What’s your feeling about the Ribbon and why?

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Ted,

I agree with your premise. What bugs the heck out of me is the fact that those of us that have been using the menu system for 30+ years {ok for Office it’s only about 17+} and know it pretty darn well have to toss all that experience when it would have just as easy for MS to keep the old system in there and let the user {what ever happened to “The Customer is Always Right!”} choose.

Here’s a couple of links to make the transition a little easier:
Word Command Finder

Keyboard Shortcuts

How To Use The Ribbon

Free Training Manuals & Reference Guides

:cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Well RG, nice thread :rolleyes: For those in the dark what I mean, yesterday I started a thread about the ribbon, then after a message discussion with Clint decided a poll would be nice. Unfortunately we could not modify the original thread to add the poll so I had to start a new thread. In the process of switching all responses over to the new thread, my original post was lost and RG became the originator so thankyou to RG. I will attempt to include most of what was on my original post.

Since MS originally included the ribbon on Office 2007 (which was not very customizable) and Office 2010 which is very costomizable the ribbon has found it’s way into many other MS apps including WLM 2011, MS Paint, Wordpad, Etc. Starting with Win 8 Windows Explorer will include a ribbon as well. My question is posed to all my Lounge colleagues. What are your feelings of the Ribbon? Such an easy question. :^_^:

I am getting accustomed to the ribbon and am starting to really like it. I am starting to find that I like to be able to customize it to work for me. In fact I have added a Favorites tab to MS Word:

30123-WordFavorites

As we move forward we have to keep increasing our knowledge. This includes learning and embrassing new technologies. I believe the ribbon brings many of the hidden features of the various Office apps to the forefront. In Office 2003, unless you used many of these features all the time, you never even knew the features existed because they were hidden inside menus that you never opened. Now these features are shown more in a ribbon that can be more easily seen.

Anyway, I hope this start a lively discussion that opens peoples eyes to new ways of doing things.

Many thanks to RG for this thread!!!

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Hi Ted,
Thanks for the post. I LOATHE the ribbon. A lot. I use loads of modified toolbars in Word and Excel (about 150 in each of small ‘straight’ MS tools and customised macro-driven icons around the screen), and find that the ribbons slow me down immensely. The arbitrary way that 2007 tools were clustered did not match my thought patterns, so I spent inordinate amounts of time hunting for tools and functions, trying to remember what MS called the blasted things so I could find them in Help(less). I understand that 2010 has some toolbar customisability, but as I am still trying to amend my new PC which is currently not letting me actually have administrator access to allow me to load my software (another frustration story completely!), I can’t yet comment on that. However, the way the ribbons are created is what I find inefficient: why can’t I have the option to see all my regularly tools at once, as I once did – all 150 of them?

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Hi Ted,
Thanks for the post. I LOATHE the ribbon. A lot. I use loads of modified toolbars in Word and Excel (about 150 in each of small ‘straight’ MS tools and customised macro-driven icons around the screen), and find that the ribbons slow me down immensely. The arbitrary way that 2007 tools were clustered did not match my thought patterns, so I spent inordinate amounts of time hunting for tools and functions, trying to remember what MS called the blasted things so I could find them in Help(less). I understand that 2010 has some toolbar customisability, but as I am still trying to amend my new PC which is currently not letting me actually have administrator access to allow me to load my software (another frustration story completely!), I can’t yet comment on that. However, the way the ribbons are created is what I find inefficient: why can’t I have the option to see all my regularly tools at once, as I once did – all 150 of them?

Have you tried any of the addons to simulate the menu of 2003 that have been discussed previously? I am just as interested in seeing if power users such as yourself can use these 3rd party apps to solve or work around their problems with the ribbon. Just as Joe has stated, I believe the present iteration is just that and will be greatly modified to accommodate all the feedback MS is undoubtedly getting.

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I think it’s a matter of habit. Once you get over the “inertia” of moving on to a new system, you can get used to the ribbon. For the options available there, the ribbon is better than a menu. The problem is accessing the options not there and I think Microsoft could have done better on that particular issue.

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I don’t have a whole lot of experience with Office so it’s not too bad getting to know a new system, I don’t have years
of the menu system ingrained. One thing with the Ribbon though, I had never realized that there were so many options and configurations,
especially in a simple Word document. The menu system seemed to keep them out of sight & cleaned up in a way wereas the Ribbon has everything in your face.

You probably should have made a poll Ted.

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Like a couple of you I have been using these office programs since Visicalc in 1981 on an Apple II+, through PFS File & Word, ProFile & ProWord, Quattro Pro, MS Word, Excel, MS Office, to now Office 2007. There have been a good many user interface changes along the way. I have read MS’s reason for the ribbon was due to many users being similar to Clint in not realizing all the many options and configurations which were available and requesting new features that already existed.

For our office the change was mostly neutral. The ribbon has not been a noticeable improvement but did not cost a lot of time. A key was quickly customizing for everyone the quick access bars in Excel and Word based on each person’s use and requests. In my case I keep Excel open all day and have 15 buttons on the quick access bar. That probably handles 95% of needed functions. I keep the ribbon minimized and open it for the other 5%. I only use Word a couple times a day and keep the ribbon displayed. Every few months I get motivated to scroll through the ribbon to browse what is there.

The Office Button recent documents list is a solid plus for us because of its pin feature and ability to list a large number of files.

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Well, I have used it in other programs and don’t like it.
I prefer everything in front of me and not have to be troubled browsing through a ribbon to find what I need.

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Bill,

Welcome to the lounge as a new Poster! :cheers:
It’s always good to have new blood, experience set, and opinions.

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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See here post #2:cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Hello Loungers
I tried to move all these posts into this new thread ….It didn’t work as i wished ( my bad ) apologize… The best i could do is this screenshot

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Thanks Fred. You help is greatly appreciated. I did modify my post #2 to explain what happened. I do appreciate your assistance with this.

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For the many people who “live” in one or more Office applications the Ribbon was/is a huge change which impacts productivity. Those long time dedicated users are most likely the folks who used keyboard shortcuts frequently and/or modified the toolbars to suit their work style. For the rest of us, the Ribbon has been a good thing. If you read the background on the FluentUI, a very large percentage of feature requests Microsoft received were for features that already existed within Office. The ribbon readily exposes much more functionality than the toolbars in the various Office programs. With Office 2010, it is much more customizable than in Office 2007. IMO, for most users the ribbon has been a step forward in usability.

Joe

--Joe

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I find it easier to find things in the Ribbon, the sections seem more intuitive than the old menu bar items. The placement of many of the items in the old Office menus was quite arbitrary, rarely used things were more often than not in the last place I’d expect them to be.

All of the keyboard short cuts I use still work. Also I use the context menu menus a lot in all applications (via the menu key – not right click).

Microsoft Office Labs have an experimental Search Command plugin for Office 2007/2010 that works Word, Excel & Powerpoint. http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28559

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northwood2222 finds: “All of the keyboard short cuts I use still work.” Have you tried [Alt]--[a] to get to the width/height settings dialogue box in MS Paint? (Used to be the Menu choices Image > Attributes.) Fails in the MS Paint Win 7 provides. Have to find some work-around if you want to trim the bottom or the right side off a graphic in Paint on Win 7. My best work-around will be pinning it to the QAT the next time I find it. Meanwhile, MS has my richly earned disapproval!

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I’ve been using Word and Excel regularly for many years and for the last 3 years have had to put up with the ribbons. There are a couple of 3rd party programs available which supposedly return the menu system but I haven’t been able to get them to work. End result is a massive quick-access bar. I reckon MS should make the quick-access bar the main strip as this seems to be a preferred way to get at often used menu items. Users should then work the other way around using ribbons only on demand. I can never find what I want on the ribbons without spending a lot of time searching through them. I guess I automatically knew where an item was in the old versions (If I only want a word processor I still use my old version of Word, it’s quicker).

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The Ribbon is frankly inefficient, and it was designed explicitly for rank beginners or children. It takes up far too much space, is visually very hard to navigate (requiring scanning of the full width of the screen to find anything, and especially hard on a small notebook), is inconsistent internally, depends on remembering masses of icons – often with only slight differences (the text is far too hard to read), does not allow easy keyboard use for those of us who have real work to do, and ultimately is easily outgrown by (almost) anyone. Making the keyboard harder to use is bizarre. The only way the ribbon could become apparently usable is if it is one of the only programs in day-to-day use. I use about 50 as a routine, switching back and forth many times, and consistent, intuitive structure is the only was to manage this, and mostly from the keyboard, using the natural, logical, easily navigable inherent tree structure of a menu system – without much eye movement. I delete all the tool-bar buttons I can where common keyboard shortcuts area available, because they just get in the way and complicate the visual field, taking up space better used for other things.

There are many instances in everyday life where icons and text are used on signage. If the icon takes longer to decode than the word, it has failed. Driving, that can be lethal. How many times have you wondered whether you are in the right place trying to decode the image on a toilet door from some supposedly imaginative designer? Often, it is only by reading the small-print label underneath that you can be sure! That is ridiculous, but it is the situation now with The Ribbon.

Why cannot the option of simple menus always be provided? Because that would be an admission of defeat. We killed Clippy – rapidly – for good reason. By all means cater to the less able, the inexperienced, and the mouse-fixated, but all I would ask is that, please, do the rest of us a favour. The Ribbon is not a step in the right direction except as training wheels (perhaps). Those are discarded with pleasure at the first opportunity, so let us unload the clutter. This is not being reactionary, or otherwise against change. I have seen enough change in computing from paper tape and Hollerith card programming to now with touch screens to know the difference between good and bad. The mouse has its place, and I use it accordingly, but the keyboard remains fast and efficient, even for two-finger typists, for most work. The ‘secularization’ of computers required simplification, it is true, so that more could use them without a technical bent, but why should the able be penalized by a misguided sales tactic?

The trouble now is that other software writers are following suit, and they get in a far bigger mess, but they feel obliged to follow a perceived standard. Unfortunately, this is change for change’s sake – where is the evidence that it was necessary? Ergonomically, it is a joke – really.

