On 14/01/2011 09:56, D.M.Chapman wrote:
In ,
wrote:
On 14/01/2011 06:46, D.M.Chapman wrote:
Beware that it'll be Office 2007 or 2010 now - both massive improvements
on 2003 but a bit of a culture shock. I like the new interface, and most
heavy users I know do now. It was a big change though :-)
You're kidding!? I use Office myself, and spend most of my working life
in a variety of businesses where the users, including myself, are all
'heavy users' (ie use it pretty well all day every day) and all of whom
are now on 2007. I genuinely can't think of anyone who has a good word
to say about it: personally I hate it with a passion and certainly have
no plans to change from 2003 on my home machines despite several years'
enforced experience on 2007.
I suspect that the only people who might like 2007 (I haven't even seen
2010) are complete newbies who will probably appreciate the more
contextual availability of commands).
Newbies, yes, much easier as much of the complex stuff is hidden and doesn't
confuse.
Experienced users have to get over the "wtf!" that happens when they first
open it - most seem more than happy after a while.
Plenty of really heave users here who would never go back now. Office 2010
improves on things - 2007 was a first stab. Not sure we even offer or
support 2003 now tbh.
I think it's PowerPoint which causes me most angst in 2007. Just trying
to thing off the top of my head why...
- Files I'm working with are frequently worked on by others; even though
I always disable *every* bloody Autocorrect option there is (default
being all "on") other (less PPT-literate) users don't, and frequently I
find files I've been working on get totally marmalised unwittingly into
Microsoft's warped idea of how they should look - never mind the user's
house style.
- There are still plenty of users of v2003 out there (and I'm including
major multinational corporate environments here) and agencies I work for
have a requirement to be able to supply files in both 2003 and 2007
format. Now, the MS patch to enable interconversion between the two
formats is definitely *not* fully reliable - notably with charts - and I
have personally had to spend *days* recreating massive PPT files which
have been screwed by this process.
- I often come across a need to customise charts created in PPT - eg to
be able to use corporate branding colours rather than the 40-colour
palette imposed by MS - in the old days you could create the chart, then
at the end 'ungroup' it and customise away. However this 'ungroup'
option has been removed from PPT 2007 by MS. WTF? Recently several
people in an office I where I was working were scratching their heads
over this one... the solution: I emailed the file to myself at home;
saved the slide in PPT 2003, 'ungrouped' the chart, and emailed it back
to the office to rounds of applause. I believe the office now maintains
one machine running v 2003 for 'emergency' use.
I'm sure there's more...
David