Make Office 2007 Look Like Office 2003
Here's news: Not everyone likes the look and feel of Office 2007, and Word's interface is the one most people seem unhappy with.
"Office 2007... has a few awesome features (most notable in my mind are the new charting features), however Word in particular is impossible to use." That's from Chris G., a realtor in Pasadena.
Robert N., is the IT guy for a large law firm in Pasadena, and he said, "as a power user, I hate the fact that I can't truly customize the toolbars [in Word 2007] and can't record macros. That's just a humongous step backwards."
Make The Change To Office 2003
If you're stuck with Office 2007, yet yearning for the familiar menu of Office 2003, you now have an option. It's an add-in from Addintools: Classic Menu for Office 2007. It changes the menus for Word, Excel, Access, Outlook, and PowerPoint. The downside is that at $30, it's fairly expensive. However, you can pick up individual add-ins, say, just for Word, for $16. (Check the screen captures here and grab a trial version here.) [Thanks, Paul, good lead.]
Talkback
Have something to say? You can use Comments below or if you'd prefer, fire an e-mail right into myinbox.
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I appreciate very much that there is a learning curve for some people, but my point of view is that - in all honesty - the changes to Word 2007's menu system make it the single most intuitive program design I have ever used. Of course "intuitive" is relative because I have used the program since version 2.0 for DOS - but I firmly believe that the new menu makes Word worth the purchase price. However, the brainiac that made the default paragraph skip 10 points before the next paragraph should be strung up by his pinky toe for that annoying tidbit. (Oh and setting the font to one nobody ever heard of.)
Learning curve? This is the MS Word I've been using since 1.1? I have tried it twice now and dumped it twice. I can't spend 20 minutes hunting every time I need to perform a common operation.
This software is garbage, and a slap in the face to all of us who have been proselytizing Office for so many years,
Intuitive? Yes, if you don't need to do anything but change the font and line spacing.
Proof of this is in the simple existence of Addintools. I see no need to pay for another version of Office and then pay again to make it useable. For those stuck with this trashware, thank goodness.
I'm experimenting with Symphony, and when it comes out of beta, it might just be the tipping point to switch to Linux (Since I my new laptop came with Vista, I haven't seen so many blue screens since Windows Me). I am reformatting my new laptop this week with XP Pro and putting V in a virtual machine if I need it. Software should be getting MORE dependable and EASIER to use.
I do a lot of work using tables in microsoft word. (I know, Excel would have been much better-- not my choice.) I had my XP version of word set up very nicely with macros that were particularly useful for editing tables-- such as "insert a row below here".
Try recording the "insert a row here" macro in 2007. For some reason, mouse input has been disabled.
You are not supposed to remove functionality when you update a program. That is all.
This will be a godsend at my work. Considering the panic that ripples through the ranks with even the smallest changes to programs, the vastly different (for better or worse) menu of 2007 would probably result in my phone melting down with calls for help.
The thing that bugs me most about 2007 is the inability to customize the ribbon. I like the idea of the ribbon, but things that used to be one-click operations now require 2 or 3 clicks. Ridiculous! Plus, there are several operations I perform frequently that are buggy. For example, changing the line spacing. If you ask it to bring up the dialog box, it simply won't do it. I recorded several similar macros today that had bugs and recorded far more information than I put in. I then had to edit the macros without actually understanding the language that runs them. I never HAD to do that before.