“Exposing functionality” is a claimed benefit. What that actually indicates is that the menus were not sufficiently developed, because there was an apparent desire on the part of MS to hide what was felt to be intimidating. Broadly, if one needed something it was findable, albeit at some effort. There was clearly too much pandering to the majority by way of making sure that they were not put off using Windows. Just look at the idiotic animations, sound effects and other juvenilia scattered around: toys are fine in their place, but do not force us to use them when we are not playing. The prefix “My” that sprang up on everything is a measure of this LCD approach – the lowest common denominator. By all means provide ramps and elevators for those who need, but the rest of us will use the stairs: fast, efficient, and fitness improves. Nobody would dream of not building stairs, would they?

BWD

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The ribbon was designed for only half of the “user” interface, that of the person sitting in front of the display. the other half, the side that programmers use to access and use existing elements of the prior command bars/ buttons, is inelegantly terminated. The designers of the ribbon blundered horribly.
Experts have responded to me that they do not use newer versions of office apps where they need to programmatically drive function,
since the ribbon amputated the efficient (and only) interface of the command-bar/buttons.
Even MS admits this in inept fashion, stating that programmatic access to the commands is no longer provided, but luckily they had
the back-door and horribly inefficient Accessibility interface to deflect invested people, even MVPs, to use in order to “look around” and find the elements.
this hit or miss (some elements are not properly presented via certain MS programs -some dropdowns do not show their child elements) and to
effectively use this MSAA backdoor, code of less than 15 LOC bloated to over 700 LOC just to get all of the MSAA interface and navigation of the
ribbon-onion-layers peeled back till you uncover the elements if by chance they are properly presented.
After spending weeks to unravel this, a particular MS app’s interface failed; a blind user with an accessibility program would be
unable to access the elements of that aforementioned dropdown.
To get past this I was forced to go an entirely different route that luckily is far more efficient than the back-door of the MSAA;
It is a hack but again, luckily it worked.
This blind amputation of functionality leads me to observe that MS is in a world of their own, and like GM, will not be around in 5-10 years as
the behemoth of today. This hyper-focus on child-like iconic presentation-as a prior respondent had also observed,
shows that they are more concerned with marketing hype and presentation flash rather than function.
I fear the Metro phone/Win8 UI is so much like this that properly working with Win or office in the future will force apps/ add-ons to make
a choice of either continuing to bet on a company that blindly chops partner access to function, or alter course to the Google Android/ other vehicles.
MS seems to strive to own all of the programmatic function, this is clear. The ribbon and Metro are the closing acts.

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I’ve invested going on 25 years learning the office menus. The favourite commands I use daily I learned to the point of muscle memory, my fingers would just do them without having to concentrate on what I was doing. Much of that is gone. Some of the old menu shortcuts still remain, but other’s don’t. I resent that MS unilaterally threw out my personal investment of time and MONEY spent on books and courses to learn the menu organization. I’ve learned some of the “dis-organization”, but for commands I don’t use regularly I have to play “hide and seek”, searching for them. Others have mentioned 2 tools I find very handy, the MS Search addon, and the Office-Watch Command Finder page: Search Command Addon – 2007 & 2010 http://www.officelabs.com/projects/searchcommands/Pages/default.aspx Office Watch Word Command Finder – http://office-watch.com/commandlist/Word_2007.aspx http://office-watch.com/commandlist/Word_2010.aspx The Office watch Word command finder is really good too, it actually provides a more focused result, but the path it describes is sometimes wrong. (They got all of the info from MS …) You can add the link to OWW Command Finder tool to the QAT using this macro: Public Sub command_finder() ‘ Ed Weber ‘ Call the Office Watch Command List applet ‘ Equivalent to the Search Tab addon ‘ ActiveDocument.FollowHyperlink _ Address:=” http://office-watch.com/commandlist/Word_2010.aspx”, _ NewWindow:=True, AddHistory:=False End Sub The ribbon is just another User Interface shell replacing the “Menu” UI. They both access the same underlying functions. It would have been trivially easy for MS to provide a “Menu” tab that maintained the old menu access. Even if they had buried access to it in the Options dialog, it would have been a huge step to reduce resistance to the ribbon. People could have used the menu and slowly become acclimatized to the new “default” ribbon ui. Sure, the Ribbon flattened a couple of “levels” of the menu, but still invokes the old, deeply nested dialog boxes. I could understand that in 2007, but I had expected they would have finished redesigning the old dialogs into flatter structures for 2010. But the didn’t. They only partially implemented the ribbon redesign. Why, in 2010, is the new “File” tab a MENU rather than a buttony ribbon? I strongly object to the “hieroglyphics” (icons). I am not a 4000 year old Egyptian, I prefer text! I object that there is no longer option to select icon, both, text only display. Unfortunately the introduction of th “new & improved” “Phat” ribbon that uses too much screen real estate coincided with the standardization on LOWER resolution LCD monitors. My “good old” CRTs had vertical resolutions up to 2500 lines, now the highest HD LCD screen is limited to a paltry 1080 lines. I’ve seen it several times now, small apps that have been “ribbonized” with 4 or 5 buttons representing all of the commands avaiable. The menu was nice and compact. Back in Office 2000-2002(?) I always immediately turned of the “smart” menu that hid “unused” commands. Unfortunately we don’t have that control with the ribbon. Every time I resize the window, all of the commands play “musical chairs”, changing location, size and appearance! I hate it! MS got rid of the “smart” feature in 2003, just to bring it back in spades in the ribbon. The ribbon is the Transformer “Gooey” for the A.D.D generation! “Ribbonausaurs- the UI for Egyptian Pharohs, and Dinosaurs Why is it that we can’t edit the default ribbon. Even in 2010 all you can do is turn off default groups. You can’t add buttons to them. I tried to recreate the default tabs, but I could not get my recreations to display the same way as defaults! The ribbon UI elements are not consistently implemented. What genius decided to create that teeny-tiny-itsy-bitsy little blob on the Group name bar for the “dialog launcher” button. Why doesn’t that button look like the rest, and be included with them? How about the “menu” in the File tab? Why in the Print “backstage” pane is there a “big” square “Print” button, long skinny drop down selection buttons for the settings AND Hyperlinks (instead of buttons) for “Printer Properties” and “Page Setup”. Or in the Styles Pane (a old dialog box that was converted to the ribbon UI) (launched Styles “dialog” launcher button); you have check boxes, 3 small buttons, an the “Options” hyperlink text button which is NOT underlined. Microsoft always claims it conducts extensive user interface research, but still revamps the UI every chance it gets. It must be using a different species of alien each time. Galen Gruman

suggestion: please add suggestion we add para break HTML code to maintain paragraphs. I’m hugely annoyed that my nicely laid out text is rendered as one large, illiterate, unreadable blob!

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As an option which can be completely disabled I’ve obviously no reason to object to the ribbon.

However as the only choice it’s not even remotely acceptable, for the various reasons that previous posters have listed eloquently. If my pre-ribbon version of MS Office becomes unusable on a later version of Windows then I’ll explore alternatives such as Open Office.

I hear rumours that Win8 will use the ribbon for Windows Explorer, which is worrying.

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It actually works well in Windows Explorer – mainly because WE has far fewer commands and comfortably fits across the screen.

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I dislike it intensely. I can see its attractions in apps with a small range of commands such as Windows Explorer. But in apps with hundreds of commands such as most Office apps, it is messy and a total waste of space. It’s original theme was to expose more commands to users, but it fails dismally in every department. Customising menus, creating custom menus, attaching custom menus to templates and documents, locating menus anywhere on screen, creating custom icons, etc., used to be a simple intuitive tasks. Ribbons are a complete antithesis of menus. A waste of time, money and productivity. LONG LIVE OFFICE 2003! Terry

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“View Poll Results: Do you like the MS Office Ribbon? Voters 9. This poll is closed”
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nine people voted and the poll is closed???????

????????

i can’t stand that ribbon. i fully customised my toolbars in office 2003/XP, created icons, keyboard shortcuts and macros for commands i used all the time that didn’t have them. it was great. all i want is MORE FLEXIBILITY, not this horrible force-feeding spoon-feeding.

i am really getting to be angry with microsoft, who so badly want to eliminate as much choice as possible, because don’t you know we are all far too stupid to be allowed to have any control over anything but the most superficial aspects of the work interface some of us see 8 hours a day. pretty colours. everything big and simple and unmoddable. idiots… but who?

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”View Poll Results: Do you like the MS Office Ribbon? Voters 9. This poll is closed”
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nine people voted and the poll is closed???????

You need to log in to vote–I just voted, and it’s over a day since your post, so it’s not really closed.

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I use MS Publisher a lot. When the Office Suite 2007 came out with the ribbon, Pub did not include the ribbon. After working with the ribbon in Word and other apps, I lusted after the ribbon in Pub, and have not been disappointed since 2010 came out. I find the ribbon to be intuitive and it helps with my Pub productivity. I know where everything is on the ribbon, can customize the shortcut ribbon. I really like the context sensitive ribbons that come up when you click on a table, image, etc.

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I regularly have to go to the Help to find out where to find the action I want to execute. Perhaps this is because I grew up on the menu interface. I have recently installed the Menu bar available from http://www.navigatorutilities.com/ and love it when I am looking for more obscure actions. The Ribbon is not bad for simple formatting.

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When our company moved from Office 2003–>Office 2007 I initially did not like the Ribbon because it took up too much screen real estate. But as I worked with it, I have grown to like having similar Ribbon functions in similar locations across all programs (Word, Excel, PowerPoint).

I have encouraged co-workers to put the functions that they use on a daily basis and quirky functions that are hard to find on their Quick Access Toolbar. In other words, spend some time to customize the program with the way you think and work; it will pay dividends.

Once you have built YOUR Quick Access toolbar, you can right click on the Ribbon and make it disappear. Right clicking again will bring it back whenever you need it.

Using YOUR Quick Access toolbar coupled with the right-click, context sensitive menus will provide most of the functions you will need in your daily use of Office programs. Embrace the Ribbon rather than letting it tie you up in knots! Georgette

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Reply to hrdubwd: I agree with you 100% on those stupid icons. I hate them too. My feelings are if you can’t read english go home and come back when you can and don’t put us through all the pain of having to decifer those so-called international images.

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I like the ribbon – and did not expect to. <>

Did someone mention VisiCalc? I started on that and on a word processor called Electric Pencil, both for the much maligned TRS-80. MS Offfice is so much better, and like others I got oh so comfortable with the GUI up through Office 2003. After cursing while helping others navigate the ribon on Office 2007, I dreaded my personal switch to Office 2010 3 months ago. Then it took 10 or 15 minutes to get comfortable with the ribbon. It is different, but vey logical. <>.

