Beth, since you were involved in feedback during the development process,
can you tell us why they also eliminated the Blue background option? Many
people liked that. I don't use it all the time, but I do like to use it
occasonally. What do they gain by eliminating it? Why not just leave it
there for the minority of people who like it and prefer it, who in many
cases need it because it's easier on the eyes?



"Beth Melton" wrote in message
...
I've been using Office 2007 for over 18 months and at first, like the
majority I hated it. I thought MS made a bad move, it was going to fail,
and
so on. I don't feel that way anymore. (Heh, you should have seen some of
my
"persuasive feedback" - the comments you've made are mild in comparison -
especially when it came to removing the ease in toolbar/menu
customization.
g).

But you know, even though I know how to customize the Ribbon it's really
not
necessary for me to customize it for my every day work. I have come up
with
alternate methods that fit my needs. For example I have several templates
that have a customized QAT with commands for specific tasks and I
load/unload them as global templates according the task at hand. (I still
have a complaint about the inability to float toolbars....)

After using the new interface I can now honestly see how it actually does
improve work flow and I can perform tasks in Word that used to take a half
hour or more in a few simple clicks. And it places capabilities that were
once used exclusively by power users into the hands of everyone. Plus
those
who were familiar with some of the advanced features will likely find them
easier to use. One quick example is AutoText. Previously you had to create
a
style and associate the entries with the style in order to create an
organized AutoText menu. Now it's a matter of creating what is now called
a
Building Blocks and assigning it to a gallery and a specific category
using
a dialog box. And there was difficulty remembering what you called them,
now
they are more visually oriented for insertion (and yes you can still
assign
keyboard shortcuts if you want).

Form development is another example. The ability to easily create bound
forms in Word has been a long standing request and that functionality is
now
available using Content Controls AND they automatically update without the
need to add extra steps or use a macro. Content Controls also resolve
another long standing request, to protect portions of a document for data
entry without losing spell check and other functionality.

Oh, and Styles have been lifted up and are easier for beginners to use.
Even
the basic beginner books are including how to use and modify styles. And
I've noticed many of the beginning Word books are encouraging users to use
formatted space between paragraphs instead of empty paragraphs due to the
new defaults. (Thank goodness!!)

BUT in order to fully see and understand these capabilities one can't be
resistant to change. That was my stumbling block for several months. I
wanted Word (and the other Office apps) to function as I was accustomed to
them functioning for over the last 15 years. To use the new versions
effectively it does require a bit of change, such as change how you may
have
previously accomplished a task but in the end it is faster and more
efficient. The key is if you want to embrace the change or fight the
change.
If you fight it then you'll hate it and find it lacking. If you embrace it
you may just find what I have found, that change can indeed be a "good
thing".

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Co-author of Word 2007 Inside Out:
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/boo...x#AboutTheBook

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

"Larry" wrote in message
...


Beth,

You've opened my eyes. Now I understand the logic behind Microsoft's
destruction of Word. By the same logic by which the menus were
eliminated,
since the "majority" of users don't create custom toolbars and custom
menus,
MS just did away with them as well. Or at least made it much harder to
create and install them--I haven't figured this all out yet. In any
case,
the former beautiful feature by which you opened the Customize dialog
box
and could effortllessly create a new toolbar and give it a name put on
it
what you wanted seems to be gone.

Hey, folks, the "majority" of users also never create a macro, never
edit
a
macro, and never assign a custom keystroke to a macro or to a built-in
command. So, by MS's logic of only keeping features that "most" users
use,
how come MS didn't eliminate VBA, eliminate macro recording, eliminate
macros, eliminate the Macro dialog box, eliminate the VBA editing
interface,
and eliminate the Customize Keyboard dialog box???

The great thing about Word was that it had thousands of capabilities,
and
each user, depending on his interests, might only deal with a small part
of
them. So each person could in effect have his own "Word." But now
we've
moved away from such diversity toward a single uniformity. A single
"majority rule" determines what will be in Word. Only what the 90
percent
of users who are mediocre users will determine what is in Word.
Everything
that a more skilled and creative or just idiosyncratic user of Word
might
want to access is to be eliminated. That appears to be the logic.

The only thing that saves the situation from total disaster is that MS
has
not yet been completely consistent in its program of destruction, so it
has
still left some "non-popular" features in place.

Larry