The ribbon (at least some parts of it) is the one thing I enjoy about the PC version of Office. VERY quickly, I can set things that I prefer: 0.5" margins all around, font, size, landscape, etc. I could see how some people wouldn't like it, especially if you don't have time to get used to it. Unfortunately, this was the one feature left out of Mac Office 2007 (or am I wrong?)
Aside from the fact that there isn't any "Mac Office 2007"...
agreed. At work I frequently use the pc with the old version of office. The problem with the ribbon is the abstract tab headings. It's not an automatic process to identify which tab something should be under. You have to engage in this intense conceptual philosophical process of guessing where some arbitrary programmer thinks something should go. Just let us customize the toolbar so it's a single view and I can put the twenty or so commands I frequently use at a single glance.
well, you actually CAN do that already in Office 2007 and 2010, I'm sure you can do that on the Mac version too. It's very handy.
If you don't like ribbon just use the toolbar palette, what's the big deal? If you minimize the ribbon it takes up about as much space as the old elements gallery toolbar. If you like ribbon then great, go ahead and use it... Now if they got rid of the menubar THAT would be something to be angry over.
Why does it take MacBU years to do anything with Office when it's their only product, and when they have probably 50+ people working for them?
They've had close to 10 years to implement Arabic/Hebrew support but haven't been bothered to. Office has always ran less reliably or as fast as its PC counterparts. Really, I don't care anymore.
I'm using Office 2004 until it won't run anymore; on my PPC Macs -- that should be never, and on my Intel Macs until Rosetta disappears (will it ever?)
My next move will be OpenOffice and/or Pages. Most likely OpenOffice since I would have complete cross-platform compatibility on not only OS X and Windows, but also my Linux machines.
I'm sure this is good news for some of you though, and I'm happy MS continues to toss you a few crumbs so you'll stay on board (not that you have a choice, since you're probably tied to it for work-related reasons).
I agree with every word you made.
MS Office for Mac is horrible, but here's to hoping this time will be different.
I couldn't agree more with this...I can NEVER find anything in word on the PC with this ribbon thing (didn't know that was what it was called)...and I've been using Word 2007 for a year now
You're just holding onto old mental patterns... you're probably over 45, I work with a few people around that age that hate the ribbon, while everybody under 30 likes it.
You should just stop thinking about features and think activity... it's pretty easy when you try. When you need to do anything that has to do with "putting stuff on the page" go to insert, when you're dealing with how the page looks, go to "page layout" and so on.. from there it's easy to visually scan the ribbon for what you need. USe it this way for 4 days, and your problems will be over.
On the Mac, Ctrl-U is the keystroke to edit the current cell. F2 means "Copy" (of you ever used an old Extended Keybard II, you know why...) YOu can use Ctrl-U in all versions of Excel from 98 up!
Schwieb
MacBU Dev Lead
Schwieb,
Thanks for stopping by! I'm glad to hear about menus and VB.
What's the status of equations? Will the Mac be able to view and edit Word 2007-style equations?
"You?ve told us that working together across platforms is a priority to you and that?s why we are making Office for Mac 2011 the best, most compatible productivity suite on the Mac."
ABOUT TIME. Assuming it's true...
The combination of Windows, PowerPoint, and not-quite-full compatibility between Office documents is among the biggest setbacks to civilization since the Dark Ages.
I know there are Office for Mac haters out there (a few might show up on this very thread). But I'm not one of them. For me, Office for Mac means that I don't have to run Windows at home (like I do at work). Just so you know where I stand, I'm a big, big fan.
That said, I do NOT love the ribbon on Office 2007. IMO it's a huge impediment vs. the menu interface for those of us who are not brand new to Office (or computers in general). I'm asking that you please NOT REPLACE THE MENU! If some users want the ribbon, fine, but make it possible to at least optionally run Office the old way with the standard menu; at least Word and Excel. That is important to me and probably to most of the Office for Mac users (again, ignoring the haters who don't count as they probably aren't actually customers in the first place).
I'm totally with you. I use Word 2004, and I have over 50 tools (icons) in my toolbar in 2 rows. That takes less than 1 inch of vertical space - the rest of the space is for the document (what a concept!).
I do like all of the things Word and Excel can do, and I'll keep using the 2004 version. (I find Pages lacks too many features that I use). I won't buy a new version of Office with the ribbon interface, though. If some people like it, that's great, but give us the option to make it disappear completely, and not waste screen space.
The other thing I dislike about the ribbon is that it tries to anticipate what you want to do next, so it changes the tools that are available. This drives me crazy, because I never want to do what Micorsoft thinks I want to do. In any version of Office I immediately turn off all automatic functions, but there are still some things it does automatically that I don't want. The ribbon interface makes all that worse.
