A few months ago I “upgraded” Office on my Windows laptop at work to Office 2007. I know, I was using the older version for too long – but it was working fine, till it stopped.
A few months after the switch, I still can not figure out the disastrous Office 2007 user-interface changes. This is a huge step backwards in productivity for me. I keep staring at the huge buttons – 100 pixels tall of wasted space across the entire top section, in all office applications, the strange ribbon (what was wrong with the single line customizable toolbar?), and the unintuitive office button at the top that hides all the useful stuff – it all seems like a move designed to give a sense of “need” to the Office suite, without a real benefit to the user. It clearly seems like Microsoft was trying to desperately make it look much different, in the false pretense that “different” == “improved”. Not so.
This week I actually stopped using word on Windows and moved to WordPad just because of the slow speed and bloated and useless user interface. I know its way too simplistic, but you know what? For editing RTF files, with some headers and fonts, you don’t need more then that.
Surprisingly for me, the Office 2008 suite on the Mac is actually one of the most polished, fast and beautiful applications I have ever seen from Microsoft. Not only it is on par with every other Mac application in terms of sleek-factor, fast-loading and intuitive to use, the user interface stayed true to the original menu paradigm throughout the lasts years, and did not change for the worse as in the Windows version. My guess this is due to the strict UI guidelines developers respect in the Mac application world.
On top of that, its elegant and beautiful. There are many small touches that are hard to notice without a careful one to one comparison – like the nice shading in the active cell in Excel, the beautiful fonts in all applications, or the more useful page layout in Excel. The Mac version of Excel is becoming one of my favorite applications on the Mac.
My suggestion for all the Office power users – try Office on a Mac. You will not believe this is a Microsoft product.
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hmm.. Don’t get angry of what I’m about to say next.
I strongly disagree with you. I think eventhough some of the buttons in the new office are too big, the overall new office gives me (as a heavy user) a much better working experience than the older version.
The GUI at first was shocking more than it seemed advanced but I have to tell you it took me a few minutes to discover what I was looking for, each time I needed it. I felt completely confident in the new design to continue working knowing I will find what I need every time, And it really happened. Something about this GUI is very correct, I can’t even explain.
Add to that the fact they changed the order of the menus, placing most useful design buttons at your reach (also during writing – you get pop up design box with most-most useful tools; Add to that the fact you got live preview of design changes; Add to that the fact you have hidden tabs showing only when needed (headers, picture tools, etc) and I have to say, again, I strongly disagree and really like it.
You know I am not a big Microsoft fan; I just compromise for PC + windows (XP at the moment till am totally convinced 7 has no Vista bugs) and the rest are non MS products, but the new office is really working for me, Have to say.
I have to admit 2 things:
a) I never used Mac office in the past years.
b) You are not the first one that dislikes this new design.
on the other hand – heard a few people that like it a lot.. So go figure..
:)
Mac office seems like a new adventure I should try once..who knows..