We may be a little behind the rest of the world with our Microsoft Office 2000 version. But it does what we need 95% of the time. As we’ve upgraded hardware, the last few computers we bought came with Office 2007…and the Ribbon. Being the IT guy, I was an early adopter of Office 2007 - “for testing purposes”. I’ve used it off and on for about a year, mostly for quick little projects that don’t require a lot of formatting. Coming from the old version of Office, I found the Ribbon to be a bit frustrating. It was definitely designed for the new user, not the converted power user.
I format project specifications in our office. As a sub-consultant to architects, we try to match the formatting that the architect is using on their specifications. Some are pretty easy to match, others require a lot of effort to match. In Office 2000, I created macros that sped up the process of formatting. I could do all, or most, of the formatting with the click of a button. Unfortunately, with changes to our master specification templates and changes in Word, most of my macros no longer function properly.
Microsoft Office toolbars/ribbons are customizable to an extent, and I haven’t taken the time to customize mine yet. I just worked on my first big formatting project entirely in Word 2007 and felt like I was jumping around on the ribbon way more than I did in the standard toolbars of Word 2000. And some of the features I use regularly, may be a bit obscure to the average user, but I have such a hard time finding them. Sometimes I even have to search the help.
I can certainly see advantages to Office 2007, especially for new user or people who mostly just type. But I have to say, I’m not sold on “The Ribbon”. What do you think of it?