Definitely hate. The Vista UI revisions are terrifying and counterintuitive. I keep having to help people at my workplace find simple options, and am having a horrid time finding common actions!

Being able to minimize the massive real estate it takes up might not be bad, I will need to show some folks that.

onidavin

I think the ribbon is a great step ahead of the traditional menu bar. True, you have to actually spend time to learn where everything is etc. But after you actually dedicate some time, to fix the learning curve, using it is like a breeze, and I can tell that things like my Presentations have improved DRAMATICALLY.

Dooga

O2K7 is a pain in the ass. Ribbon-lovers can disagree, but I'm no fan of it. It puts one more layer of BS for me to dig through to find what I really need.

On the other hand, it forced me to memorize the shortcut keys to many common tasks because I got tired of looking for them on the damn ribbon.

Why in the hell would I want to minimize the ribbon, it's the last vestige of hope I have for finding stuff ;)

Microsoft is doing with Office what they've perfected with Windows: selling new features as a "new" suite of programs. Naturally, I bought it.

pdok

I'm surprised anyone buys a new Office anymore. What's changed in the last 5-10 years in word-processing?

swalve

Only thing I like about Office 07 is the shiny new graph themes. Other than that, its pretty much useless for the cost, exactly same as Vista. Vista in essence is just a theme upgrade... There are way better themes than Aero. Also with Office. The ribbon isn't bad, it just causes a ton of lags. office 2003 takes less than 2 seconds, literally to load. Office 07 will take forever.

knvb1123

I don't understand why people are so afraid of change. You don't know where everything is? you didn't know where anything was when you started using the old version of office Get to know the new version. Its a very nice layout, and much faster than the old menu layout, once you get used to it.

pomokey

I had Office XP Small Business installed on all of my computers. I "upgraded" them to 07. Today, I really upgraded them to OpenOffice. Everyone's happy, now.

ish91

They installed Office 07 on the computers in the lab at school, and it is a pain in the ass. Its big, its full of useless pictures (for those who can't read?), and I have no clue where anything is now. They really should have included an option to switch back to 03 layout so I wouldn't have to spend 5 minutes trying to find the button to let me type in bold.

And don't even get me started on the new Excel. I don't think it is even capable of making a decent, useful graph. Not to mention going back and forth between 07 at school and 03 at home causes all sorts of formatting problems (even when using their "save as Office 03" or whatever its called).

yerxa

to tell the truth i never knew how to user stuff in office before 2k7. office 2k7 seems very easy to me maybe because i almost never used the pervious versions

utube2007

FYI, you can also minimize it just by double clicking on each main tab on the ribbon (I.E. for Word: Home, Insert, Page Layout, etc)and then double clicking again to make it reappear

tryandsquarepi

Thanks tryandsquarepi, that's useful.

However, even more useful for me was the tip given by Daniel Escapa in the comment section of the link. Apparently Crtl+F1 does the same thing, which allows me do to even more without having to touch the mouse.

Personally, I find the ribbon interface to be much more intuitive than the toolbar and menu system in place in older versions of Office. Now, utube2007 is an example of someone who didn't know much of the previous interface and thus found 2007 very easy and I think I fall in a similar category. I used previous versions of Office (mainly 2000, though my college uses 2003), but I didn't do anything complicated with them.

When I started using Office 2007 in beta, I found that I very much preferred it to OpenOffice.org, which I was using at the time. I'm a college student with a rather small budget for office software, and since both were free at the time, I went with the interface I prefered.

Now, I probably wouldn't buy a full-priced Office 2007, because though the interface is nice, it's not worth that much to a college student who just needs to get the work done. But I happened to catch a deal to get a free product key, so Office 2007 is my main Office Suite.

It's a bit hard for me to imagine that the interface would be that hard to pick up, though I suppose if it took yerxa 5 minutes to find the bold button, my learning curve with the software didn't match everyone's. Personally, I think people would complain more if they were familiar with the ribbon and Microsoft released something with the traditional menu and toolbar interface.

MengBomin

Is there a way to move the ribbons to one side of the window instead? I really hate auto-hiding menus and toolbars, but I have a widescreen monitor, so vertical real estate is minimal for an expanded view all the time.

greatslack

@pomokey: Who? Who won't wear the ribbon?!

nad

The ribbon only improves productivity for mouse-driven users. (How many times have we discussed keyboard shortcuts and their advantages here??) Oh, and if you say something to the effect of "But the NEW keyboard shortcuts are great, and come up ON SCREEN!" then I would kindly ask you to test the speed of the new shortcuts against the old ons. What a bummer. I've done this, and Office2003 is MUCH faster at executing shortcut commands.

ACF

I don't like the ribbon either and I don't see much new functionality with Office 2007. I was quite happy with Office 2003, but I felt I was forced to upgrade to it because the college where I teach upgraded all the classroom computers to it. In one of my classes I use Excel extensively to teach analytical methods and found it impossible to teach the class without spending time learning where stuff was.

@ACF: Most of the Office 2003 shortcuts still work in Office 2007. Try them out and you'll see.

For those of you hunting for options that got lost in the shuffle, check out these links (I've found them to guite useful:

Word:
[office.microsoft.com]

Excel:
[office.microsoft.com]

Powerpoint:
[office.microsoft.com]

There's also software you can buy that will restore your Office 2007 menus back to the classic Office 2003 menus. I've read mixed reviews about the software and I haven't tried it out for myself (I'm honestly trying to learn where things are in Office 2007):

[www.addintools.com]

Julie D

Same same... I have to hate the new UI when I constantly have to search for familiar menus, options, pointers or whatever I usually need.

ruffneck

in fact, it's double click the current selected label (Home, Insert, etc.).

and one more fact, compare 2k7 and 2k3, ribbon actually take the same amount of space as 2k3 toolbar by default

cookiez

Ah yes, the Ribbon. Just when i was adept at the menu system of Office 2003, Microsoft changes its game. Hiding it may save space, but I think that MS should have given users an option to stick to the old menu driven system. My school is offering a course on the new Office 2007 software, and I am attending, just to keep up with the times. I think I can actually feel like my brain is melting. (The first tip was something like this, "If you make a mistake, you can hit the backspace key to erase what you have writeen.") In any case, hiding the ribbon is the lesser of two evils, and helpful, until Microsoft throws another curve ball at us!

jordanswogger

Mentioned earlier, but bears repeating:

CTRL-F1 - Hide/unhide ribbon.

If you have a mouse you can program(using Logitech's VX Revolution myself), you can set a button to do the shortcut, making things a bit easier to manage.

Chef