Getting Office 2007 To Work

On Monday, I talked about my Windows 7 glitches, and on Wednesday it was IE 8 foibles. Today, I'm talking about getting used to Office 2007.

I was nervous about Office 2007. I remember meeting an Office 2007 product manager at a winery near Seattle. I said I was getting a lot of feedback from my newsletter readers: "In fact, I have a bunch of messages on my BlackBerry about the ribbon interface I haven't even read. Would you like to see 'em?"

He was excited, expecting great praise. Instead has was subjected to ridicule, objections and condemnation.

I mostly use Word (I haven't yet cranked up PowerPoint or Excel), and have figured out most things. But like Word 2003, Word 2007 seems to have a mind of its own. It wants to format the way it wants to format. With 2003, I just used "undo format." I'll have to search a bit to find it on 2007. The same is true with Track Changes and "accept all changes." I'm halfway through making sense of all that.

Another oddity: "recent documents" has been replaced by "recent places," which for me is far less useful. Thank goodness for keyboard shortcuts, which still largely work.

What do you love or hate about Office 2007? Let me know at dbarney@redmondmag.com.

Posted by Doug Barney on July 17, 2009 at 11:53 AM