I’d like help with two old MS Word commands however. There were 3 customizations I installed on every MS Word GUI I helped with (dozens and dozens), and 2 seem to have vanished. <>

MS Word’s ‘Format:Paragraph’ – when added to the toolbrs (now quickAccess), one could pop the paragraph dialog box with a single mouse click. Now it seems to always take two clicks. <>
MS Word’s ‘Next_Window’ – when added to the toolars, one could rotate through the document stack with a single click. Until one has 5 open documents, the Next_Window command is statistically as good or better than the Selet_Window command. <>

Anyone? Many thanks

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[INDENT]@Guanton: If you have the Home ribbon showing, the Format | Paragraph dialog will come up when you click once on the little down-right arrow at the bottom of the Paragraph pane. Ditto for other panes with this symbol: Font, Styles, etc.

[/INDENT]

I disliked the Ribbon intensely when I installed Word 2007, and went back to 2003 until I had to move to 2010. I perservered with it and now find that I’m used to it — and even prefer some aspects of it.

I do feel there were some questionable decisions about its implementation though, and agree with many posters who feel the UI was dumbed down. The “quick style” pane is a huge waste of space, and far too complex to manage effectively. The Header & Footer pane seems misplaced in the Insert ribbon (I frequently find myself going to the Page Layout ribbon for it).

I hope that as applications evolve, the “context sensitive” aspect of the ribbon approach is enhanced.

Like some of the other posters, my word processing experience goes back to before PCs. When I’m feeling irritated about the UI, I calm myself by recalling how much better it is than working with a teletype terminal attached to a mainframe…

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double post

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MS Word’s ‘Format:Paragraph’ – when added to the toolbrs (now quickAccess), one could pop the paragraph dialog box with a single mouse click. Now it seems to always take two clicks. <>
MS Word’s ‘Next_Window’ – when added to the toolars, one could rotate through the document stack with a single click. Until one has 5 open documents, the Next_Window command is statistically as good or better than the Selet_Window command. <>

Anyone? Many thanks

Guanton

Since I got Office 2007 in 2009 and once I got to know the groups in each Ribbon – eg Word Home has Clipboard, Font, Paragraph, Styles and Editing – I’ve found I hardly use the mouse. Here’s how I use the Ribbon interface without the mouse

I always have the Ribbon minimized.
Tapping the Alt key, shows a letter for each ribbon (‘H’ for Home etc, ‘N’ for Insert (??), ‘P’ for Page Layout etc)
Type H (or h) and the Home ribbon is displayed and on each widget there’s a one or two letter code (eg AC for paragraph center),
To get at the Paragraph dialog its PG (or pg).

It sounds like more work, but IMO its a lot easier type Alt, H, P, G than using the mouse.

The way the ‘hint’ letters are displayed makes it easier to learn than looking for the underlined letter in a menu items.

Its a feature of the Ribbon interface that’s not often discussed – I sometimes wonder how many people even know about it.

Re Cycling through Windows – I use an addon called Office Tab, you can imagine what it does. To move between tabs (documents) it uses Ctrl/Tab – but you can change it via its options. I use the free version. http://www.extendoffice.com/ which only does word, excel & powerpoint, which are all I use.

BTW I’m almost 70 years old, I use Word almost every day and Excel a couple of times a week. I really don’t know what the fuss is about with Ribbons. Making the switch from Lotus 123 to Excel was much harder, and I was a lot younger then

NW

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MS Word’s ‘Format:Paragraph’ – when added to the toolbrs (now quickAccess), one could pop the paragraph dialog box with a single mouse click. Now it seems to always take two clicks.

This was my favorite keyboard shortcut, and I currently have the icon on my QA Toolbar. As I recall, I had to go to Customize on the QA Toolbar, set it to view all commands, then scroll through until I found the right icon (I think it’s called Paragraph, but won’t swear to it). Now all it takes is a single click!

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This was my favorite keyboard shortcut, and I currently have the icon on my QA Toolbar. As I recall, I had to go to Customize on the QA Toolbar, set it to view all commands, then scroll through until I found the right icon (I think it’s called Paragraph, but won’t swear to it). Now all it takes is a single click!

Even faster: right click the dialog launcher (the arrow in the bottom right-hand corner of the Paragraph Group) and choose ‘Add to Quick Access Toolbar’. You can add most commands to the QAT using a right-click on a ribbon.

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Ted Myers (Lounge VIP ) wrote, “They have trained their fingers and minds to do what is necessary to do their jobs most efficiently, and will be the least willing to adapt to the ribbon.”

I say, “Why should I have to spend a lot of time having to almost start over in order to use a program which I have been using for years.?”

The Microsoft software writers are brilliant, but in my estimation they often lack common sense. Consider, for example, integrating two powerpoints together. In powerpoint 2003 if I wanted to insert slides from one powerpoint into a PPT I was working on I went to ‘Insert’, then ‘Insert slides from file’. In powerpoint 2010 you go to the Home ribbon, then New Slide , then down to ‘Reuse Slides’. It makes sense to me that if you want to insert slides you go to the insert ribbon. I had click on the little ? in the upper right corner in order to find out to discover this change.

hrdubwd stated , “…it was designed explicitly for rank beginners or children.”

I agree. That is all part of the dumbing down of America.

MS should spend more time perfecting good software into great software rather then making changes for change sake.

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z-rod…I spent nearly 20 minutes trying to figure out that Ppt function to copy a slide from another pres. I was ready to ditch the entire app and quit my job at that point, dang I was frustrated…lol, can’t search in help for a function that no longer exists because they renamed it….and it’s been there since the first version, unchanged until 2007. Was it broken? Nope.

Ppt 2003 was a thing of beauty. The new features of 2007 were awesome, but who could ever find them? I was a power user of Ppt and Word through v2003, but as my job shifted focus I find I can’t do even simple tasks anymore. What a letdown.

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Once I find somthing I use I put it on the task bar. Those times I have to go hunting for something I do not use often are a pain because under the old system I could find them, now I have to go poking. The good part is my memory is good enough to start remembering where some things are on the office ribbons. I skipped 2007 and went straight to 2010. I am glad I did!

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Would it not be possible for Microsoft (or some other clever fella/gal) to put in a simple command (although the programming might be complex) to be able to return to the original menu system? Surely Microsoft would only need to ‘dust-off’ the original coding and merge it?

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I believe the ribbon debate is less about functionality (although a legitimate concern for any regular user of an application) than it is about the lack of standardization in the software industry. At home, or at work, no two programs use the identical set of commands to generate the same result. Small example: at work, to go to the next page of the document displayed, depending on the application, the correct keystroke for the application is only one of any of the following possibilities – pa1 (aka alt 1), f1, enter, pa2 (aka alt 2), f7, tab, down arrow, page down, etc. The user is required to remember which is valid for the current application. And then the industry wonders why casual users still dislike the computing experience!
Form is supposed to follow functionality, and the normal human expectation is the same functionality will have the same (or very similar) form.
The Ribbon is the latest example in a long string of software engineering decisions based less on function, and more on keeping the brand unique from all the others by keeping the command structure unique.

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This is the lively discussion I was envisioning when I first started this thread.

It does appear that those user that are the Office power users that spend all day in Office, and have for years are the very same users that detest the ribbon for obvious reasons. They have trained their fingers and minds to do what is necessary to do their jobs most efficiently, and will be the least willing to adapt to the ribbon.

Those that are light users of Office or new users of Office actually seem to like the ribbon better because they can more easily find the commands that seem hidden in the menus of Office 2003 or earlier versions of Office. I guess it would be safe to say that if MS or someone could develop a way of “turning” the ribbon or menus on/off in a manner that actually works effectively would be hailed by both sides of the debate.

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I agree with most of the comments here that the ribbon is a bad interface.

My twist on it is the need for customization to even make it work. Searching for ten minutes to find a function that was so simple to find before is a joke…I may as well have switched to a different application altogether.

So say I customize it to fit my needs. One, for office apps I’m a user. I don’t want to learn how to customize the app to get it to work like it did for 17 years prior. Two, I tend to switch computers and systems, and use multiple systems, and customizing Office every time is a waste of my energy. I also do occasional user support, and fishing around for stuff in an uncustomized installation is a HUGE waste of time.

It’s like that cool Win 7 tweak you read about in the news letter…it works, you use it for a couple years and love it, but completely forget how it got there or where you learned about it. Get a new system, and you’re back to square one all over. This is the new Office….never the same interface twice. The need to customize the ribbon is its fatal flaw, IMO. I don’t recall these types of forums being filled with complaints about the menus, in fact the menu system made support and help easy.

In closing, they clearly designed the ribbon for new users. But these days, how many new users are there, compared to experienced users?

ps…there are tools that switch Office back to menus. I’m still using O-2003 until I find time to upgrade to O-2010 and install the menu switcher. I refuse to use the POS ribbon, simple tasks require 200% more time as I fish around searching for basic functions.

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Like many others, I am NOT a fan of the ribbon. It takes up a lot of space and re-organizes functions that you KNEW where to find.
Fortunately there are choices: you can hide the ribbon and have only the “tabs” showing, which gives a menu like appearance and
allows it to come up only when you need it. I can live with this in Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but I’m not too sure there are ways to minimize it everywhere it appears (like now in SharePoint and Outlook). It really should be able to be minimized everywhere for those of us who really
don’t want/need/like it. At work we can do this on our office PCs but the Pubvlic ones are likely to show the ribbon always.

I have another choice at home, that I don’t at work : don’t use it — I use Open Office/Libre Office instead. It does everything I need it to do and more.

Just my .02

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The Ribbon takes time to get used to – certainly the 2010 version is far better than 2007. Having never used a default Excel menu setup in my life, I don’t really find it any harder having to customise the Ribbon than having to customise the old toolbars.
From a developer perspective it actually has some nice features – such as being workbook (or namespace) specific without having to write code to keep switching back and forth. It is however, still a work in progress – MS history shows that it generally takes until version 3 to get something halfway decent – so fingers crossed…
Also, I don’t think it’s going to go away, so you can either learn it, stick with an old unsupported version, or switch applications. Personally, until someone else provides full VBA support, I’ll stick to the lesser evil.