You're just holding onto old mental patterns... you're probably over 45, I work with a few people around that age that hate the ribbon, while everybody under 30 likes it.
You should just stop thinking about features and think activity... it's pretty easy when you try. When you need to do anything that has to do with "putting stuff on the page" go to insert, when you're dealing with how the page looks, go to "page layout" and so on.. from there it's easy to visually scan the ribbon for what you need. USe it this way for 4 days, and your problems will be over.
Trust me, I do usability for a living!
The problem is nobody can stop thinking "WHY did MS do it?". The ribbon is a classic solution looking for a problem; nobody asked for it or wanted it, but we got it anyway.
Suppose Adobe redid PhotoShop with a ribbon (for no other reason than to market a new version). The productivity loss would be tremendous as the industry had to re-learn what previously worked. I can't imagine what the training costs would be. Yet MS does this with Office, and anyone who resists gets labeled "old school:.
Since there isn't enough information about the new product here to make any kind of intelligent comment, I will just say that since Mac Office today is basically a giant steaming pile of poop ... almost anything they do will be a welcome change.
I'm more enthused by the news that they are thinking of making a version for the iPad. To do that, they would have to rethink every single thing about Office as a product, and that can only be a good thing. Maybe playing around in the iPad sandbox will give these people the chutzpah necessary to actually make some changes, instead of just bolting on this years gee-gaw and calling it a day.
The application Microsoft that should develop for the iPad is OneNote. It's marvelous for taking notes and would fit perfectly with the portability of iPads. It's also the only application that Windows has that I would like to see running on Macs. Until it runs on my MacBook, I'll settle for it on an iPad.
Microsoft Windows is a necessity to me for 2 reasons. First, the real Microsoft Office is on Windows. (Want to say I'm wrong? Port the Windows version to the Mac. Just a straight port. It would be fine).
Second, SAS needs windows. I do own Mac Office 2008. Looks pretty, but lacks features, and is unstable. And Excel calculates slowly and lacks features.
In the corporate world, only Windows Office will do. Mac Office is not the same thing. It can't survive a real beating the way WinOffice does.
Office For Mac 2011: Mac Toolbar or MS "Ribbon"? We can't decide so we're putting BOTH in! Yay!
And look at all the vertical space you just lost, MacBook users.
Oh, and pay close attention to the Mac Toolbar: Microsoft STILL USES A FLOPPY DISK ICON. Do teens even know what a floppy disk IS? Any guesses on what clicking this icon does? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
The more time goes on, the more I'm convinced that the sole reason Office still exists is that Office still exists.
There's so much cruft in the "Microsoft" part of Word that should be up in the "Cocoa" part of Word that it's embarrassing.
And tragic. Users are losing so much screen real estate because MS insists that users have a smooth transitional experience between Windows and Mac versions of Microsoft apps than they do between different Macintosh apps.
In other words, they put themselves before their users, something that NO good Mac developer does.
Users always are the top priority for Mac developers. Ironically, WordPerfect learned this extraordinarily well in going from their original port of WP 1.0 to 3.0.
Yet more corroboration that Office still exists solely because it still exists.
PowerPoint on Mac suck no matter what so whatever.
Yes, but it sucks on the PC too. Things that can get done with a couple of clicks in Keynote takes several visits to dialog boxes in PP. The last time I had to collaborate with someone using PowerPoint, I felt like I was beating my head against the wall trying to force it to do what I wanted. Keynote is a joy to use, and in many ways is a far more capable product - if Apple could find a way to give it access to live data, it'd be just about perfect.
You're just holding onto old mental patterns... you're probably over 45, I work with a few people around that age that hate the ribbon, while everybody under 30 likes it.
You should just stop thinking about features and think activity... it's pretty easy when you try. When you need to do anything that has to do with "putting stuff on the page" go to insert, when you're dealing with how the page looks, go to "page layout" and so on.. from there it's easy to visually scan the ribbon for what you need. USe it this way for 4 days, and your problems will be over.
Trust me, I do usability for a living!
It's not a matter of the ribbon being there or not. It's a matter of the value of the ribbon in the context of everything else, of Microsoft trying to ride Roman on who's more important, MS or the user (I'm a UI/UX developer myself).
It's all that visual clutter, it's the vertical space taken up in a world where horizontal space is becoming cheaper and cheaper all the time. And, mind you, vertical space is the far more important dimension in a word processing app.
As for being over 45 and under 30....a floppy disc icon in the toolbar?
I think that says it all for Microsoft and their so-called willingness to throw away what needs throwing away in order to create the best possible usability.
