Comments on: Why Microsoft’s ribbon sucks

By: joejoe

joejoe — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:18:08 +0000

yes, stop forcing this communist control freak bull cr@p on us. listen to your customers. arrogance is right. do it our way. well there are a lot of different people out there. I work in IT and i am starting a MAC revolution. apple all the way!!! microsoft fail.

By: joejoe

joejoe — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:11:50 +0000

yes. The ribbon sucks. it takes forever to scan accross the ribbon to find what you are looking for.
Microsof is so stupid and self indulgent. and they won’t listen to their customers. I have been using it for a long time and it has slowed my productivty down so much. It is like they are preaching to the world – “you are moving too fast. here is a new product that will help you slow down.” vista was the same way. tell that to my boss. idiots.

By: Me

Me — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 23:08:43 +0000

I learned to read a while back. Bring back the drop down menu’s or at least the option to turn them on. Icons and pictures are for artists. Remember the Wordperfect 5.1 and Lotus 123 ‘compatability’ modes for users to switch to the MS equivalent products?

By: Todd

Todd — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:08:12 +0000

Have to agree with the people who hate office 2007. I had to use google to find out how to undo. If your wondering its the curved arrow way up in the top left corner. I don’t think theres any other way. Also something that no one mentioned is the new docx format. Why change something that works to something that doesnt work with older versions. Of course each time you save you can switch it to a .doc format.

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:39:21 +0000

Well, I faced Office 2007 just recently. I am a user who needs Word for just 2-page document. However, I immediately switched to Open Office as soon as the new UI has some sort of moronic feel. It looks like there is some Great Moron in the Microsoft who made a decision that changing interface is what users need, and everyone had to cope with that. So what can I do if I hate this bullshit-bingo attitude (we are looking into the future blah-blah) since my Soviet childhood?

What makes it feel moronic? Actually, UI is nothing but the extension of the keyboard. And re-arranging means exactly the same that re-arranging keys on a keyboard. No one will do it in sound mind, not because the key location is perfect but because professionals use keyboard not looking at it. Keys re-arranging means total disruption for all administrative work and the explanation that in this way you can find them easier is completely moronic, isn’t it?

Secondly, the screen is something like your desk. One with a desk keeps most of the stuff in drawers, leaving just some necessary items on top. This is how the old UI worked. The new one has all tools taken out, so it’s just messy. Where there are just icons, you have to be finding out what they are, whereas icons+words congests the space with the same info repeated twice. Finally, if you hide the ribbon in order to get rid of this mess, you need not less clicking than it was before. And let me add I don’t like too much pictures as I am no more in a kindergarten and can use written words.

As if the very idea of buttons re-arranging is not silly enough, they decided to add a couple of things which simply abuse common sense. In the old UI everything you would do to a FILE (i. e. open, save, print) was in the FILE toolbar, which is no more there. Well, you expect to find this functions in the HOME tab, but there are just functions from former FORMATING and EDITING tabs. And “file” functions are carefully hidden under Microsoft button that doesn’t have any name and looks like old Microsoft emblem which was ever unclickable. This is the reason why experienced users have to spend minutes to find out how to open, save or print a document as someone decided to intimidate them deliberately.

There are other things but this is what came as the last drop of my patience. I just don’t want to go back to the USSR where people were constantly led to the happy future for everyone.

I’m just surprised why companies, anticipating productivity losses still switching to Office 2007 instead of boycotting it, as well as schools and even government. Why office staff doesn’t try to go on strike? Cheers.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:53:35 +0000

As a high school student, I have no other choice but to use this. It's ingrained in the curriculum to the point that the ribbon is the curriculum. I am not a power user of word processors by any means, I am fully open to new GUI changes, but this is absolutely horrible! It is probably the worst UI I have ever had the displeasure to work with, it is completely counterintuitive. The "office button" is extremely confusing, I thought for the first hour of using the app that it was just eye-candy while struggling to perform basic operations such as undo (I probably would have never figured it out had I not been informed by the instructor). I like to explore interfaces on my own, as i use many third party and indie applications and have run into some strange interfaces, but very few were unusable, and none of them even approached the difficulties I've been experiencing with Office 2007.

By: Slim Whitman

Slim Whitman — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:15:43 +0000

I have heard on several occasions that when Bill Gates was given a demo of the new Office 2007 UI, his first question was “How do I toggle to get the classic menu?” and when he was told there is no way to do so, he predicted unresolved disappointment on the part of long term users.

Here’s one link that relays the story: http://www.mrexcel.com/classicexcelmenu.html

I know my company has not yet migrated to 2007 for this very reason. In fact, the US Government has just now (start of 2010) started migrating some of its agencies.

Huge screw-up in MS product marketing, or is it simply hubris?

By: Anon Amouse

Anon Amouse — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:31:36 +0000

Quote: “It’s hard to please everyone.”

Implement a way to COMPLETELY turn off the asinine “ribbon” and use the EXACT SAME previous user interface, problem solved.

This mentality of *forcing* a “new” UI “invention” on everyone comes from software arrogance and nothing else period.

Get a clue people, these microsoft “managers” and “engineers” are being highly paid to annoy millions of people.

By: Wayne Bloss

Wayne Bloss — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:51:02 +0000

Completely Agree. Microsoft couldn’t have made Office harder to use if they tried.

OpenOffice is looking better and better every time I have to use the Office Ribbon.

By: Richard Mailman

Richard Mailman — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:37:21 +0000

The biggest problem with Office 2007 is (and contrary to one of the comments above) that it really is not customizable. You can put a few of your favorites in one toolbar, but you cannot alter the program to suit your needs. In 2003, I made custom toolbars that engaged macros to do all sorts of things that saved me time (e.g., start a letter complete with letterhead, date, formatting, and electornic signature, all with one click). I also added frequently used commands to places where I knew they were and could access easily. The problem with 2007 is that they put in this kludge of an interface and essentially removed the customizability (which is what made Office products so good). I have not yet had time to play with the 2010 beta, but some of the MS info suggests they may have heard at least some of our comments.

P.S. I downgraded (I had purchased a personal copy early) back to Office 2003, and had to fight to keep the IT people in my organization from “upgrading” me again when they went through the whole organization doing this. This is the same IT group that has never allowed Vista machines to function (all new computers had to be downgraded to XP) —- Win7 machines will not be allowed until Summer 2010. But they did make sure we all were to have the “benefits” of Office 2007. Sigh.