Hating Word 2010 – how to restore productivity?

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Apparently, I’ve been living in a cave, blissfully using Word 2003. I’ve just upgraded the computer and software and the Office suite, chiefly Word 2010. And so far, it completely sucks.

I’m a simple person. I write. I’m not an art director. I use keyboard commands instead of the mouse or selecting from pull-down windows because taking my hands off the keyboard is SLOW.

I don’t get breathless about formatting and using styles (form follows function, I use Courier New and maybe Times New Roman from time to time) and I’m not a corporate user who has to track all the people who’ve had their way with my work.

I try not to use words as ornaments or substitute groovy layout for actual ideas.

The software is called Word, not Photoshop or Pretty Picture Editor.

Unfortunately, I have clients who use Word 2010 (and are annoyed at having to convert plain text up and back) or I’d probably still be using WordPerfect 5.0 for DOS.

Can anyone suggest ways to turn off all this interferrent frippery (85 styles, pull-down windows for pull-down windows, permissions, etc.) and just get back to simply writing? For example, I used to be able to simply hit alt-F and C to close a document. Now it’s a fifteen-step menu with choices about who can and can’t make changes and what they have to be wearing to be able to comment.

Thanks.

Neal

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Neal,

You might want to try UbitMenu a free download to get back the 2003 menus. Another option would be to download Open Office, also free, which can read & write MS Office file formats.

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Don’t know if this will help but there is an Office 2010 – Use these interactive guides to find the new menu and toolbar commands that you might have a look out. A friend is using it until he gets a handle on where some of the commands are.

Here’s another site a bit easier to navigate with a list of Interactive Guides

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This is a Microsoft Blog about using Word 2010 just for writing.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_office_word/archive/2009/03/02/word-throwback-just-write-edition1.aspx

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Many of the keyboard commands continue to work the same in Word 2010 – for example, you can use Ctrl+s to save a document, and Ctr+w to close it.

Gary

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Apparently, I’ve been living in a cave, blissfully using Word 2003.

Yes, read all the posts about the Word 2007 UI and you will see this is not really a new issue.

For example, I used to be able to simply hit alt-F and C to close a document. Now it’s a fifteen-step menu with choices about who can and can’t make changes and what they have to be wearing to be able to comment.

When I use Word 2007, I miss the Alt+F menu, too. To close a document, you could try Ctrl+F4. That works in most MDI apps.

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For example, I used to be able to simply hit alt-F and C to close a document.

Alf-F C still works for me in word 2010 (and 2007).

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Use ALT in any of the ribbon enabled applications will display an overlay of the keys to push for the various options available to you. For the most part these are the same keyboard commands as in older versions of Office.

Here’s a few links to the Office 2010 help about keyboard shortcuts.

Keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft Word 2010

Keyboard shortcuts in Excel 2010

Keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft Outlook 2010

Keyboard shortcuts for use while creating a presentation in PowerPoint 2010

Keyboard shortcuts for use while delivering a presentation in PowerPoint 2010

Keyboard shortcuts for SmartArt graphics – PowerPoint – Microsoft Office

Keyboard shortcuts for working with shapes, text boxes, and WordArt – PowerPoint – Microsoft Office

For more see the Accesibility section in Help for any individual application.

Joe

--Joe

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Ctrl+W works for me to close the current document (Word 97 – 2010).

It also works in Excel, PowerPoint and Notepad. In Access, it allows you to close the current Form, Table, Query, etc. I think it may have been part of Microsoft’s initial Common GUI standards and — bless ’em — still is.

Kim

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Unfortunately, I have clients who use Word 2010 (and are annoyed at having to convert plain text up and back) or I’d probably still be using WordPerfect 5.0 for DOS.

I’m not sure what you mean by that sentence. There was absolutely no need for you to upgrade to Word 2010 just because everyone else is using it. You can make Office 2003 fully compatible with Office 2007/2010 by installing the FREE Microsoft Office Compatibility pack. That will let you open any Office 2007/2010 document and edit it it.

