Leaked: newer Office 2010 Technical Preview build

Barman58 said:

Hello Gary,

It's been said that "80% of word users only use 20% of the features" but as the actual 20% varies with each user all the functions are required.

I found the ribbon a little strange at first and it's the fact that the functions available are fixed that has I think stopped a lot of business people making the switch (it's not always about cost ), and i was amazes that Microsoft made the ribbon fixed in the first place

My place of employment switched to 2007 a few weeks ago and there was a LOT of complaining about it due to the ribbon. I've grown used to it an really like the new interface. Especially in 2010.

When 2007 first came out I trialed it on a small group of users, the support requests from this group massively increased, so being the lazy admin that I am, I rolled them back to 2003 and scrapped all further rollout plans.

jimbo45 said:

HI all

Why this ribbon causes so much problems I can't understand.

A little bit of "RTFM" and you'll see on Office 2007 (and 2010) pressing CTRL+F1 gets rid of it on all the office apps.

To re-instate it just press CTRL+F1 again.

Seems a silly thing to go back a few releases just because of a feature that you can quite easily turn on and off.

Cheers
jimbo

Good Day Jimbo.

I did mention in my post that I had "read the FM" and had, in addition, taken a couple of online classes to learn how the @#$%^&* ribbon works. I also spent quite a numbers of hours over a 6 month period of time becoming familiar with it. I am familiar with the little up arrow at the far right of the menu bar which hides the @#$%^&* ribbon. And as I stated, I do (did) keep it hid until needed. (I tend to use mouse rather than keyboard shortcuts.) The fact remains that the @#$%^&* ribbon is anything in the world but intuitive. One must rely strictly on memory to perform whatever action they wish to perform, as no step leads logically to another. As evidenced by the 2003 to 2007 guide published by Microsoft (I'm too lazy to look up the website at the moment. I'm sure you are familiar with it anyway) it requires 3 to 5 motions (mouse clicks) in 2007 to perform the same operation that was/is possible to perform in 1 to 2 motions in 2003. If it were possible to actually turn off the ribbon and use a normal drop down menu with sub menus that are logically arranged and automatically open when one hovers over them, I would do so and not have problem with the @#$%^&* ribbon. Until then, to me and my arthritic fingers and feeble mind, the ribbon is inefficient, un-intuitive, and undesireable. That's "why this ribbon causes so much problem".

That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.

jimbo45 said:

I'm sure "In due course" it should appear on Technet for more testers to get it 100% legally.

Can anybody tell me if it's been improved from the "leaked" version from around April / May.

I found the (at that time) white bland background horrible - not possible to customise it further - and didn't see any particular reason to upgrade from Office 2007. The only advantage at that time was the fact that a 64 bit version would eventually be available but for these types of applications it doesn't really matter if it's 32 / 64 bit since even a large spreadsheet is unlikely to test the resources of even a quite modest modern laptop.

However this was a very early probable even pre-alpha version so I hope its a lot better now.

Any testers out there -- significant differences from 2007 -- from the point of a Workstation user --not really interested in the "Windows Live" or "Corporate collaboration" pieces.

Cheers
jimbo

Jimbo, there is a quite enhanced photo management capability in Word 2010 beta that did not exist in 2007. There are a few other added features that I have not had (or have not taken) the opportunity to explore. Even though I despise the ribbon, the beta version that I downloaded from TechNet about one week ago does "seem" to offer several new features.

I guess it is not actually beta. It is a "Technical Preview".

Barman58 said:

Hi All,

Goodies time

I assume that the MS conversion mentioned was ....

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/wo...744321033.aspx

There is also a printable version of this same information (PDF if memory serves me correct). I am not at home where I have the printed copy and I cannot find it online at the moment. When I return home next week, I will post the URL for the printable copy for anyone interested.