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I, for one, think the whole ribbon interface idea is ridiculous! It just doesn’t make any sense. If all other software had it, it would be different, but they don’t. On a “standard” menu, which all other software uses, I’m used to seeing “Edit” near the upper left of the window, but MS decided to put it all the way over to the upper right! At least, they should have given the user the option to move it. Also, in 2007 Excel, if a person wanted to insert another row or column, wouldn’t you think you’d find that function under the “Insert” tab? That’s not where MS decided to put it!
I use MS Office 2007, but use the third party add-on “UbitMenu”, which gives me an extra tab on the ribbon that allows me the option to use a “standard” menu.

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No strong opinion here but I generally disfavor it. The same folks who say if exposes features/functions that they never knew existed…well, they’re exposed…and still never getting used by the vast majority; so they just look like clutter to me, plus I have too much German in me and the ribbon is just not precise enough for the casual user and variance between applications that employ the ribbon interface. At the same time I’ll admit to looking under a couple different menu headers sometimes in search of a function so its by no means perfect.

For some reason MS got to hate’n on the menu though, after all its not even enabled for explorer when one first installs Windows 7 for crepes sake.

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I’ve been using Office most of its life. Having experienced 2007, I went back to using 2003. Eventually there was a need to move to 2007, then quickly to 2010, and from Vista to Win7.
I suspect I’m getting used to the Ribbon, however the most used things end up on my Quick Access tool bar, so use of the ribbon is limited. Some things I rarely use are difficult to find without going to ‘help’. But as someone said, it’s amazing how many options there are…as Ed McMahn on Johnny Carson would say…’you have everything you could possibly want.’ …not precisely…a Quick access bar instead of the wide ribbon might be nice. As a librarian, I don’t find the placement of items all that intuitive; should have better placement organization.

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Good thing about the ribbon: Ability to customize Quick Access toolbar
I’ve got my half dozen most frequently used features — that in both old menus and new ribbon require three clicks to get to — pinned to the Quick Access tool bar. Saves tons of clicking. As long as I’m on my own computer. Once I switch, back to endless clicks.

Bad thing about the ribbon 1: Takes sooooo much space!!!
Can’t see a whole page at once because of the g***** ribbon. Why can’t it offer the option “Hide icons”? Why can’t it hide the styles’ examples? Or better yet, why not provide an option where the ribbon is hidden until you mouse over it and then it reappears?

Bad thing about the ribbon 2: Where [edited] is it?
Revamp of UI to ribbon re-hid important features. How to do you change document properties like Complete Date? How to you attach a template to a document? Yes, I found them eventually. It took a long time. Eventually I figured out how to pin the links to the Quick Access toolbar. But what a learning curve!!!!!

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billwrtr,

“Why can’t it offer the option “Hide icons”?

You can minimize the ribbon by right clicking on it and choosing, “Minimize the Ribbon”.
I do this to my Office 2007, which, by the way, only uses the ribbon interface on 3 of about 8 or 9 applications???

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hate it
offers no benefit over the old methods that i can use without stopping to think about

ms keeps adding stuff aka “features” thinking different and more (maybe also more different?) is better

different is just different — AND takes more effort to learn a new way

i would rather they cut out 90% of what they have and make win more *reliable* and *faster*
and totally scumware proof. and don’t cripple the pc for uses such as audio recording.

that latter would take a new systems *architecture* combining hardware and software but it is provably achievable. why wont the govt or some corporate consortium fund a totally safe and secure pc?

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All of this sound and fury is great, but does anyone really think Microsoft cares? They moved the “Show Desktop” button in Win7 from lower left to lower right, not for any real benefit, but because someone thought it would be “better.” A little thing, but telling. The graphics in Win7 and Office2010 are childish blobs, and the drawbacks have been listed here several times. It won’t matter, however, because MS is going to do things the way it wants. You Will Use It The Way We Say, And You Will Enjoy Using It The Way We Say.

http://dailywav.com/0705/worktogether.wav

http://dailywav.com/0502/regardme.wav

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Sorry, I thought I set the poll up to last for one month. It’s the first poll I’ve set up believe it or not. Sorry again. I will look at restoring it, but I do not believe it’s possible.

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You can get the old menus back with UBitMenu (http://www.ubit.ch/software/ubitmenu-languages/). It makes Office 2007 and 2010 usable again. Free for private use.

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My sentiments tend to parallel those of hrdubwd (post #13). I also agree with IonMan’s assessment: Microsoft cares as much what we think of the ribbon as Facebook cares about their users’ opinions.

I was one of the “lucky” few to get Office 2007 installed when it came out, and fortunately for my sanity Office 2003 was still on my computer. The only time I ever used 2007 was when I had to read a .docx file someone else had created. For my personal use, I still have Office 2000 or Office 2003, depending on which computer; my latest has only OpenOffice.org and Libre Office, which work just fine. As long as Mozilla is still providing security updates for Firefox 3.current, I’m in no rush to upgrade that, either, since they’ve also introduced a ribbon (or so they said — as soon as they said it, I refused to look at it); thank goodness they haven’t foisted it on us Thunderbird users, yet.

Even now, I find it hard to provide any kind of support to family members with Office 2007. Nothing under the ribbon is in what I consider an intuitive location, and as others have observed it takes 10 minutes to find a simple command.

I believe this is all part of Microsoft’s strategy to “dumb down” the entire system so complete idiots can use it, at the expense of the long-time and power users. Look at all the garbage that’s integrated into the operating system that really has nothing to do with running the computer!

Out of fairness and transparency, I’ll mention that I’ve been working with computers for close to 40 years, including working with a pre-release model of a “mini-computer” that required flipping the switches to boot and then running a paper tape to load BASIC into the system. I still do most of my work, except for opening a file, through a DOS prompt because I can type a lot faster than I can navigate through menus, let alone a ribbon (besides, XCOPY works better than copying from a CD via Windows Explorer; the latter requires two separate steps to remove the read-only flags on the files). And yes, I still work with directories, not with folders (another dumbing-down of a term that worked perfectly well for decades).

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There are different cognitive styles and the ribbon works well from some, not others. I’m among the latter, prefer the simple serial way the older style works. Sure, we can get used to the ribbon, but that only speaks to the almost infinite flexibility of the human mind. Don’t need a ribbon to prove that. Unfortunately, the creative and profit-seeking need to showcase the graphical capabilities of interfaces is overshadowing usefulness.

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Hey everyone, it appears the poll is working again. I do not know why it had self destructed for a while as I had specified a month, but oh well, it’s back so if you have not voted yet it is working again for now.

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Has anybody tried : Classic Menu for Office Professional Plus 2010 v4.00 or Classic Menu for Office 2007 v6.80 ? http://www.addintools.com/index.html I just simply installed these utilities and said goodbye to that hideous “Ribbon”.

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I fell in love with Word when v3 came out for the Macintosh (was that ’88?). Why? Because I could assign any keystroke to any function and still keep my hands on the keyboard.

Over the years, I’ve customized it so every Ctrl- combination and Alt- combo and Shift-Ctrl- combo and Function key and Alt-Shift-Function key, and, and, … well, you get the idea. I customized the menu bars and the toolbars, too. And auto-correct.

When W2007 came out, I inquired as to how to import my Normal.dot file (which is >700KB) and I was told that I couldn’t.

Therefore, I’ve stayed with W2003. And there I’ll remain until I can take my skills and technique with me, instead of losing everything to return to what some beginners’ focus group finds easiest.

So, please tell me that there’s now a way to bring my past along into this future?

AL

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I’ve made my peace with the ribbon, but only after customizing the Quick Access Toolbar so that the stuff I use most often is readily available. My biggest beef was that the old keyboard shortcut for the paragraph format dialog no longer worked (and it took a lot of digging to find it in the Customize dialog to put it on the QA toolbar, to boot).

Now that everything’s set up and I’m familiar with what’s where on the ribbon (and I’m used to clicking on the Paragraph Format icon rather than just using my keyboard), I find that it’s easier to come up with the seldom-used stuff than it was in the old menu system. Oh, and I keep the ribbon minimized except when I know that I’m going to go to it repeatedly in a short length of time.

That said, I was never a big user of keyboard shortcuts (just the paragraph format and fonts dialogs, for the most part). I could see where those who used Word a lot and had all the keyboard shortcuts in “finger macros” would be really distressed with the change (assuming that other keyboard shortcuts were removed from Word). I’ll also admit that there are some more esoteric commands that aren’t anywhere on the ribbon–but then, I seem to recall having to heavily customize the old menu for a lot of those commands, too, so I’m not sure that we’re really any worse off for that (except for having to re-do all of our customizations, of course).

My suspicion is that this change hurt the heavy users (like I was 10-15 years ago) a lot more than it did the occasional users (like I am now).

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bethel, I think you’re right. Heavy users were the hardest hit by the changes from 2003 to 2007/2010. These were the people that knew where all the features were or who had developed all the keyboard shortcuts that we average users have not. We average users did not even know most of the features were available in Office because they were hidden deeply within menus that we never had a need to explore, or the time because our jobs were not focused there.

Power users on the other hand do spend a large portion of their time in Office and have developed the keyboard shortcuts or know where the features were located. For them the ribbon had to be like moving to a new country, not just a new city. Everything has been changed. I can see why these people are having the problems they are.

There have been several add ons mentioned that help to modify the ribbon or change it back closer to the menu format. I hope this helps those power users that do not like the ribbon.

Lets hope we can all find common ground with Office.

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The issue with the Ribbon isn’t so much whether or not it’s a better interface then the traditional menu & toolbars because for most users new to Office the ribbon does work better. The real issue is Microsoft’s attitude and its handling of the aftermath that is known as the Ribbon fiasco.

Once Window’s 7 was a definite release Microsoft finally admitted that it dropped the ball with Windows Vista. Up until then though the official MS response was that vista was a success even though the rest of the world knew this was BS of unimaginable proportions. Doing this with Vista, Microsoft set the tone for how it would continually deny failures in the future; at least until the failures replacement was close to release. The problem with the Ribbon is that there is no planned replacement. Microsoft sold the farm betting on the Ribbon and so now it can’t admit anything but “Major Success” when it comes to the ribbon.

It matters not how many users are unhappy with the Ribbon and how it was forced on them, Microsoft will continue to deny there was ever any issue with the Ribbons rollout in Office 2007. And that is why so many of us who have been using Office long before 2007 are irritated.

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I have used office since it was first released and as well as Word Perfect & Lotus and even VisiCalc before that. Yes I was used to the menus and didn’t want to let them go. I hated the ribbon at first but once I learned to use it properly and use the quick access bar correctly the combo is way faster and better than any menu system. The key is the fact you can put the things you do most right up front.