Microsoft has been consistently criticised for foisting ribbons onto us. Some users say that they like it but personally I think it was a futile effort to redesign the interface for something to do: they broke what worked. In the right hands, Word will never be as productive with Ribbons than it was with menus.

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Microsoft has been consistently criticised for foisting ribbons onto us. Some users say that they like it but personally I think it was a futile effort to redesign the interface for something to do: they broke what worked. In the right hands, Word will never be as productive with Ribbons than it was with menus.

Terry,

I’m with you but you could say the same thing about Windows and how it BROKE WordPerfect 5.1 {A Classic} took me a loooooong time to break all those old habits but as much as I love keyboard shortcuts I can’t imaging going back to a keyboard only program or giving up my VBA! They have a word for it…let me think…oh yeah Progress.

Flash forward 10 years change a couple of words in the above and you can re-post it next time MS changes the interface to touch screen only! I’m buying stock in Non-Ammonia based window cleaner now, I’ll be rich if I live long enough.

I’ll try to get the tongue out of my cheek before my next post, I promise!

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Terry,

you could say the same thing about Windows and how it BROKE WordPerfect 5.1 {A Classic}

To this day, WordPerfect X5 allows you to use WiordPerfect 5.1 commands by default if you so choose. It’s less expensive than Word as well, and it keeps Microsoft,which to the best of my understanding owns a piece of it, from being a monopoly.

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Terry,

I’m with you but you could say the same thing about Windows and how it BROKE WordPerfect 5.1 {A Classic} took me a loooooong time to break all those old habits but as much as I love keyboard shortcuts I can’t imaging going back to a keyboard only program or giving up my VBA! They have a word for it…let me think…oh yeah Progress.

Flash forward 10 years change a couple of words in the above and you can re-post it next time MS changes the interface to touch screen only! I’m buying stock in Non-Ammonia based window cleaner now, I’ll be rich if I live long enough.

I’ll try to get the tongue out of my cheek before my next post, I promise!

Having recognized this behavior in yourself, don’t repeat it! It gets tired when you hear the same people complaining about being forced to use a mouse when DOS went away, then complaining about Program Manager going away and this new Start Menu c***, then they go on about the ribbon, then it’s touch interfaces, …….

Boring!

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In response to the below, I totally agree. The menus and keyboard short cuts are productive. The ribbon is a blunder but Microsoft and its project team are too busy hugging and fondling one another to realize that everyone outside of their little circle cluster hates it.

Not only are they not productive and a time killer, but they are not intuitive and they are not arranged appropriately. It’s amazing where you end up finding some of the commands on the “Ribbon”. What a colossal failure.

I’m not sure what you mean by that sentence. There was absolutely no need for you to upgrade to Word 2010 just because everyone else is using it. You can make Office 2003 fully compatible with Office 2007/2010 by installing the FREE Microsoft Office Compatibility pack. That will let you open any Office 2007/2010 document and edit it it.

Microsoft has been consistently criticised for foisting ribbons onto us. Some users say that they like it but personally I think it was a futile effort to redesign the interface for something to do: they broke what worked. In the right hands, Word will never be as productive with Ribbons than it was with menus.

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The menus and keyboard short cuts are productive. The ribbon is a blunder but Microsoft and its project team are too busy hugging and fondling one another to realize that everyone outside of their little circle cluster hates it.

Not only are they not productive and a time killer, but they are not intuitive and they are not arranged appropriately. It’s amazing where you end up finding some of the commands on the “Ribbon”. What a colossal failure.

Get over it. Office has used the Ribbon interface for 8 years now and it’s not going away any time soon. Almost all the old keyboard shortcuts still work the same way they did before and, once you get used to the different interface, the Ribbon actually starts to make a lot of sense. Granted, some things require more keystrokes/mouse clicks to get at, but MS neither started with the Ribbon nor persisted with it because “Microsoft and its project team are too busy hugging and fondling one another”. They have done so in response to market feedback. That same market feedback totally disproves your assertion that “everyone outside of their little circle cluster hates it”. You and the relative minority of recalcitrant luddites inside your little circle are not ‘everyone’. I have used both Office 2003 & 2010 extensively (I have both installed on my system) and, having done so for some years, I mostly prefer to work with Office 2010. These days, I mostly only use Office 2003 to provide support for people using that or an earlier version of Office.