Comments
The ribbon (at least some parts of it) is the one thing I enjoy about the PC version of Office. VERY quickly, I can set things that I prefer: 0.5" margins all around, font, size, landscape, etc. I could see how some people wouldn't like it, especially if you don't have time to get used to it. Unfortunately, this was the one feature left out of Mac Office 2007 (or am I wrong?)
Aside from the fact that there isn't any "Mac Office 2007"...
Although, the things I heard about 2008 and the fact document compatibility is not such a big issue anymore makes the choice not so clear cut.
All I care about is VBA support. If that comes back, I'll update.
Looks like you will be updating then...
Mail and iCal do exactly what I need and no more (and yes this is at work). So I don't really care what they do with Outlook.
PowerPoint on Mac suck no matter what so whatever.
I can only hope that MS can spruce up Word and Excel a lot speed wise. 64bit Office for Mac would be awesome as well
Ribbon? *shrug* I can live with or without it. Kinda figured it would show up on the Mac version sooner or later.
agreed. At work I frequently use the pc with the old version of office. The problem with the ribbon is the abstract tab headings. It's not an automatic process to identify which tab something should be under. You have to engage in this intense conceptual philosophical process of guessing where some arbitrary programmer thinks something should go. Just let us customize the toolbar so it's a single view and I can put the twenty or so commands I frequently use at a single glance.
well, you actually CAN do that already in Office 2007 and 2010, I'm sure you can do that on the Mac version too. It's very handy.
Why does it take MacBU years to do anything with Office when it's their only product, and when they have probably 50+ people working for them?
They've had close to 10 years to implement Arabic/Hebrew support but haven't been bothered to. Office has always ran less reliably or as fast as its PC counterparts. Really, I don't care anymore.
I'm using Office 2004 until it won't run anymore; on my PPC Macs -- that should be never, and on my Intel Macs until Rosetta disappears (will it ever?)
My next move will be OpenOffice and/or Pages. Most likely OpenOffice since I would have complete cross-platform compatibility on not only OS X and Windows, but also my Linux machines.
I'm sure this is good news for some of you though, and I'm happy MS continues to toss you a few crumbs so you'll stay on board (not that you have a choice, since you're probably tied to it for work-related reasons).
I agree with every word you made.
MS Office for Mac is horrible, but here's to hoping this time will be different.
My primary Office Suite is IBM Lotus Symphony.
I couldn't agree more with this...I can NEVER find anything in word on the PC with this ribbon thing (didn't know that was what it was called)...and I've been using Word 2007 for a year now
You're just holding onto old mental patterns... you're probably over 45, I work with a few people around that age that hate the ribbon, while everybody under 30 likes it.
You should just stop thinking about features and think activity... it's pretty easy when you try. When you need to do anything that has to do with "putting stuff on the page" go to insert, when you're dealing with how the page looks, go to "page layout" and so on.. from there it's easy to visually scan the ribbon for what you need. USe it this way for 4 days, and your problems will be over.
Trust me, I do usability for a living!
Menus are not being removed. Unlike Windows Office, we're keeping the familiar Mac interface with the standard menubar at the top of the screen.
VB and Macros are back in Office 2011. I blogged about this a year and a half ago: http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2008/05/...-visual-basic/
On the Mac, Ctrl-U is the keystroke to edit the current cell. F2 means "Copy" (of you ever used an old Extended Keybard II, you know why...) YOu can use Ctrl-U in all versions of Excel from 98 up!
Schwieb
MacBU Dev Lead
Schwieb,
Thanks for stopping by! I'm glad to hear about menus and VB.
What's the status of equations? Will the Mac be able to view and edit Word 2007-style equations?
"You?ve told us that working together across platforms is a priority to you and that?s why we are making Office for Mac 2011 the best, most compatible productivity suite on the Mac."
ABOUT TIME. Assuming it's true...
The combination of Windows, PowerPoint, and not-quite-full compatibility between Office documents is among the biggest setbacks to civilization since the Dark Ages.
Dear MacBU:
I know there are Office for Mac haters out there (a few might show up on this very thread). But I'm not one of them. For me, Office for Mac means that I don't have to run Windows at home (like I do at work). Just so you know where I stand, I'm a big, big fan.
That said, I do NOT love the ribbon on Office 2007. IMO it's a huge impediment vs. the menu interface for those of us who are not brand new to Office (or computers in general). I'm asking that you please NOT REPLACE THE MENU! If some users want the ribbon, fine, but make it possible to at least optionally run Office the old way with the standard menu; at least Word and Excel. That is important to me and probably to most of the Office for Mac users (again, ignoring the haters who don't count as they probably aren't actually customers in the first place).