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Coming in late to this party, I never thought to NOT like the ribbon. I used Office 2003 for a long time before moving into 2007 and it just seemed intuitive. Prior to 03, I used Lotus Smart Suite and still like their database 100% better. Never HAVE gotten the ‘hang’ of Access.

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The ribbon is great for newbies and kids, but h*** for us old geeks, but I have to use it while teaching. My students must email me their assignments, however, I use “Open Office” to review and grade them. I was interviewed by a couple from Redmond a few years ago because I was one of the first Engineers at a large Engineering firm to use a PC to for my work and was also a “Shareware Author” back in the early days. I strongly suggested the minimize the use of Icons in their future releases and you see how the listened. I work with many older folks that at one time stated “I will never use a computer” now they have to eat their words because of the own family communications and it is much easier for me to teach them how to use Ubuntu to get email and browse the web. I know microsoft has to come up with something new every couple of years to stay in business, so why can’t they come up with a OS the is Old People friendly, JUST WORDS PLEASE and Under $50.

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When I started using the “ribbon” I sighed that I would now have to learn to differentiate among these abstract icons for concepts that I knew the words for. Why didn’t Microsoft merely use the Chinese characters for the functions, instead of a new set of ideograms. At least then the learning effort would be useful, instead of creating a new language.

Continued irritation with the clumsiness of using the ribbon enabled me to make the decision to abandon Office entirely for another tool. I am much happier now.

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The Story of the Ribbon

Blog:
https://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/the-story-of-the-ribbon.aspx

Presentation, “The Story of the Ribbon”:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/MIX/MIX08/UX09 (1 hour, 30 minutes, 31 seconds)

Slide Show:
http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2008/03/20/the-story-of-the-microsoft-office-ribbon-by-jensen-harris/

Jensen Harris is now leading the Widows 8 UI design.
—
I recommend watching the Presentation at least once.
You may or may embrace the ribbon, but you’ll at least have some idea of why the ribbon.
I like the ribbon; I’ve been through: TSO, CP/M editor, WordStar, WordPerfect, early Word, and now Office.
For better or worse, Office has in excess of 1500 commands; the ribbon, imho, organizes them better.

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Count me in the group of hating the Ribbon. I’ve been forced (by workplace upgrades) to use it for 3 years. I found ways to make it easier to use but still hate it. Others have voiced opinions more eloquently than I can. But the one thing I hate the most, is that what I used to do in 1, or 2 clicks, now takes 5, 6, 7, etc. or wasting time searching, or *gasp* having to use the useless Help to find it. My saving grace is that I learned a very, very long time ago to use keyboard shortcuts. If not for the shortcuts, I would be a screaming idoit.

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I’ve used 3 business-class word processors and was/am a near expert user in all of them. Changing word processors is always difficult, but moving to Word (’95, I think) was the hardest: I hated Word for the first 5 or 6 years I used it. Moving to W2007 was, by comparison, a piece of cake , even though I had 2 betas and a trial version on my computer before I seriously tried to learn it. I had hoped for some big changes in Word 2007 (like eliminating necessity for a new section to change page orientation, allowing more than one header per page, and allowing chapter numbering with custom styles). When I didn’t see anything like that, I was not inclined to pay attention to “shallow” interface changes. What made me get serious? An informal poll of regular users–not novices, but nonexperts who use Word every day in their business activities. Nearly all of them liked the ribbon, claiming that they found things they didn’t know Word (or Excel) could do. I began to use W2007 for some word projects a couple weeks later and also began to modify the QAT. Comfort and speed with the ribbon was pretty quick after that. I still have clients who insist using W2003, but today I am not as comfortable with it as I am with W2007/10. So I clicked “Like it.”

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If you took a poll, what would the most popular desktop gadget be? Probably an analog clock. Different minds work in different ways, so it’s no surprise that some love the ribbon and others hate it. It’s been a while since I saw anyone with a digital wristwatch, but we’re just about all stuck with digital when it comes to clock radios. I like the ribbon.

I think one problem with the ribbon is that it is not independently scalable, which means that it is intrusive on some screen displays and much less so on others, and you can only change the size of it by messing with your carefully-selected screen settings, which then ruins your display. If memory serves me well, it was the same Ted who started a thread (rhyme accidental) about not being able to read his screen display. I think the aspect ratio of the screen has a lot to do with the ribbon being a visual sore thumb when it is one, and I would like to see them provide a means of adjusting the size of it.

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It must have been someone else who started the other poll. (I do not remember doing it) My laptop has an almost 17 inch screen with 1600×900 resolution, so works fine for office products. My desktop is even bigger with a 19 inch screen. I have plenty of room for the ribbon. It is possible some of the people who don’t like the ribbon don’t because of it’s size alone, but by putting their most commonly used commands on the QL bar and minimizing the ribbon, it really takes up no more space than the old menu. Several people have stated their keyboard shortcuts still work so with keyboard shortcuts and a customized QL bar I would think many power users could find most of what they commonly use fairly easily.

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Sorry about the wrong attribution Ted. It wasn’t actually a poll (that was a hypothetical example to suggest that a lot of people are more comfortable with a clock face than with a digital time display, just as some are more comfortable with the ribbon than the menu system), but there was a thread (unrelated to the ribbon, I think) started by someone with poor eyesight who was having difficulty in reading on-screen text.

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I seem to remember that as well, although my eyesight seems ffine. I need reading glasses, but no glasses for distance.

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I am getting used to it and as this happens I, of course, find less wrong with it! However, I must admit I have installed the Ubit Menu and use it as a fall-back when I am in a rush and don’t have time to search for a particular feature using the ribbon. Being a bit of a power user, I have built up a sizeable memory of shortcut keys that makes my work considerably easier and this results in bypassing the ribbon (and Ubit Menu) much of the time.

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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hrdubwd said most of what I wanted to say, so I’ll just add “ditto”!

Now, apart from that: in this topic I read the first rationale for the Ribbon that I’ve ever seen. Microsoft adopted it because so many of the new-feature requests they received were for features that were already there.

How interesting. I thought their reason must be something wrong-headed but logical, like “We ran comparative tests and found that Ribbon users were 7% faster than menu users with 3% fewer errors. Never in my most cynical fantasies did I imagine something like this.

Menus are not constantly on display (I would say “constantly in my way”), but they are easily browsed and reasonably comprehensible. Ribbon displays are not. Until the user becomes familiar with the application, they resemble a child’s toybox: countless oddly shaped and colored objects thrown together in no apparent order. Most of the icons disclose little or nothing about what they do.

When the user does become familiar with the application, she does so largely by learning by rote where the icons she needs are located. The ones she doesn’t use are like background noise: irrelevant when she can ignore them, distracting when she can’t.

Some users will eventually learn what some of the unfamiliar icons do — by clicking them accidentally, for example. Some of the icons these users learn about will prove to be useful. This is not an effective way to learn what features a program has, any more than equipping a hundred moneys with copies of Word is a good way to produce the works of Shakespeare.

Given the problem of users who don’t know that the feature they want is already available, the solution of displaying several collections of cryptic icons in complex and variable two-dimensional arrangements is farcically superficial.

I’d be very interested to hear how many requests for existing features Microsoft gets now. l’d be surprised if they have declined much, if at all.

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I’d be very interested to hear how many requests for existing features Microsoft gets now. l’d be surprised if they have declined much, if at all.

Given the amount of telemetry, feedback, and requests that Microsoft has I dobut very seriously that the Ribbon would be extended beyond Office in the way it has if the results were as skewed as it appears you believe.

Joe

--Joe

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Joe, your faith that a positive feedback loop is functioning somewhere in Redmond is touching, but I don’t share it.

If all of that feedback and all of those usability studies were producing positive results, the Ribbon would never have made it out the door in the first place, at least not in anything like its present form. I’ve stated some of the reasons why the Ribbon is a usability disaster. The fact that Microsoft expended tremendous amounts of resources producing the disaster does nothing to assure me that they know what they’re doing.

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Joe, your faith that a positive feedback loop is functioning somewhere in Redmond is touching, but I don’t share it.

If all of that feedback and all of those usability studies were producing positive results, the Ribbon would never have made it out the door in the first place, at least not in anything like its present form. I’ve stated some of the reasons why the Ribbon is a usability disaster. The fact that Microsoft expended tremendous amounts of resources producing the disaster does nothing to assure me that they know what they’re doing.

If menus were reasonably comprehensible then there would not have been the continuous new feature requests for functions that already existed. As a very seasoned but far from expert Office user I found the proliferation of menus confusing & functions very hard to find. When I tried to use a feature in any Office product that I had not used before or had not used in a while I would just give up quickly because the discoverablility was so bad.

I like the idea that the Ribbon changes based on what I’m doing. It gives me a much better chance of using the product in a productive way. Yes, I understand that those who “live in Office” or are just very experienced in one Office program probably don’t like the Ribbon. Like many of Microsoft product decisions it will probably take another iteration (i.e the third) to make the Ribbon useful enough for the experienced Office user.

Microsoft decided that the menu metaphor was obfuscating features making Office harder to work with not exposing them making usage easier. Just to humor me, what would you have done given the circumstances at the time?

Joe

--Joe

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Most basic users/beginners that I have spoken to find the Ribbon easier to use (I don’t understand it myself, but there you are). Given that they make up most of the licences, it’s not surprising that the ribbon is here and probably will be for the foreseeable future, though it will naturally evolve.Personally I think its first incarnation, like the rest of 2007, was rubbish, but 2010 made some good steps in the right direction. Fingers crossed for 15 which I can’t comment on.

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Most basic users/beginners that I have spoken to find the Ribbon easier to use (I don’t understand it myself, but there you are). Given that they make up most of the licences, it’s not surprising that the ribbon is here and probably will be for the foreseeable future, though it will naturally evolve.Personally I think its first incarnation, like the rest of 2007, was rubbish, but 2010 made some good steps in the right direction. Fingers crossed for 15 which I can’t comment on.

This is no surprise. Think back to your earliest days with a computer and how you have progressed. There was the same reluctance and even “hate” between DOS & Windows, Word Perfect & Word, Lotus 123 & Excel, Unix & AS400 there are many more. We (humans) are creatures of habit.