As for TerFar’s claim “You can make Office 2003 fully compatible with Office 2007/2010 by installing the FREE Microsoft Office Compatibility pack”, nothing could be further from the truth. Even with that installed, there are many features of Office 2007 & later that Office 2003 simply cannot handle. Let’s start with the two most popular Office apps:
Excel:
• worksheets with >65536 rows or >256 columns or > 3 conditional formats.
Word:
• building blocks, content controls, citations & bibliographies.
etc., etc.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Here, here;

I use a lot of custom menus and buttons with customised icons with VBA both at home and work.

The ribbon (pewk) doesn’t let you use customised icons, or add custom menus to the quick access toolbar.

In short Office 2007 & Office 2010 SUCK!!!!!

I’ll stick with Office 2003

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If one’s requirement is serious word processing, WordPerfect leaves Word in the dust. I have had both for many years, using WP for (as examples) getting things done effectively and efficiently, direct formatting features, large document stability, tight document control, the ability to work outside of styles, powerful but user-friendly macros, efficient file sizes, and long-term file compatibility and stability. I also appreciate WP’s highly responsive user help forums and newsgroups. I keep Word on hand solely for dealing with occasional document conversion issues.

Many WP users customize and compact their WP user interface to their own needs and preferences, and WP’s possibilities for doing that are easy and extensive. The comparatively inflexible Word 2007 and 2010 ribbons occupy overly much of the screen, and are good at showing me many features I do not want but not so good at showing me the features I do want.

Word’s dominance is attributable to marketing brilliance, not programming brilliance. As but one example of that, for years MS required OEMs of pre-installed Windows computers to include Word for Windows — with the result that Word is the only word processing program with which many Windows users are familiar. For such users Word often is or seems “good enough” (and for many such users OpenOffice would actually be “good enough”). Inertia and “standardization” isolate Word users from discovering WP, but if they were to discover WP many of them would not look back.

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If one’s requirement is serious word processing, WordPerfect leaves Word in the dust. I have had both for many years, using WP for (as examples) getting things done effectively and efficiently, direct formatting features, large document stability, tight document control, the ability to work outside of styles, powerful but user-friendly macros, efficient file sizes, and long-term file compatibility and stability. I also appreciate WP’s highly responsive user help forums and newsgroups. I keep Word on hand solely for dealing with occasional document conversion issues.

Many WP users customize and compact their WP user interface to their own needs and preferences, and WP’s possibilities for doing that are easy and extensive. The comparatively inflexible Word 2007 and 2010 ribbons occupy overly much of the screen, and are good at showing me many features I do not want but not so good at showing me the features I do want.

Word’s dominance is attributable to marketing brilliance, not programming brilliance. As but one example of that, for years MS required OEMs of pre-installed Windows computers to include Word for Windows — with the result that Word is the only word processing program with which many Windows users are familiar. For such users Word often is or seems “good enough” (and for many such users OpenOffice would actually be “good enough”). Inertia and “standardization” isolate Word users from discovering WP, but if they were to discover WP many of them would not look back.

My 2-line post on 5.1 commands wasn’t intended to start a debate over different products, but one argument you might have added is that W was late in discovering PDF.

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Fred Langa’s article in the latest Windows Secrets (#276) offers some suggestions that might be applicable here to clean up and customize the Word ribbons and the quick access toolbar (QAT). With almost 2000 different operations available Word can appear overwhelming at first but articles like Fred Langa’s as well as a lot of the links offered by others here go a long way to making Word do what you want it to do. And it’s a lot more constructive than statements like, “It sucks!” which really serve no purpose in a discussion forum like this one and only cheapen the writer’s post. I expect better at venues like this one. I thought for a moment that my browser had switched to Defacebook.