I'm totally with you. I use Word 2004, and I have over 50 tools (icons) in my toolbar in 2 rows. That takes less than 1 inch of vertical space - the rest of the space is for the document (what a concept!).
I do like all of the things Word and Excel can do, and I'll keep using the 2004 version. (I find Pages lacks too many features that I use). I won't buy a new version of Office with the ribbon interface, though. If some people like it, that's great, but give us the option to make it disappear completely, and not waste screen space.
The other thing I dislike about the ribbon is that it tries to anticipate what you want to do next, so it changes the tools that are available. This drives me crazy, because I never want to do what Micorsoft thinks I want to do. In any version of Office I immediately turn off all automatic functions, but there are still some things it does automatically that I don't want. The ribbon interface makes all that worse.
You're just holding onto old mental patterns... you're probably over 45, I work with a few people around that age that hate the ribbon, while everybody under 30 likes it.
You should just stop thinking about features and think activity... it's pretty easy when you try. When you need to do anything that has to do with "putting stuff on the page" go to insert, when you're dealing with how the page looks, go to "page layout" and so on.. from there it's easy to visually scan the ribbon for what you need. USe it this way for 4 days, and your problems will be over.
Trust me, I do usability for a living!
The problem is nobody can stop thinking "WHY did MS do it?". The ribbon is a classic solution looking for a problem; nobody asked for it or wanted it, but we got it anyway.
Suppose Adobe redid PhotoShop with a ribbon (for no other reason than to market a new version). The productivity loss would be tremendous as the industry had to re-learn what previously worked. I can't imagine what the training costs would be. Yet MS does this with Office, and anyone who resists gets labeled "old school:.
I'm more enthused by the news that they are thinking of making a version for the iPad. To do that, they would have to rethink every single thing about Office as a product, and that can only be a good thing. Maybe playing around in the iPad sandbox will give these people the chutzpah necessary to actually make some changes, instead of just bolting on this years gee-gaw and calling it a day.
Second, SAS needs windows. I do own Mac Office 2008. Looks pretty, but lacks features, and is unstable. And Excel calculates slowly and lacks features.
In the corporate world, only Windows Office will do. Mac Office is not the same thing. It can't survive a real beating the way WinOffice does.
And look at all the vertical space you just lost, MacBook users.
Oh, and pay close attention to the Mac Toolbar: Microsoft STILL USES A FLOPPY DISK ICON. Do teens even know what a floppy disk IS? Any guesses on what clicking this icon does? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
The more time goes on, the more I'm convinced that the sole reason Office still exists is that Office still exists.
There's so much cruft in the "Microsoft" part of Word that should be up in the "Cocoa" part of Word that it's embarrassing.
And tragic. Users are losing so much screen real estate because MS insists that users have a smooth transitional experience between Windows and Mac versions of Microsoft apps than they do between different Macintosh apps.
In other words, they put themselves before their users, something that NO good Mac developer does.
Users always are the top priority for Mac developers. Ironically, WordPerfect learned this extraordinarily well in going from their original port of WP 1.0 to 3.0.
Yet more corroboration that Office still exists solely because it still exists.
PowerPoint on Mac suck no matter what so whatever.
Yes, but it sucks on the PC too. Things that can get done with a couple of clicks in Keynote takes several visits to dialog boxes in PP. The last time I had to collaborate with someone using PowerPoint, I felt like I was beating my head against the wall trying to force it to do what I wanted. Keynote is a joy to use, and in many ways is a far more capable product - if Apple could find a way to give it access to live data, it'd be just about perfect.
You're just holding onto old mental patterns... you're probably over 45, I work with a few people around that age that hate the ribbon, while everybody under 30 likes it.
You should just stop thinking about features and think activity... it's pretty easy when you try. When you need to do anything that has to do with "putting stuff on the page" go to insert, when you're dealing with how the page looks, go to "page layout" and so on.. from there it's easy to visually scan the ribbon for what you need. USe it this way for 4 days, and your problems will be over.
Trust me, I do usability for a living!
It's not a matter of the ribbon being there or not. It's a matter of the value of the ribbon in the context of everything else, of Microsoft trying to ride Roman on who's more important, MS or the user (I'm a UI/UX developer myself).
It's all that visual clutter, it's the vertical space taken up in a world where horizontal space is becoming cheaper and cheaper all the time. And, mind you, vertical space is the far more important dimension in a word processing app.
As for being over 45 and under 30....a floppy disc icon in the toolbar?
I think that says it all for Microsoft and their so-called willingness to throw away what needs throwing away in order to create the best possible usability.