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Russ,

How right you are! Unfortunately, most of my habits are bad ones. :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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For me, as a Word/Excel user for 20+ years, I of course hated it at first. I spreat the QAT across with the most frequent commands and tried to ignore the ribbon. As i used it more and more I came to if not really like it, get used to it. Now I find myself un hiding the ribbon to use it. The saving grace for me is the same keyboard shortcuts still work the same way. I’m a BIG keyboard guy, and having those still work is the absolute best thing for me. As Ted has said, it is a good thing to learn new stuff, so I grudgingly went along and in short order was working as fast the “new” way as I did with the menu.

As an aside, the point made by Clint is also valid, I am sure many people had no idea all the features in Word and Excel even existed as they truly were buried deep in the menu system thus unknown to many.
Joel

Joel

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Joe, most of my points exactly. I knew nothing of many of these features simply because most were buried so far in the menus and that even if I had an inkling the feature existed, there was little hope of finding it. I suppose some would say a similar thing of the ribbon, but the tabs at least give me a hint where to look. And with 2010 I can customize to make things easier for me. I have placed many of the features I use on my favorites tab.

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Joe, you asked what I would have done.

I’ll assume you meant what would I have done about reducing the number of requests for existing features and making Office more accessible to beginners, since those are the only two rationales for the Ribbon that have come up.

Regarding feature requests, I would have analyzed the requests for each feature to determine what prevented users from finding it. Then I would have tried to change each feature’s concept and interface to reduce or remove the barriers.

That would be a lot of hard work, but it would be productive work. The Ribbon is not a productive change from this perspective.

Regarding new users… the first thing I’d do is find out whether there really are any new users to worry about. Twenty or even ten years ago there were, but I think that time has passed — at least in the United States and most of the industrialized world. I think the number of people who do not use computers and will ever be willing and able to use them is now rather small.

(I’m excluding kids from this. Back in the day, kids learned to program 6502 computers in machine language. Kids can learn anything they want to.)

I recognize a relatively large class of people who have learned to use computers but just barely understand them. They will benefit the most from an improved interface. The catch is that they will also be confused the most by any type of change. To be productive, not counterproductive, changes directed at these users must be incremental; they must improve the interface that the users know, not replace it with one that is completely different.

So what I’d do for these users is essentially the same as what I’d do for people who wish they had features that already exist. I’d look for ways to improve the concepts that underlie the application’s features, and the interface that overlays them, to make the application more intuitive and accessible. Again, there would be no single change that makes everything good. There would be an accumulation of incremental changes. Again, it would be a lot of hard work, and it wouldn’t give the marketing wonks anything to crow about, but it would yield a program that is really easier to learn and use.

If I found that non-kid new users actually were a significant class, I might introduce something like the ribbon for them — but I would view it as an improved set of training wheels. I would never, ever interfere with established users’ use of the menu system. On the contrary, I’d look for ways to encourage Ribbon users to graduate to the menu system.

Note that by taking this approach I’d eliminate the need for the Ribbon to support all of the application’s functions — which would enable me to make it a lot simpler and easier for its real audience to use.

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Regarding feature requests, I would have analyzed the requests for each feature to determine what prevented users from finding it. Then I would have tried to change each feature’s concept and interface to reduce or remove the barriers.

That would be a lot of hard work, but it would be productive work. The Ribbon is not a productive change from this perspective.

Regarding new users… the first thing I’d do is find out whether there really are any new users to worry about. Twenty or even ten years ago there were, but I think that time has passed — at least in the United States and most of the industrialized world. I think the number of people who do not use computers and will ever be willing and able to use them is now rather small.

(I’m excluding kids from this. Back in the day, kids learned to program 6502 computers in machine language. Kids can learn anything they want to.)

I recognize a relatively large class of people who have learned to use computers but just barely understand them. They will benefit the most from an improved interface. The catch is that they will also be confused the most by any type of change. To be productive, not counterproductive, changes directed at these users must be incremental; they must improve the interface that the users know, not replace it with one that is completely different.

So what I’d do for these users is essentially the same as what I’d do for people who wish they had features that already exist. I’d look for ways to improve the concepts that underlie the application’s features, and the interface that overlays them, to make the application more intuitive and accessible. Again, there would be no single change that makes everything good. There would be an accumulation of incremental changes. Again, it would be a lot of hard work, and it wouldn’t give the marketing wonks anything to crow about, but it would yield a program that is really easier to learn and use.

If I found that non-kid new users actually were a significant class, I might introduce something like the ribbon for them — but I would view it as an improved set of training wheels. I would never, ever interfere with established users’ use of the menu system. On the contrary, I’d look for ways to encourage Ribbon users to graduate to the menu system.

Note that by taking this approach I’d eliminate the need for the Ribbon to support all of the application’s functions — which would enable me to make it a lot simpler and easier for its real audience to use.

You imply that Microsoft did not do any research into the reasons that features were not being discovered. At some point adding features makes you outgrow the menu-toolbar metaphor. If you’ve never read the blog posts by Jensen Harris about the Ribbon I’d urge you to read them. Links can be found at Why the new UI.

So, you’d introduce a new method to discover features in addition to the menus and toolbars? What would this new metaphor be? Adaptable menus? Microsoft has been there, tried that, got crucified for it. An agent to help with features? Oh, like Clippy et al – another beating for Microsoft. What about Task Panes? Another been there, tried that moment. It is not as though Microsoft has not made an effort to try various avenues to make product usage better. Making interface changes is NOT easy. It is very difficult and not undertaken lightly.

The user base for Office could not keep growing if there were not new users all the time. Are the numbers of new Office users the same as 10 – 20 years ago? Probably not. I don’t know. I’m pretty sure Microsoft has an idea though. Since it appears that you disagree with Microsoft’s analysis of the UI usability, changes required for each version, and all the other reasons stated in the Jensen Harris posts it is easy to say incremental change is easier for everyone. But the suggestion is “I’d change the feature’s concept and interface”. If you change the feature’s concept is it the same feature? Have you added yet another new feature? What is the basic interface metaphor you propose? Would it be different for every feature?

Once again I’ll say making UI changes is hard. Introducing even more usage metaphors would make the suite less usable than it was at the time.

Joe

--Joe

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Joe, I know you’re engaging in this discussion in good faith, but it’s very frustrating for me, because you clearly “don’t get it.”

You imply that Microsoft did not do any research into the reasons that features were not being discovered.

No, I don’t. I’ve already discussed this in general, although not in this particular context. I understand that Microsoft does a tremendous amount of research into usability for every innovation it introduces. I also know that this research produces results that are, in balance, worse than doing nothing. Just working with the products demonstrates that.

I don’t know why Microsoft’s large investment in usability research produces negative results. I can draw theories from the histories of other institutions that have done similar things, such as the American automotive industry. The reasons why it is so aren’t really important here. It demonstrably is so.

It seems to me that Microsoft has assumed the role of Aristotle in this debate: if they said it, it must be true. Heavy objects fall faster than light ones, rotting meat creates flies by spontaneous generation, and the Ribbon is an improved user interface. The Authority always provides plenty of logical arguments that its supporters can cite to refute their opponents, and the contrary evidence is simply given no weight.

If you’ve never read the blog posts by Jensen Harris about the Ribbon I’d urge you to read them. Links can be found at Why the new UI.

I’ll add that to my round tuit list (which, I warn you, is already pretty long). However, a quick Google search shows that he is not, shall we say, an impartial observer. I’ll have to consider what he says in light of that.

So, you’d introduce a new method to discover features in addition to the menus and toolbars?

No, that’s exactly what I would not do. The last thing the computing world needs is more feature discovery methods to learn. It needs features that are easier to discover.

What is the basic interface metaphor you propose? Would it be different for every feature?

The answer to that question is really the same as the answer to the previous one, but stating it in more than one context may make it clearer. The basic interface metaphor I propose is WIMP (although I think it’s more a paradigm than a metaphor). Changing the paradigm is the last thing I want to do.

WIMP has worked well for about thirty years. There are good reasons for that. Don’t change what ain’t broken.

I’ll entertain a better paradigm for generalized computer interaction when one is proposed, but so far it ain’t been. The Ribbon doesn’t even come close enough to make fun of, except for the fact that the 800 pound gorilla of the computing world is trying to force it on us.

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Joe, I know you’re engaging in this discussion in good faith, but it’s very frustrating for me, because you clearly “don’t get it.”

No, I don’t. I’ve already discussed this in general, although not in this particular context. I understand that Microsoft does a tremendous amount of research into usability for every innovation it introduces. I also know that this research produces results that are, in balance, worse than doing nothing. Just working with the products demonstrates that.

I don’t know why Microsoft’s large investment in usability research produces negative results. I can draw theories from the histories of other institutions that have done similar things, such as the American automotive industry. The reasons why it is so aren’t really important here. It demonstrably is so.

It seems to me that Microsoft has assumed the role of Aristotle in this debate: if they said it, it must be true. Heavy objects fall faster than light ones, rotting meat creates flies by spontaneous generation, and the Ribbon is an improved user interface. The Authority always provides plenty of logical arguments that its supporters can cite to refute their opponents, and the contrary evidence is simply given no weight.

I’ll add that to my round tuit list (which, I warn you, is already pretty long). However, a quick Google search shows that he is not, shall we say, an impartial observer. I’ll have to consider what he says in light of that.

No, that’s exactly what I would not do. The last thing the computing world needs is more feature discovery methods to learn. It needs features that are easier to discover.

The answer to that question is really the same as the answer to the previous one, but stating it in more than one context may make it clearer. The basic interface metaphor I propose is WIMP (although I think it’s more a paradigm than a metaphor). Changing the paradigm is the last thing I want to do.

WIMP has worked well for about thirty years. There are good reasons for that. Don’t change what ain’t broken.

I’ll entertain a better paradigm for generalized computer interaction when one is proposed, but so far it ain’t been. The Ribbon doesn’t even come close enough to make fun of, except for the fact that the 800 pound gorilla of the computing world is trying to force it on us.

You appear to have decided that the Ribbon is terrible and anyone who disagrees with that does not “get it”. I do understand that there is a group of users that will never believe the Ribbon is useful and productive. You appear to be among them. As such you dismiss any research from Microsoft as being producing “negative results” and the results being “worse than nothing”. Just because it is Microsoft does not mean it is right nor does it mean it is wrong. Try reading the short Ribbon section is this blog post Reflections on our first conversation by Steven Sinofsky. As with Jensen Harris, he is hardly unbiased. But that does make what he saying about satisfaction and usability wrong. BTW, Jensen Harris was on the Ribbon design team in Office and now works in the Windows division. I’d not expect his posts to be unbiased. Nor would I expect a post by any designer or programmer to be unbiased about their product.