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You can use the old keyboard shortcuts (over 90% of which still work). That way you don’t have to find the location for that function on the Ribbon. You may also have trouble with the new paragraph spacing which adds 10 points after each paragraph and uses 1.15 line spacing instead of the previous 1 line. You can simply change your defaults to 0 points after each paragraph and single line spacing. If you retain the new spacing when you type an address block or a list, the spacing can be a real pain. Simply highlight this area and apply the No Spacing style to it. This removes the extra spacing.

The long and short of it is that there is a definite learning curve when going to 2007 or 2010. My advice is to get used to it. It gets easier!

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NealNYC —

You might want to take a look also at Oracle’s free OpenOffice.org office suite. I also use a lot of keyboard commends, and feel your pain. That’s also why I use multiple products, including Word, WordPerfect, and OOo. One of the nice features that I like about OOo is that I can open not only all versions of Word documents, but also WP documents, as well as some PDF documents for editing. It also has had the capability of saving to PDF format for some time. >;-) Having multiple products loaded wastes disk space, but these days with terabyte and larger drives, that’s rather a moot point any longer.

Best regards,
Phil Heberer

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I write. … I use keyboard commands … just get back to simply writing

Check out Notepad, a free text editor in all Windows versions.
For clients, another free Windows program called Wordpad will save your TXT files as RTF, which will be (word)perfect for their needs. When they send you RTFs, use Wordpad to save as TXT, and you’re back into your favoured Notepad environment again. No need to ever go near a word processor.

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

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Check out Notepad, a free text editor in all Windows versions.

I think you forgot your “sacasm” emoticon… Notepad is a terrible editor.

I was a WordPerfect 4.1 convert (from WordStar), and over the years became a Word convert because of its programmability. It certainly is traumatic changing paradigms, whether it is from Reveal Codes and inline formatting to Styles and dialogs, or going from the menu/toolbar UI to the ribbon. As one of the last Office 2003 users in our office, I know I’ll have to switch soon, and look forward to mining this forum for assistance (or solace, as the case may be).

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As one of the last Office 2003 users in our office, I know I’ll have to switch soon, and look forward to mining this forum for assistance (or solace, as the case may be).

One difference you may want to pay close attention to is in switching Outlook files to Unicode. There is plenty on the subject (e.g. thisTechNet page) but I think everything else is a smooth transition if you enjoy playing with new bells and whistles.

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@NealNYC: From your post, it seems you have already obtained and paid for Word/Office 2010. Use it with the Ubit Menu as suggested by RetiredGeek in post #12 and then it will behave like word 2003…..(Ubit also works in Excel…)

Edit (Added bit about Excel)

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I cannot emphasize my HATE, my ANGER, my VEHEMENT FRUSTRATION, my LIVID INCENSED OUTRAGE, at how totally, pitifully, discustingly….. Word 2010 SUCKS.

Those idiots at Microsoft have SCREWED UP EVERYTHING!!!!! And for WHAT!? Absolutley nothing.

Every simple command that was a click of a mouse before, now takes 9 clicks and 3 menus to get through. The simple act of opening a new page used to be a simple click of the little icon of a piece of paper. Now its a menu, then roll down to the option, then you get a PAGE FULL OF [garbage] !! All I want is a clean page, not two dozen readymade clusterfuzzles!!!

And the worst part?? the WORST????!!!!!!

Those pitiful scum suckers at Microsoft REMOVED THE HELP FILE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WHAT! You CAN’T be serious.

They replaced the useful helpfile with a collection of useless tutorials AND REMOVED THE INDEX!!!

YOU CAN’T EVEN SEARCH THE HELP FOR SIMPLE TASK!!!! Instead you get the BING search engine.

I dare ANY of you to “search” the help for CENTER and see what junk you get. Wanna know how to “Search & Replace”?? I DARE to type “Search” or “replace” in the help search box & see what rediculous junk BING gives you instead. Need to BOLD or ITALIC something & don’t know how? …enter those words into the search engine & see what rubbish you get in return.

