even if I have some complaints about iCal).

I use Word daily - I'm a writer, there is no choice. Period.

I use Excel occasionally, but probably use 1% of its capabilities.

PowerPoint blows.

Entourage blows.

Nuff said.

Now to elaborate

Word: I agree that it is an extremely bloated application and it tries to hard (and fails) at being useful. Auto formatting while you type is not as useful as one may think it is. You can do a lot of neat stuff with Word, but you really have to wrestle with it sometimes. I'm specifically referring to some default settings, which can only be changed (I think), on a document-by-document basis. One example is the way images/objects initially insert (offsetting a bunch of text). I hate having to manually change them every single time for every single object (a time saver is the ability to change the layout properties of a group of objects... this is good).

Word cont: A new feature in 2004 is Notebook/pad (whatever) view, which I find quite useful when outlining/note-taking. You can also dictate in this view to elaborate/make comments on items (without all the typing). I've actually recorded myself reading off my notes only to export the session to an audio file... which would then by moved onto my ipod of "studying" while in transit. For a guy who suffers from CRS* this is useful indeed.

Excel: I use it when I need it. Does what it is supposed to. It has useful stat. equations and objects like the pivot table. However, it suffers the "please let me format your text for you" syndrome. Let's not forget the "this looks like a blah blah blah list, may I xyz for you?" pandemic.

As far as it being the best... I think I recall (almost a certain impossibility for someone afflicted with CRS), someone/people/hordes mentioning Excel being crippled in either 1) the Mac version in general, or 2) this version of the Mac ports. As I am too lazy to search the threads, anyone care to elaborate? (Forgive me in advance if it was already stated in this thread.)

Outlook: <cleaning up mess I made caused by the shear thought of using outlook>

Entourage: I dunno guys. People have been bashing on this program for as long as I can remember (um.... yeah). And I have had experiences with it being butt-slow and being a resource hog. But the 2004 version seems to be all right. I have already used it on about ten major projects and it was... well, spiffy. I had tight control over everything I needed for the project (a handful of them collaborative), and did not "lose" anything. It was nice to have access to everything I needed within one program. I wish apple would do something like this for mail, addressbook, ical. Although spotlight does help a lot in this respect, I like having one interface/portal/environment (whatever), where I can instantly view and alter different types of data related to a project. It kind of lets me see the project(s) and assets in a slightly different way (unified) than the dispersed (mail, ical, etc) approach. Entourage does this and without straining the system. I did most of this work on my Pismo too.

I would have to completely disagree with iGary (who I almost eerily love), and say that Entourage far from blows. It is an incredibly useful application. <ducks>

Powerpoint: Yeah, it sucks. haha. I've seen/used it way too much in school to have a good opinion about it. Powerpoint always seems to have "issues" for something that should be sooooooo simple.

OK, that's all now. G'day.

 

[Apple]

I have been using MS Office passionately for the past three years ever since the beginning of HS and I got really used to it and bored. I ended up spending way too much $$ getting MS 2004 because I got iWork a couple of months later. At first I hated pages- way to simple. But then I realized I did not need all of the features like converting to HTML and stuff and for my purposes all I needed was word processing. The best part to me is inserting graphics such as tables, very simple to customize and use. And that is just Pages.

Keynote is miles past powerpoint when it comes to compatibility and such, I find it much easier to use and it even has better features. Such as menus and stuff. It also does not look like crap. Like PowerPoint

 

[IJ Reilly]

Pages is simply NOT better for word processing than Word is. There's absolutely no way around it, it is simply not as good.

End of story, eh? No other opinions need apply?

 

[IJ Reilly]

PowerPoint was bought, and Excel was copied IIRC. Not sure on Word, though I doubt Microsoft thought up the idea of a word processor.

Excel was derived from Multiplan, which itself was a clone of Visicalc, the original spreadsheet application (on the Apple II). Of course Microsoft didn't think up the idea of a word processor. Several existed on the PC before Word came out and of course Apple included a word processor with the Mac from 1984 on -- and it certainly wasn't Word! How soon we forget.

 

[Maxiseller]

I like Office, but I don't think it's going to be around forever.

Office is one of the programs that when all is said and done, most of us couldn't live without. I really think that Apple needs to work toward a complete unreliance on the Office programs - otherwise Microsoft can just pull the plug and wipe out the switchers thinking of changing to the Mac platform ; and thats what will happen. Microsoft isn't worried about loosing a little revenue from the 5% Mac owners.

If you were making software for a company that threatened your own; and that software was fundamantal in the every day running of a lot of people's lives, wouldn't you pull the plug?

Go Apple! Get iWork up to scratch; re-invent what we now accept as "word processing" and I call "time wasting".

 

[diehldun]

Keynote is miles past powerpoint when it comes to compatibility and such.

If you export a Keynote to PowerPoint (save it reformated as PPT), will it still retain all the eye-candy features?

I just got iWork '05, and I need to export a lot of presentations from my PB (Tiger) to an iMac (Classic) that runs on PowerPoint. If I make these really fancy transitions, will they still show up on the iMac?

 

[sjpetry]

End of story, eh? No other opinions need apply?

You're just a fanboy to Apple. You need to open your eyes.

Pages is not up to par with Word.

Maybe in a couple of years Pages will be better. But not yet.

 

[Cooknn]

I don't hate Microsoft. I hate Windows. Microsoft makes excellent software, but Windows isn't an example. Office is.

I concur. Not only that, but with Microsoft Office for Mac we stay compatible with the Windows world thus making it easier to switch users over from that freaking virus infected piece of crap OS (sorry, was dealing with a troublesome PC again tonight).

 

[wrldwzrd89]

You're just a fanboy to Apple. You need to open your eyes.

Pages is not up to par with Word.

Maybe in a couple of years Pages will be better. But not yet.

You're right, sjpetry...but perhaps Pages, at least in this first revision, wasn't meant to compete directly with Word. I don't use Pages very much - TextEdit is more than enough for what I do in the overwhelming majority of cases.

 

[Bern]

I have never liked or gotten use to Entourage. It just seemed like a bloated and very clumsy application.

I don't use PowerPoint and very rarely Excel. I use Word, in fact been using Word from it's beginning, so I guess I'm just use to it.

I have Office 2004, but the only components installed are Word and Excel when I did a reinstall with Tiger. I don't see the comparison between Pages and Word, they seem like two different applications for different purposes.

I'm in no way a M$ fan, but Word is my preferred application of that kind.