I fully expect that you’ll dismiss what Sinofsky has to say in the fourth paragraph about user satisfaction and product usability.

Joe

--Joe

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These don’t necessarily have to be mutually exclusive options. Microsoft could make a lot more users happy if they offered a choice of menu and ribbon.

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Gentlemen, I think it’s time to dial it back a notch or two. I believe we know what both of you think of the ribbon. As Joe mentioned earlier, Office 2010 is most likely the latest version of an ever changing product that will continue to evolve as continued feedback is received by MS on this product. Perhaps in a future version there will be options to use either the ribbon UI or a menu driven UI. In any case there are 3rd party alternatives that can be added that allow a menu driven alternative now. Perhaps those that truly hate the ribbon should really be looking at those alternatives.

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My perception is that Microsoft has taken the route of listening far too much to novice users, and in some way sort of emulating the Mac’ user experience. This has clearly alienated the power/long time users who feel insulted by this approach. As John259 stated, “Microsoft could make a lot more users happy if they offered a choice of menu and ribbon”. I still use Office 97 on XP, and to keep up to date, Libre Office on Kubuntu (dual boot system – i7-2600K CPU). So my choice of not using the ribbon is to stay away completely.

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I think it’s pretty obvious from the poll that the majority of the people who read this forum are those power users we have heard from in the discussion. I also noticed many of the respondants have very few posts. I would hope the discussions here would cause them to think about adding more to these forums, not only in the Office Applications Forum but in other areas. We can always use more informed opinions and assistance in solving these sometimes very complex problems as they come up. Thank you all once again for taking time in your busy days to respond. Please come again, and often!.

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Ted, I think this is a useful discussion, and I don’t see any problem with continuing it as long as we remain respectful of each other.

Joe, I do not claim that the Ribbon is terrible. I maintain that the Ribbon is useful (although not necessarily optimal) for certain classes of users (whom I believe are a relative minority, but that’s another issue). Nor do I claim that anyone who disagrees with me does not “get it”. I observed that you do not “get it,” not because you don’t share my opinion of the Ribbon, but because you have misinterpreted my reasons for believing as I do.

I read the Sinofsky piece. I didn’t come away with any strong opinion about it; he didn’t seem to be stating anything in particular for me to agree or disagree with. However, I was struck by the following statement at the end of the section:

We’ve been looking at this [feedback on the color palette of the Metro UI]… We actually added intensity and pixels… because of feedback we received… We’ll continue to look at this area of course, but want to avoid “churn” at a stylistic level because so many third-party products tend to mimic the Windows experience without utilizing the built-in metrics and system settings to obtain the palette (so things can look awkwardly different).

I was struck not by what he said about the topic, but by the very fact that he mentioned the topic as a matter of concern. It made me realize that a lot of Microsoft’s UI engineering is not about usability at all, but about aesthetics. One of their goals is to improve their products’ functionality and usability, but another is to add sizzle, generate excitement, and persuade people to buy the New Thing whether it’s really better or not. Inevitably, the two goals get confused in their minds, and even more in what they write for external consumption.

I’m not saying this cynically… at least not entirely. I understand that Microsoft is as much a marketing company as a technology company, and given the realities of the market it’s in, it has to be. It must do a certain amount of sizzle making to succeed in the marketplace. But I also recognize that what helps Microsoft succeed does not necessarily help anyone do their work.

I also understand that to whatever extent a given innovation is motivated by a desire to make a product look cool, the debate about whether it improves or degrades usability is off point, on both sides of the issue.

I’m not sure where this is going to lead us. Perhaps we’ll develop a whole new class of software to make Microsoft’s products usable, as we once developed anti-virus software to make them safe. Or, perhaps we’ll move toward a world where advanced users “graduate” to Linux and Open Office as a matter of course.

Personally, I won’t be ready to do that until Open Office and the Linux application world in general become somewhat more mature. I hope I can hang on with Windows, if things go that way, until they do.

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How is this a useful discussion then? I am genuinely curious as you seem to have denigrated anything that might resemble empirical discussion, as being biased, without an alternative that I can see.

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Rory said, “… you seem to have denigrated anything that might resemble empirical discussion.”

That baffles me. My whole purpose in pursuing this debate is to encourage empirical discussion. Can you give an example of an effort at empirical discussion that I have denigrated?

I’m following dictionary.com’s first definition of empirical: “derived from or guided by experience or experiment.” I have said critical things about several posts that were based on an appeal to authority. I do not consider that empirical.

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Now now children, get all your toys together because I’m calling your mommies to come take you home…

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I’ve always wondered why a few ppl hate Ribbon

Seems to be split down the middle or at least much closer to the middle than to a few, unless we’re qualifying hate to a specific level of ire, and not just thumbs down or up in general.
Mary Jo was just on Windows Weekly, been using the ribbon in Office for years now, doesn’t use it often enough to get familiar with it and it still baffles her, as it does me; my needs are simple and the ribbon “protrudes.”

Those that use it all the time and get used to it are probably much more likely to be satisfied with it; like getting used to anything that has value but is presented in an alternate configuration.

Edit: HO! Just saw the poll results, the ire is higher than I guessed; if accurate of course, small but significant sample.

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The thing I have seen while reviewing the posts is that it seems many of the posters are those heavy users of Office. These seem to be the same members who frequent the Office Applications Forum from my experience. The average Office user does not seem to visit this forum nearly as often because they do not have nearly the advance questions needing answers in these forums if that makes any sense. In other words I do not believe average users are even seeing the poll as much as power users.

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The thing I have seen while reviewing the posts is that it seems many of the posters are those heavy users of Office. These seem to be the same members who frequent the Office Applications Forum from my experience. The average Office user does not seem to visit this forum nearly as often because they do not have nearly the advance questions needing answers in these forums if that makes any sense. In other words I do not believe average users are even seeing the poll as much as power users.

Ted

No poll can be perfect! But take that observation to its conclusion: Ribbons are the equivalent of big letter coloured keyboards for kids (novice users), Menus are the keyboards for grown ups (professional users).

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I do not necessarily agree. The novice users do not get nearly involved so they do not visit the forum that delves into the inner working of Office apps nearly as often as power users. I suspect if those novice users visited this thread and answered the question the poll would be nearly identical. This does not mean the novice users should be belittled because they seem to like the Ribbon more than the power users. Perhaps those same office novice users are experts in other fields that would make the Office power users cringe. Some may actually take exception to reference to “big letter coloured keyboards for kids”.

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GET THAT RIBBON OFF MY LAWN! …

Let’s go back to those personalized menus you never saw, because you didn’t use them, because you never saw them.

Bruce

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You know, one can tailor the Quick Bar (or whatever term) w/ the items YOU want & then collapse the Ribbon. Then on, just hit a Tap when, occasionally need something not, in Quick.

Drew

The QAT would be a part solution if it wasn’t so inflexible. Actually adding commands is simple, but assigning sensible icons and keyboard shortcuts is a nightmare. Adding custom macros is far from intuitive and probably impossible for the average user to attempt.

And you have no choice where the QAT resides – only at the top of the screen. You cannot float it or dock it to the sides or bottom. It is far more difficult to use than the simplicity of custom menus and custom toolbars with self-designed button faces.

You can create custom QATs and attach them to templates, so there is a process but it is so far removed menus/toolbars as to be from another galaxy.

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You can put the QAT below the ribbon

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I think you have a biased poll.

In asking if readers like it or hate it, you have pitted users with a moderate opinion against readers who have a strong opinion.

If you had asked if readers like it or dislike it, that would have been a fair contest. If you had asked if readers love it or hate it, that might have been a fair contest.

One reason the poll is unfair is that the number of responses you get from the moderates may be greatly outnumbered, if not in effect shouted down and intimidated by the opinionated users, with the specified opinion being one of ‘hate’.

I have already voted to say that I like it, so you can’t count me again. You might, however, reflect on the bias that is built into the poll itself.

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Like I have said previously, I think the biggest problem with this poll is that the users who like it, the non-power users, are those users that do not delve deeply into the inner workings of Office and hence do not partake of this particular Forum very often. Yes you might be right, the wording could have been better, but the very nature of this forum was stacked against the people that liked right from the start.

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The whole concept of ‘power users’ is just a euphemism for ‘users of a certain age and experience’. There is now an entire generation of users who have known nothing but The Ribbon and will accrue experience, becoming power users with the ribbon. You can’t buy it without the ribbon. Furthermore there are specialized users, which means almost everyone who isn’t either teaching it or writing a book about it, who use certain features and don’t care about the others. How many users use Word Count in Word? Writers do, and Word has a lovely little cubbyhole on the ribbon with spellcheck, grammar check, reference sources, dictionary, thesaurus, and Word Count (plus whatever else). It’s a gem. And that is just the ‘glorified typewriter’ part of it. As I recall, the earliest PCs were just glorified typewriters, with real (IBM Selectric) typewriters for the hard copy.

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Wow, what a discussion! As a Tech support person for over ten years and having worked with Word since version 6 (which came on a set of about 14 floppy disks) I’ve noticed a number of things.
I like the old interface for a number of reasons: it could be customized to just the way you liked it and it pretty much stayed that way, I had “toggles” so I could toggle on/off toolbars like the drawing toolbar which I frequently used, other infrequently used toolbars could easily be turned on/off as required if I was working on some project, and even the toolbars themselves could be customized. All my toolbars and their Icons were just a click away, now I have to figure out which menu I have to be in first and they’re often 3 or more clicks away as I try to figure out which menu I need to be in.
As a company that had hundreds of templates, we had created our own toolbars for the most common ones: fax covers, letterhead, etc., that were always available – however they are now buried a level deep under the oddly named heading – Addins.
Odd thing though, even though we had pretty much a common user interface with everyone having access, I couldn’t “teach” some of the users to use many of the common shortcuts – they would click “File, Save” or “File, Open” instead of using the first two or three icons on their menus – even with those menus being consistent across all of their Office products.
Now, with Office 2007-2010 they’ve renamed a number of functions which totally threw us off. Sure you could find “Insert, Page break”, but to insert any other type of break you have to go to Page Layout??? Office seems to have gone from having 5+ different ways to accomplish a task to one.
Parts of the ribbon really are a pain, but I personally really like the way you can “preview” the way a document or paragraph will look just by highlighting a font, point size, or style. Unfortunately, that’s not much use in our Office environment where 95% of the staff only use 2 designated fonts for filling in templates.
The ribbon is a nice idea, but not suited to the way most people work.