Used to, you could go to the index & look under “B” for BOLD. Not now.

All you have now is a useless “table of contents” that you can’t search.

Total RUBISH.

I LOVE my Wordperfect version 8.0 and only use Word because I am forced to by the outside world. There is no describing how much better that old Corel product from 1999 is compared to this 2010 colossal piece of junk.

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I LOVE my Wordperfect version 8.0 and only use Word because I am forced to by the outside world. There is no describing how much better that old Corel product from 1999 is compared to this 2010 colossal piece of junk.

I remember being very unhappy switching from WP 6.1 to Word 2.0 for Windows in the early 90s. No reveal codes! But if you commit to it, you can do it.

I suspect you aren’t going to commit to it, so I suggest you get a cheat sheet of keyboard shortcuts so that you can minimize the time spent learning the new UI. For example, Ctrl+N for a new document, Ctrl+E to center the current paragraph, Ctrl+B for bold, etc.

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It’s a bit of a change if you don’t come from Word 2007. Things are not as bad as they look, you will get used to it, if you don’t give up. Some things are not as bad as they seem.

Allow me to pick an example – the help system. It does have local help:

All you need to do is select local help as shown on the menu and you will even have an index. Search doesn’t work too well, I will admit to that.

All I can tell you is that I felt a bit lost on Word 2007 too, but today I don’t know if I would go back.

Good luck.

Regards

Rui

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Word is the topic and productivity the subtopic (or modifier or something), but I would be intrigued to know what percentage of Word sales are not Word-as-a-part-of-Office sales, and the same holds true for WordPerfect. We have gone from applications to suites, from the triumvirate of WordPerfect 5.1-Lotus 1-2-3-dBase IV to apps within apps within suites. It is driven by the economics of it for most professional users: Office anything (MS or WordPerfect) is designed to serve the diverse needs of an office environment. You get a lot for your money, but whether you get your own money’s worth depends on your own needs.

There is nothing wrong with having a glorified typewriter – the spellchecker, grammar checker, and research resources, including translation if they improve upon that feature, saves an enormous amount of labour and improves communications, and all of those capabilities were extremely primitive or nonexistent in an earlier era. Refine the setup for things that matter to you and put them to use. Go through every option in spelling, grammar and (maybe) style and fulminate about some of the defaults in that area.

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There are a couple of practical things you can do to get your most-common commands back to being one click away: Add them either to the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) or else customize the Ribbon (which you can do starting with Word 2010) to put them where you want them.

Another quick way to get to some of the familiar functions from earlier versions is to click on the little square dialog launcher boxes that are at the bottom right corner of some groups such as Font, Paragraph and Page Layout – clicking on these will bring up the old familiar dialogs for setting properties.

Yet another quick way to get at common functions is via the right-click menus – these haven’t changed much from earlier versions.

Like a lot of others, I spent a fair bit of time decrying the ‘idiocy’ of the Ribbon when I started working with Word 2007, but have to say that by now my productivity is probably as good as it was when working with earlier versions of Word – it just took a (long) while to get used to the new locations of things. But even when I disagree with how things are organized, by now I know where things are and can do what I need to do.

Gary

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@Gary: Agreed! I, too really freaked out at how “difficult” the ribbonised word (is) was. I used Ubit menu for quite a bit and then slowly ventured into using the ribbon. Over a few weeks I eventually reached the point where I now only use Ubit when I get stuck and can’t afford the time to get where I want via the ribbon. Hang in there, that’s my advice; it is well worth it.

The problem is, IMHO, we humans don’t really like change. We get used to something and want it to be like that “for ever”. I recall having to move away from the old (but surprisingly good) Multimate Advantage word processor years back when my company adopted MS Word. Boy, did I freak at the “totally different” approach to word processing that that introduced. But I soon became a total supporter of “Word” and have dutifully migrated from version to version over the years, I believe to my own benefit!

