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Why the Office Button?


ハイドン

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I've never understood why Microsoft decided to go with the Office Button in 2007. Sure, it looks nice, but from my own experience after transitioning all the machines in my workplace to Office 2007 this year its been a nightmare having to demonstrate to users how to do such simple things as 'save' and 'print' the document. Surely keeping the old 'file' label couldn't have been too bad an idea? And why not even add it into the ribbon, and finish the transition to a better UI altogether?

Well, I decided to trial this idea for myself, and adjusted the 'Normal.dotx' file to one I'd configured to have a new 'file' tab with all the options included in the drop-down menu, and I have to say, practically everyone has found it much easier to navigate.

Consider the current menu:

post-229127-1234431271_thumb.png

And compare it to a Ribbon tab with all of that menu's contents:

post-229127-1234431293_thumb.png

The tab makes commands easier to find for those who are used to the old menu system, and even those people who have adapted to the Ribbon find it more uniform and identifiable. Additionally, and this is just my opinion, it finishes the overhaul of the old drop-down interface with the new and better contextual Ribbon interface. Surely the gurus at Microsoft would have thought of this though? But apparently not. I guess I can only hope that they will read this post and consider it for Office 14.

So what are the thoughts of Office power-users such as yourselves on this whole matter? Does the Office Orb work for you? Or would you prefer an additional Ribbon tab?

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I've personally never liked the orb, and find it useless. I prefer Office 2003 style. It might be plain but it beats hunting around for what you want, although the ribbon interface has much better usability in simpler programs, such as that implemented in Wordpad and Paint in Windows 7. For the uses of Office 2007 however, everything is just too cramped.

And while we are on the subject of Office 2007, was there a reason to break almost 10 years of compatability (1997-2006) with the .doc format to create .docx? Personally I have set it so my Office saves to the older 2003 format so everyone can easily open it without needing to download compatability packs just to read a document.

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You could have saved 2 hrs by adding those controls to the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT). See pic:

post-25917-1234663325_thumb.png.

Seems like you have no icons in the QAT. 4 are there by default so you must have removed them.

Yes, that is another way to do it, but the Quick Access Toolbar's settings aren't integrated into the Normal.dotm template which makes it a huge bother to deploy a custom QAT across a network. And I probably shouldn't say this, but if my users couldn't find the buttons under the Office Button, they might not find them in the Quick Access Toolbar either. So really, a custom Ribbon tab was all I could come up with, and thankfully it's considerably reduced some very simple problems users have been having.

Edited by ハイドン
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The settings of the QAT are saved in a file in each users folder. I can't remember the name but I have this file copied automatically during installation. When I figure out the name, I'll post here.

I think the icons are easily noticed as they are standard icons.

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