Insert options

[Jon Combe]

I've recently been "upgraded" to Office 2010 from Office 2003 and find
the "Ribbon" interface really horrible. A good example is in Excel. In
Excel 2003 if I wanted to insert a row or column it was simple. Go to
the insert menu and select either rows or columns.

To do the same task in Excel 2010 the logical place to go is the
"Insert" ribbon. This lets me insert lots of things, but none of them
are rows or columns. To do that I have to go to the "Home" ribbon and
then there is an Insert button from where I can insert rows or
columns.

I thought one of the goals of the ribbon was to make Office easier to
use, but I fail to see how is a user supposed to know what things they
can insert from the drop down "Insert" button and what they can insert
on the "Insert" ribbon. Sorry but this is a mess and worse it doesn't
seem to be possible to customise it.

Other examples include why the right click menu in Excel includes
"Paste Special" but Word does not. The interface is just so
inconsistent and such a mess. Why did Microsoft do it ?

 

[Jim Cone]

Re: "Why did Microsoft do it?"

I can only guess...
To make it different from the older versions.
For the eye candy (all those wonderful large icons).
To sell the sizzle not the steak.
To force upgrades and keep the money rolling in.
'---
Excel 97 is faster, has a much more responsive help file (with appropriate topics)
Doesn't crash as often and with a few changes would... but I dream.
'---
Your IT department or your boss spent the money for Office 2010 - so something's working for MS.

xl2010 has a few kinks...
Those extras rows/columns are mostly non-useable.
Fill a few of those million row columns with formulas and see how long it takes to calculate
-or-
Try Go To Special (constants) on 300,000 to 400,000 cells - took 18 minutes on my machine (3.2
GHZ).

On the other hand, you can right-click a cell and get the Insert Entire Row/Column option.
I feel better already. <g>
'---
Jim Cone
Portland, Oregon USA
http://www.mediafire.com/PrimitiveSoftware
(Extras for Excel: Date picker, Clean Data, Classic Menu ...)





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