My Rig: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core CPU; ASUS Cross Hair VIII Formula Mobo; Win 11 Pro (64 bit)-(UEFI-booted); 32GB RAM; 2TB Corsair Force Series MP600 Pro 2TB PCIe Gen 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD. 1TB SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2 NVME SSD; MSI GeForce RTX 3090 VENTUS 3X 24G OC; Microsoft 365 Home; Condusiv SSDKeeper Professional; Acronis Cyberprotect, VMWare Workstation Pro V17.5. HP 1TB USB SSD External Backup Drive). Dell G-Sync G3223Q 144Hz Monitor.

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Apparently, I’ve been living in a cave, blissfully using Word 2003. I’ve just upgraded the computer and software and the Office suite, chiefly Word 2010. And so far, it completely sucks.

I’m a simple person. I write. I’m not an art director. I use keyboard commands instead of the mouse or selecting from pull-down windows because taking my hands off the keyboard is SLOW.

I don’t get breathless about formatting and using styles (form follows function, I use Courier New and maybe Times New Roman from time to time) and I’m not a corporate user who has to track all the people who’ve had their way with my work.

I try not to use words as ornaments or substitute groovy layout for actual ideas.

The software is called Word, not Photoshop or Pretty Picture Editor.

Unfortunately, I have clients who use Word 2010 (and are annoyed at having to convert plain text up and back) or I’d probably still be using WordPerfect 5.0 for DOS.

Can anyone suggest ways to turn off all this interferrent frippery (85 styles, pull-down windows for pull-down windows, permissions, etc.) and just get back to simply writing? For example, I used to be able to simply hit alt-F and C to close a document. Now it’s a fifteen-step menu with choices about who can and can’t make changes and what they have to be wearing to be able to comment.

Thanks.

Neal

Well I won’t disagree that MS has been completely bu**ered up Word with a stupid, gimmicky interface, but I have to defend some of what has been implemented by saying that most of the important keyboard shortcuts still work.

Have you actually tried Alt+F,C? Well it still works just as it did in previous versions. And if you are using Courier New, you are still in the era of typewriters! Have you tried WordPad? It probably meets your needs and is totally free with Windows.

Yes, Word 2003 is still by far the most productive version of Word and I defy anyone to prove otherwise. Unfortunately, MS think we are luddites. Hence Word 2007/2010 and the grotesque Microsoft Answers Forum.

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I do not have a vested interest in the suggestion made in this post.

You are arguing about a new interface, and nothing more. I mentioned several sorts of under-the-hood improvements that are independent of the interface but make it a better product exclusive of appearances. If you really crave efficiency I can suggest an additional investment that might take your minds off that, and that is voice input.

So far as I know it is a one-horse race, it is initially expensive, you need a fairly powerful computer, and the higher the quality of the input device that goes with the software, up to a point, the better. I am still just getting used to it. It is faster than anything I normally do with the keyboard, and the machine will follow commands in addition to transcribing dictation. I can’t type nearly as fast as I can talk.

If you have never considered it before (or had a bad experience and qualify for an upgrade), the latest generation is sufficiently refined to put it on your mental map or next year’s list for Santa. If you’re in business, it’s presumably tax-deductible. I don’t know if there is a way you can try it without buying it, but maybe there is a demo online. (If you find one, please post a link so that I can pick up some pointers.)

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I do not have a vested interest in the suggestion made in this post.

You are arguing about a new interface, and nothing more. I mentioned several sorts of under-the-hood improvements that are independent of the interface but make it a better product exclusive of appearances. If you really crave efficiency I can suggest an additional investment that might take your minds off that, and that is voice input.

But Peter, these under-the-hood improvements could have easily been applied to Word 2003 and had those been the only changes, users would have been up in arms at the cost of the upgrade for the mediocre offerings.

What has Office 2007/2010 really offered (outside of the interface) that couldn’t have been implemented into Office 2003?

