How would you make Microsoft Office better?

Carl Forster said:

MS, YES get rid of the "RIBBON" Interface or at least let us users that want the"CLASSIC" inferace the option to use it, BOTH Offiee and WIN7.
And MS wonder why people still prefer to use Office 2003, and as they have "MS") NOW stated Office 2007 has NOT had the uptake they would have expected. WIN 7 will sufer the same FATE (NO "Classic") interface.
Sorry to tell you I use VISTA Ult 64bit and Vista 32bit PRO and Office 2003, and am happy, have tried WIN7 for 3 weeks SORRY RIBBISH (Librarys UI, START,) and NO OPTION to use the "CLASSIC" as in VISTA.
I and 115 users will be skipping WIN7.

Hi all

If you want the simple Interface on Office 2007 ( I hate saying RTFM) but why not just press CTRL F1 to minimize the ribbon and if you right click quick accesss toolbar you can customize it to your hearts content.

I find the Full ribbon a bit horrible myself but I've customized the quick access toolbar so its fine for me.

I Found the Insert new rows / colums in a table in a Word 2007 document impossible to find until I scrolled around with the menus.

I do agree about the horribleness of the ribbon in 2007.

Whist the functionality of the Office 2007 is good -- why not let users START with a small classic interface (as per 2003) and they can USE the extra options as they become more proficient.

Also the default on a small Netbook with an 8 inch looks REDICULUOUS -- so much of the screen real estate is taken up by that ribbon unless you minimize it.

Cheers
jimbo

DarkNovaGamer said:

Thats a very interesting opinion. I personally love the ribbon. Why can people just not learn to adapt? We are humans. That is something we should be able to do.

I don't work for MS or any of its affiliates, but I feel it is my solemn duty to stand up and be counted in support of The Ribbon.

I frickin' love the ribbon. I want to marry it and have its babies. It's the best thing to happen to GUIs since the introduction of the mouse. It adapts to me, so that I don't have to do the opposite.

As an Office user, I am quite hopeless. Most of the time I don't even know what I want to do with the document, and if I did know I wouldn't be able to articulate my plans in a way which would lend itself to searching Help. That's when I look up to find the Ribbon has magically morphed to show me functionality which is relevant to what I'm currently doing! I mash some buttons on the context-sensitive menu, and Robert's my father's brother - the document looks ten times better than I ever dared to dream :)

[quote=H2SO4;313870]

DarkNovaGamer said:

I frickin' love the ribbon. I want to marry it and have its babies.

me and the ribbon eloped last week.
sorry.

I would add this feature.


Have a prompt when you click the print that can be turned off if you wish but have it say.

"Did you spell check yet?". If that would come up when people push print I think it would be a killer idea. So many people I talk to forget to spell check or waste paper printing it out and then having to print it out again because they had forget to spell check the first time.

Just think it would be a little nice feature for those who forget.

I love the ribbon too. This has been a great innovation by Microsoft.