The Stupidity of Office 07

[jstiene]

Is it just me or is Office 07 one of the stupidest business decissions ever made?

Here people have been telling me about open office, and other suites replacing MS Office and me telling them corporations would never go for retraining 100,000 employees on a new office suite.

So what does Microsoft do? Come out with a version of Office in 07 that removes all the menu items, replaces them with tabs, and makes its COMPETITORS OFFICE VERSIONS EASIER FOR USERS TO LEARN THAN THEIR OWN OFFICE SUITE.

What in the hell? I can see how there was no gradual way to introduce tabs with icons. But why the giant icons, and more importantly, why REMOVE all the old menu items so customers are totally screwed trying to find familiar functionality?

I dont think there is even any option of putting the menus back. Do they just think that strong arming everyone into a new version and forcing them to learn it when the stop licensing XP and 03 will force people to buy new software without millions of people being very, very pissed off?

I did an upgrade on Access from 97 to 07 a few weeks ago for a company and could barely find my way around Excel and Access. I had to make a form with all the old menu options, opening traditional windows.

I've seen software that supposedly puts 07 back the way it was, but is an exe and I don't trust it, and don't have a version of 07 here.

Luckily the backend is pretty much the same for Excel and just about everything that works in XP and 03 will still work, though if you have backend references some things might be missing if they are old, like DAO 2.5-3.5.

And in Access, forget it. They totally messed with the interface. Why does everything have to look like a web page now with left top and middle sections? They did this with .net, Office, and supposedly Vista has done similar things?

What moron decided to risk their monopoly on office suites and operating systems forcing radical change on customers?

 

[gwkenny]

I am withdrawing from the conversation because to me, the following comment:

Like the car industry. They just could not work with an XL chaos.

demonstrates that you still view XL (spreadsheets) as a cause of obstruction and not just a tool whose obstruction or facilitation in the business process depends on it's implimentation; and that spreadsheets, in and of themselves, are not obstructive.

Good luck to you!

 

[lalbatros]

Again I agree with you: excel is only a tool.

To be precise in wording, now I explain again:

I am not saying that excel is a bad tool or that excel damages the organization.
I am just saying that using excel in many business streams is damaging, dangerous and inefficient.
I also said that this is a frequent situation and that I experience is everyday.
(despite that this has been diagnosed officially in my compagny, and aknowledged)
And you have provided some exemples that support my view.

Now, I also explained how a great tool excel could also be form some purposes.
As I said I use it for very specialized applications involviong only a few people.
Of course I also use it as a daily perosnal tool.
And I use it often for end-of-stream data analysis, like pivoting on tables from a database and reporting.
But I repeated to my collegues to stop using it at many places. This will happen but it needs time. In other companies that I know, the decisions have been much harder: 99% in Sap.