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@peterg: Agreed! Not wishing to detract from the theme of this post, I use Dragon Naturally Speaking 11 . It took a while to get used to it, but I now use it with the same ease as typing. Ditto for general voice commands to operate Windows.

My Rig: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core CPU; ASUS Cross Hair VIII Formula Mobo; Win 11 Pro (64 bit)-(UEFI-booted); 32GB RAM; 2TB Corsair Force Series MP600 Pro 2TB PCIe Gen 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD. 1TB SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2 NVME SSD; MSI GeForce RTX 3090 VENTUS 3X 24G OC; Microsoft 365 Home; Condusiv SSDKeeper Professional; Acronis Cyberprotect, VMWare Workstation Pro V17.5. HP 1TB USB SSD External Backup Drive). Dell G-Sync G3223Q 144Hz Monitor.

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I would like to add my 2 cents and agree with those who are totally disgusted with what Microsoft has done to the interface. Yes, it may be just a matter of getting used to where things are now, but I had my toolbars so customized all I needed was one click to do what now takes several clicks – and that’s assuming I can even find what I’m looking for.

Why doesn’t Microsoft stop treating us like idiots who have to see pictures of everything or we don’t know what we’re doing and give us the option to switch back to the 2003 interface if we want. Or at least customize the dang ribbons with tiny little icons that don’t take up half the screen (yes, I know about the quick access toolbar, but I had 4 lines of highly customized toolbars in 2003.

Oh, and I would NOT have switched on my own – but my company decided it was time to upgrade so I’m stuck. Also, like others in this thread, if I could go back to my beloved Word Perfect, I would do it in a heartbeat.

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If you just want to write plain text, try WriteMonkey – a very simple and fast text editor. No menus, ribbons, or anything else.. just a plain screen to work in. You can choose your own paper colour and text colour (I use green and black – reminds me of the old dumb terminal days). Right click on the mouse for a list of functions and options. When you are done, you can easily copy/paste your work into any word processor if you wish, or just leave it as a text file.

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Have you changed the Keyboard to have the same shortcuts as WP. When I HAD to move from WP, the first thing I did was to go through the list and change ALL the keyboard shortcut I used to use in WP. For example, I changed CTRL+F to be the Search and Replace, instead of just the Search dialog box, because in WP I used CTRL+H to get a number, which I now have attached to a Number Style in WORD, any version I have “upgraded to”. I attached ALT+INSERT to Insert a Row in a Table, and ALT+DELETE to Delete a Row in a Table, etc.

I went through ALL the shortcuts in WP a long time ago and changed ALL of them, before I even started in Word. It took me a while to get them all going, but by now I have 99% of them done. Everytime I try to use a shortcut that I know from WP and Word does not have it setup, I do it immediately. You know, Click on the Office Button, then Word Options, Customize, Keyboard Shortcut: Customize, then I select the ALL COMMANDS and customize the command I want from the list. I hardly use the Ribbon.

Check this article http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/CustomizeRibbon.htm. Hope this helps.

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I never used WordPerfect, but I have a comment on this… there’s a difference between “progress” that forces users to learn a better way of doing things, and “progress” that forces users to learn a worse way of doing things. Windows replacing DOS was mostly the former. The ribbon replacing the menu system is entirely the latter.

What additional convenience did we get by moving to the ribbon? None. It’s prettier, if you like that sort of thing, but more difficult to use at every point.

What additional functionality did we get? Some… but after using Word 2007 at clients’ sites for close to a year, I can’t recall a single one of the added features, and I’m pretty sure that none of them required the UI change. They just happened at the same time.

I agree with the original poster’s somewhat rude assessment of the new UI. I’ve yet to see a defense of it that made any sense to me.

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Just writing to say I totally agree with Paul’s last post. I hated the Ribbon when it was introduced. This is the response of most people with much experience using the earlier interface. Most come to really like it a lot after a while. One book I read said about six months which comports with my experience. Word 2010 and 2013 are both far better than was 2007. Like Paul, I have all of these (as well as Word 97 available). I mostly use Word 2010.

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