Any why did they change the reply to “do you want to save your changes?” to “Save, Don’t Save?” when I was used to hitting Y or N??? But that’s another topic…

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You might find Templates more conveniently under File | New.

It’s hard to believe the ribbon is more than five years old, and a kid who started learning Office in High School may now be well into university, and not have the faintest idea what all this fuss is about.

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I want to make an additional comment on the rationale for the Ribbon: that it is Microsoft’s response to requests for features that are already implemented.

Joe asked how I would respond to that problem. I neglected to give the simplest and most direct reply: I would provide a help system that gives users help.

This may sound snarky or flip, but I mean it quite soberly. Office’s help system does not accomplish that.

As an example, consider my experience of last weekend with Word 2010. I had to review a document that contained hundreds of changes, and I wanted to know how to accept or reject a change and move to the next change with one click instead of two.

I clicked the question mark icon which Microsoft has exiled to the right edge of the window (the first time I used Office 2010 it took me minutes to find it). Word opened its help window.

First, I noticed that the “search” box was labeled “Bing,” not “Search.” Microsoft is using Office’s help system to provide some free advertising for one of its other products. Tacky! This is a little thing, but a software product’s image is largely a sum of little things. If Microsoft wants me to have a favorable opinion of Office 2010’s help, and thus of Office 2010, it’s starting off on the wrong foot.

I entered a search string, something like “review accept reject.” Seeing no Search button, I pressed Enter to start the search. (I later discovered that the little magnifying-glass icon, positioned inside the text box like the “open” arrow on a dropdown list, is actually a search button. Maybe I’ll remember that that next time I use help. Probably not. When every part of Office’s user interface works differently, and all of them not only work differently from everything in the non-Microsoft world, but even from other Microsoft products, it’s pretty hard to remember how anything works.)

But onward. The help window displayed several dozen articles, with a “More” icon after the last one. Clearly Word found me lots of help… more than I could possibly use unless I was prepared to undertake a major research project. It had better do a good job of ranking the results, I thought, because I’ll never find the needle I want by rummaging through this haystack.

Unfortunately, it turned out to do a really miserable job of ranking the results. I’m not sure it was even trying.

The first article’s title was something like “How to Use the Review Feature in Word 2003.” Excuse me? This is Word 2010. Why is a topic about Word 2003 even available?

The second article had a more promising title, but turned out to be a long-winded introduction to the Review feature which didn’t contain the information I needed.

The third “article” was a blog post by someone I’d never heard of, who had no apparent connection to Microsoft.

And so it went.

After skipping past several more probably-unhelpful entries, I found one titled, “How to troubleshoot print failures in Word 2010, Word 2007, and Word 2003.” This was so obviously irrelevant that it fascinated me. How could a help system possibly come up with that for a search on the review feature?

I opened the article to see what it might have to do with my search. I found that it did contain the word “Review,” right up near the top, where it said: “Last Review: August 26, 2011.” The words “accept” and “reject,” alas, did not appear in the article at all.

I looked at the page’s meta tags, but found no more clues.

I looked at a few more articles, then gave up. The information I wanted might be buried somewhere in the information that Help found for me, but extracting it would take more effort than it was worth. It was easier to review a few hundred changes by clicking twice instead of once.

If I were naive enough to blame Office rather than the help system, and to think Microsoft might pay attention to my feedback, I might write to tell them it would be really nice if Review would let me accept/reject a change and move to the next change with one click. Thus I’d join the ranks of benighted users who inspired Microsoft to reinvent the user interface.

I want to emphasize that this experience is neither made-up nor cherry-picked. It’s simply the most recent encounter I’ve had with Office help. I chose to recount it because it’s fresh in my mind. I don’t often try to use Office help, but when I do, the result is usually about the same.

I hope I’ve described it in enough detail to demonstrate that I am getting insatisfactory results because Office’s help system is almost useless, not because I don’t understand how to use it.

Actually, Office does not really have a help system at all. It has a half-baked search engine in a lameware web browser that pulls stuff up, apparently more or less at random, from Microsoft’s Knowledge Base and other parts of the Web.

I work for a company with less than a dozen employees, and part of my job involves producing end user documentation. If I created a usability tool as badly conceived and executed as this one, my boss would take stripes off my back, and justifiably so.

The idea that Microsoft would produce a shoddy help system like this one, then react to its users’ inability to find information by inventing a new user interface, is like a plot line for a Dilbert cartoon. It’s infuriating, it’s frustrating, it’s pathetic… but it’s also rather funny.

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If you use the Quick Access Toolbar, I suggest you go to ‘All Commands’ and add ‘Changes’.

That was a dandy post, and it may well start (or renew) an avalanche of further posts.

(AN additional comment?)

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I think that if you go to the Quick Access Toolbar ‘All Commands’ you may find a cure for many of the ribbon’s shortcomings, and a lot of things that either aren’t available from the ribbon or are nearly impossible to find. You may find it worth going through every one of them alphabetically – actually install as many as will fit on your screen at once – and test each to see what it does – and then remove those and continue with the next screen-wide sequence.

In Word, if I want to insert the current date and time there is an icon for it under the ‘Insert’ tab of the ribbon, but if I want to insert a different date, I have no idea how to use the ribbon to do it. There is, however, a ‘Date Picker Content Control’ in the ‘All Commands’ list for the Quick Access Toolbar, which does exactly what I want it to do.

Having found any number of useful functions in the ‘All Commands’ list, you may then be able to leave them on the Quick Access Toolbar, or you may be able to customize the ribbon to put them where you want them.

I have a suspicion that a lot of users may find that ‘All Commands’ list in the QAT can increase their productivity and make the system more user-friendly in no time at all. How many ‘power users’ even know what those commands do?

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@jsachs177: When you open help if you click on the “book” icon you get a help table of content organized in the more traditional manner. You do not have to search to use it. It does take you to online help. But online is the way help is going now. It is much easier to distribute changes online that in a help file. I agree that the basic interface where you are encouraged to search is bad and that the search results are often not the best. I suppose that will improve over time. IMO, the quality of help in general is terrible regardless of the product. This in no way is meant to exonerate Microsoft. As most other vendors they have not paid enough attention to “help” for quite a while.

As far as your particular search for how to accept changes and move on. If you click on the top part of the “Accept” button it will accept and move on. Just hover to see the tool tip.

Joe

--Joe

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Joe, thank you for pointing out the book icon. It does make Word’s help work better. The jury’s out on whether it works well enough to be useable, though… I may end up concluding that searching the world with Google is still a better source for help with Word than Word’s own help.

Your suggestion for “accept changes and move on” does not, alas, work. Actually, it’s the first thing I tried, since it’s the obvious thing to try. It accepts the change and then sits there until I click “next change.” I assume there’s some obscure option I have to change to make it work the way it ought to work.

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Does the tool tip say “Accept changes and move on”?

Joe

--Joe

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To me the Ribbon looks messy, confusing, and really slows me down … but that’s just me. I wish there was an option for both.

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Does the tool tip say “Accept changes and move on”?

To be precise, “Accept changes and move to next.” And I’ve found that it works that way in other documents, but not in the big one that I had to review under time pressure.

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To be precise, “Accept changes and move to next.” And I’ve found that it works that way in other documents, but not in the big one that I had to review under time pressure.

Here is a LINK that you might find helpful, along with links from that.

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Thank you, dogberry. I’ve been using change tracking for ten years or more, and I already had a pretty good idea how it works. I took a look at the link; it described a few interesting features I didn’t know about, but unfortunately nothing about the problem I described. I believe it was just a bit of weirdness that can’t be explained, and I just have to hope it never happens again.

Given that, it no longer seems like the best example to have used to a critique of Office Help. However, I can assure everyone (again) that it’s representative. I can almost always find better answers, faster, by searching with Google.

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Thank you, dogberry. I’ve been using change tracking for ten years or more, and I already had a pretty good idea how it works. I took a look at the link; it described a few interesting features I didn’t know about, but unfortunately nothing about the problem I described. I believe it was just a bit of weirdness that can’t be explained, and I just have to hope it never happens again.

Given that, it no longer seems like the best example to have used to a critique of Office Help. However, I can assure everyone (again) that it’s representative. I can almost always find better answers, faster, by searching with Google.

I would have to investigate more closely, but other word processors, notably WordPerfect (which has just released version X6) will produce documents that can be readily converted to Word. If, however, there is no provision for ‘track changes’… The same would be true if the document were converted to a PDF and back again.

Well, you tell me. It’s just a passing thought.

I agree that ‘it’s hard to find good help these days’.

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I find clicking on the drop down arrow next to search in help and selecting Word help rather than the default of all word works better for me. In the case of searching for accept changes, the first item that comes up is “Review, accept, reject and hide tracked changes”.

Jerry

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I don’t want to stir up the discussion again, but I need to make one comment.

I hope that the Windows 8 debacle will encourage a more realistic judgment of Microsoft’s human factors research.

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Ya, to me the best interface is a menu bar with a customized icon bar selected from the most used items available. Ribbons are kind of in the middle, better than a menu bar alone but not as good as bar and icon combination. There’s no getting around the fact that the ribbon interface looks more modern though and these days, to be considered old and stodgy u.i.-wise is completely out of fashion so menu bars are often hid and need to be turned on for major interfaces like iTunes and W7 explorer leaving almost no proper u.i. at all if left off!!

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Here’s what Microsoft does…

It comes out with a new OS and after years of using the old OS and familiar with it Microsoft comes out with the new OS and changes things and commands and features that are basically what the old OS had and they change the names of them, puts them where we are not familiar and then we spend a another few years learning it and then Microsoft does it all over again…

All they ever need to do is leave alone what we are familiar with and just leave us with only having to learn any new stuff they added.

An example I always use is with the solitaire game.
In Xp all you had to do was hit F2 and it dealt a new hand.
Now you have to hit F2 and get three options as to what you want to do when all you wanted to do is deal a new hand..
So, in thier warped quest for efficiency they now give you an EXTRA step to waste your time on.

It’s like a big plot being concocted by a bunch of programming school dropouts!

ARE YOU LISTENING BILL GATES????

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