Aeneas said:
Some, who take the time to read about what Office 2007 offers, will
decide it doesn't suit their needs and decide not to buy it; many
others will be impressed and buy it. Typically, those in the latter
group will take the time to learn the new user interface and how to
take advantage of other new features (both of which can be very
frustrating) and, in most cases, be rewarded for their efforts.
Others will have Office 2007 forced upon them by a decision of company
management. Some will refuse to spend the time to learn the new
interface and take advantage of the new features; instead they will
incessantly complain, often blaming the "evil empire (Microsoft)" or
their stupid bosses. Most who choose to endure the frustration of
learning the new software will be richly rewarded for their efforts.
I did not get involved in the beta trials - life's too short - but I have
been using Office 2007 since the launch and it certainly has merit, but for
those coming to it with an in-depth knowledge of the earlier version, the
change is traumatic. I now use it more or less continuously, but there is no
doubt I am less productive than I was with the earlier version, and when
faced with any complicated task it is usually simpler to start Word 2003
(which I still have available) and use that.
I personally think that Microsoft squandered good will from its vast user
base with this unneccessary change by not providing a backward compatible
user interface. Patrick Schmid's excellent Ribbon Customizer
http://ribboncustomizer.com/ goes some way to bridge the gap, but frankly
it gets in the way of learning the new layout.
Business will have a huge training implication to consider along with the
cost of the change. Users cannot simply abandon 2003 and start up work the
next day with 2007 without training or time to learn. Some users will have
been with the familiar Word layout for more than ten years. Ten years of
familiarity takes a lot of putting aside just for a pretty new face.
Then there are the implications for all the specialised processes using vba,
many of which will have to be re-written. Autotext no longer works properly
because of the lack of autocomplete (though potentially it is much better),
and it is much more difficult to customize the interface to suit personal
work practices. Even custom labels have to be re-compiled (though to be fair
that happened also at the change from Word 2000 to 2002). Only the XML file
format is really worth the effort, and that could have been added to 2003 as
the compatibility pack shows.
Excel too I now find much more difficult to use, though as I do not use it
to anything like the extent I use Word I can live with that. Only Outlook
and Publisher seem to have benefited from the changes and that is because
they have not been changed so much and the changes have been largely
beneficial. And I simply refuse to update FrontPage.
I am not averse to change and I am quite happy to learn new software if the
changes are truly beneficial. I am afraid that here the cosmetic changes are
not justified by the results. The old military expression 'bullshit baffles
brains' is well served by Office 2007
--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP
My web site
www.gmayor.com
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