The Single Worst Thing About Office 2007
I've said here that I'm a fan of Microsoft Office 2007. After using it even more, for most of my daily work, I still am. But one major downside merits mention: It's kind of an unfinished product.
What I mean by that is that the suite's new interface, which is by far the major reason to consider upgrading, has only been implemented in some of the applications. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access have it throughout; Outlook has it for the tools relating to composing e-mails, tasks, and contacts.
But everything else in Office 2007 has the old, traditional, menu-oriented interface--the one which Microsoft says its own research shows users think pales in comparison to the new one. Here, for instance, is a bit of Word 2007's tabbed, visual look:
And here's Publisher 2007, same as it ever was:
How come the new interface isn't everywhere in Office 2007? You've got to think that it's at least in part because Microsoft chose not to invest the time and energy it would have required. (Clearly, when it decided where to direct its resources, some of the suite's members were more equal than others.) But when I've asked company execs, they've told me that they don't think the new UI belongs everywhere, since it's primarily a boon for tasks that involve document creation and editing.
Which is a reasonable excuse for why, say, the Groove collaboration application doesn't need it. But Publisher and the OneNote note-taker are totally about creating and editing documents. Both would benefit hugely from the new interface--particularly the way it makes it a heck of a lot easier to add extremely slick graphics to documents. Spend some time in Word or PowerPoint and jump into Publisher or OneNote, and it really does feel as if you've taken a major step back into the past.
Visio 2007 is another graphics-intensive program that could really use the new interface but doesn't have it; this business-graphics program doesn't come in any of the Office 2007 versions, but it's touted as being part of the "2007 Microsoft Office System." The notion that apps that didn't come in any Office box were kin to those that did has always been a little shaky; now it seems like marketing hype that the products in question don't even try to live up to.
I've asked Microsoft if it plans to add the new user interface to applications (within or outside of Office) that don't have it. The reps I've talked to have been pretty noncommittal, though they've agreed, more or less, that doing so would be a worthy goal. I sure think so--and I really hope that we don't have to wait until the next suite-wide overhaul before Publisher, OneNote, and Visio are just as good as the 2007 versions of the core apps.
For now, Office 2007--as good as it is in multiple major respects--feels a little a 2007 equivalent of what Microsoft Office would have been like in the mid-1990s if it had still included a bunch of DOS applications...
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If you used the tool bars that came with the previous version of Office then Yes, the new interface is an improvement. But if you are an user like myself who junked the default Office tool bars and designed you own, then the new interface is a hindrance and not an improvement. There are a lot of things that I like about the new version of office, but the ribbon bar is not one of them.
I'm just not getting it -- I've tried out Office2007 and I've not seen anything warranting the upgrade. There are a few nice-to-have features but not a single "gotta-have"... If the new ribbon interface is the only reason to upgrade, well, your business must have a lot more money than mine to be spending on that...
My take is that Office2007 will only be put in place for customer-facing roles. I'll keep my current version of Office for the rest of the organization.
Not only does Office 2007 not have any "must-have" apps, the fact that you cannot customize the Ribbon at all is a major turn-off. Why must I have the button for strikethrough text visible all the time?
Answer: In order to save you the trouble of hunting for a command, the folks in Redmond decided to put *every* command at your fingertips. Yuck.
As others have noted, there's really nothing compelling here to justify the cost of upgrading. The basic features are still there, and still pretty much work as well or as badly as they always did. The dramatic reduction in customization possiblitiles is actually a drawback (consider whether you would want all those feature buttons visible if you're trying to teach your 73 year old German speaking mother in law how to use email. Not. )
The point of a good GUI is a *consistent* look and feel between applications; we now have multiple interfaces that don't work the same way. Not good design.
Also, what's with the price? Do they really believe that this thing is $400+ worth of ease of use to justify upgrading? Compared to OpenOffice at basically the price of downloading, and no annoying activation nonsense to deal with, or $40 for a CD? It's just not a compelling story, folks, particularly for the 98% of casual users.