We have recently been upgraded to Office 2007. What a complete shambles it is.
I guess that for somebody who doesn't like computers very much, and this is their introduction to Excel, then it might find some fans.
However, for a user, it is little like the old Excel. What exactly is the benefit supposed to be?
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excel 2007? upgrade?
are you sure thats an upgrade?
edit, office 2010 is the latest for windows, and office 2008 for mac.
Last edited by: Zero on Mon 6 Sep 10 at 19:07
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>>
>> However, for a user, it is little like the old Excel. What exactly is the
>> benefit supposed to be?
>>
I can only assume the benefit was supposed to be for Microsoft shareholders, as I find it much more fiddly to use than Excel 2003 and no new features worth having. YMMV of course.
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It's to keep your mind sharp and see if you can find the functions you use all the time.
I'm not a fan of the new menu system but I have reached the age where I am becoming blind to progress and acutely aware of annoying.
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Yes, 2007. We were on 2003 until the other week.
>> It's to keep your mind sharp and see if you can find the functions you
>> use all the time.
I am, in principle, happy that they might wish to reconfigure their software for the benefit of the user, and that the software may take some getting used to.
What I find frustrating, however, is that it has made jobs which used to take, say, two keystrokes, take rather more. Or, indeed, require the use of the mouse.
e.g. Outlook. Add a new diary note. Type & tab between the sections. Now, it's a private engagement, and I don't want my secretary to know about it, and I don't need a reminder, but it's there to make sure I don't double book myself on Thursday night, and then I want to shut the diary entry. So, previously, ALT + R (no reminder), P (private), S (save) - total time taken 0.1 seconds.
New version:
1. Find mouse,
2. Move mouse to reminder box
3. Click drop-down arrow on reminder
4. Move mouse
5. Click "no reminder"
6. Move mouse
7. Click "private appointment"
8. Move mouse OR return hands to keyboard
9. Click "save" OR ALT + S
NINE separate and fiddly movements of the hand taking 5 seconds, replacing the movements of three fingers and a thumb which wouldn't have to move more than a third of an inch.
How is it progress to remove keyboard shortcuts? (I still mourn the loss of CTRL SHIFT I which used to bring up print preview in the early part of the 90s. Given that this combination of keys does absolutely nothing, how does it improve anybody's life to have removed it?)
Over reliance on a mouse for somebody who cannot use a computer effectively.
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I dislike Office 2007 too. Not tried Office 2010 yet. Have Office 2008 on the Mac.
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I would love to meet your IT head honcho, he must be a complete divot.
2007 as an upgrade?
It came out in 2006, he is gonna have to move to 2010 in two years as support will disapear then and he will have ot move to 2010 (or 12)
He should have kept 2003 in use, and tested 2010 and gone straight to that.
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I think it depends on the size of the co. Z. Many of the global corps. I've worked with are still on 2003 under XP and won't be moving anytime soon.
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exactly - they will jump right to 2010, not stop off halfway at 2007.
Last edited by: Zero on Mon 6 Sep 10 at 20:12
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I think it depends if 2010 works on XP.
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Matters not, most corporates will be moving to 7 in the next 12 months,
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...most corporates will be moving to 7 in the next 12 months...
My firm won't be if it costs any more than 5p.
Cut, cut, and cut again is the order of the day.
"Spend" is a swear word.
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>> Matters not, most corporates will be moving to 7 in the next 12 months,
>>
Maybe it has not reached leafy Surrey yet but there has been a shortage of cash on the rest of the planet of late. Car manufacturers have more important R&D costs than W7.
Does anyone really notice much difference between Vista & W7 ? I've got both on 64bit, I can't say W7 Ultimate is anymore stable than V HP 64bit SP2.
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Corporates never moved to Vista. Its not a matter of cost, its a matter of MS support and MS licensing agreements.
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>>I would love to meet your IT head honcho, he must be a complete divot.
>>It came out in 2006, he is gonna have to move to 2010 in two years as support will disapear then
Support? What's that?
We still have many users on Office 97, the rest of us have "upgraded" in the last year to 2007. I was one of the first, I was fed up with getting Excel .xlsx and .xlsm files from external companies that '97 wouldn't open. Internally, we tend to save in "compatible" (old) format.
I don't mind the ribbon interface in 2007. I'd still go back to Lotus Smartsuite though.
The browser with the standard image is IE6 I think - the one that doesn't work very well anyway. I've updated mine. I'd use Firefox more, but our intranet won't play with it.
We also use Lotus Notes, I think we are still on version 6.5 with many of the features crippled including the combined views, message threading and instant messaging.
I have no idea why we are in this state, though I suspect it's the overhead of changing, with multiple sites, lots of remote users etc. The aggregate time wasted on converting things and asking for files to be re-sent in old format must be significant though.
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>> We have recently been upgraded to Office 2007. What a complete shambles it is
Agree 100%
I'm still using Excel 2002 :-)
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>> I'm still using Excel 2002 :-)
Which was the best one ever made. Well stingy row limits (was still 65k rows back then) excepted.
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>> Well stingy row limits (was still 65k rows
>> back then) excepted.
>>
It's a spreadsheet not a database. The number of co's I've seen with 16GB databases thinly disguised as spreadsheets is unbelievable.
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Excel 2003 here. No complaints. XP Home too. I too am at the age where change is a pita. Got a mate, very successful Builder/Developer, several big ££ in the bank and I mean BIG. What computer?
MD
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OY. Shouldn't this be in Computing??
it is now
Last edited by: VxFan on Tue 7 Sep 10 at 00:59
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I had Office 2007 inflicted on me when I moved jobs. I mainly use Excel and Powerpoint and could use Powerpoint 2003 in my sleep. So I was well chuffed (not) to find that several of the functions I used most often were now buried deep in the new Powerpoint 2007 menu bar that takes away 15% of the useable space at the top of the screen and that 2 of the functions had actually been deleted from Powerpoint 2007, as confirmed by scanning the internet. After a week I asked our IT bod to give me 2003 but this wasn't possible as there no more licences.
This was 2 years ago and I have now adjusted to the new workflows though for my own use none of the new functions bring any value.
The biggest headache we have is that a lot of our customers (SMEs) still have Office 2003 or older. There is a function to save a 2007 file allegedly compatible to 2003 but in practice the generated files are not 100% compatible. A query to the Microsoft "Help" Desk elicited the usual nothing-wrong-with-our-software brush off with the hint that our customers should upgrade to 2007.
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>> Have you looked at
>> office.microsoft.com/en-in/access-help/keyboard-shortcuts-in-the-2007-office-system-RZ010156267.aspx
Yes, thank you, I found those quite quickly. The Microsoft wording says everything:
"A lot of research has been done into how people use Microsoft Office, and how they wish it would work."
i.e. "A lot of research has been done into how stupid people cannot use computers, and it has been decided to dumb the entire system down so as to help them."
I have found one good thing on 2007 Excel, which is that you can pin files on your recently used list. Otherwise, rubbish.
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Give me Office 2000 any day - shame there are no more security updates.
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I have all the features of Office 95 on this machine - I need no more.
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Until fairly recently I used Office 97 at home, the only new feature since then I like is the WYSIWYG font selection from Office 2000 onwards; I only upgraded to Office 2003 because I could get a legit copy of 2003 Pro for 18 quid through my employers.
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I have just upgraded to Office 2010 Professional Plus. Not really for any of the fabulous features, but because I have just managed to get it through the employee purchase scheme at work for the princely sum of £8.95! Only downside is I had to download it, as the install media more than doubled the price to an extortionate £19.25! :-)
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Excel 2007 - in fact, Office 2007 - Zero
