Word 2007 is "More intuitive??"

I hope it just that this new interface is still strange to me, but I am
finding the migration from Office 2007 to be far more difficult than was any
previous change.
I have used Office since version 97 (in 1998) and have migrated to new
releases as the minds in Washington state decided it was time for me to
change. Those were all painless.
Any and all opinion are welcomed to help enlighten me.

And by the way, Ron deBruin, an Excel MVP has an excellent site at
http://www.rondebruin.nl/0307commands.html. It is related to Excel, but may
prove valuable for Word and PowerPoint as well.

The experience seems to be that the new UI is more intuitive for brand-new
users and not too difficult for casual users to get used to. Longtime power
users, the ones who knew where every command was on every menu and where
every button was in every dialog or on every toolbar (and had their toolbars
and menus extensively customized), are the ones who are really suffering.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"PA" wrote in message
...
I hope it just that this new interface is still strange to me, but I am
finding the migration from Office 2007 to be far more difficult than was
any
previous change.
I have used Office since version 97 (in 1998) and have migrated to new
releases as the minds in Washington state decided it was time for me to
change. Those were all painless.
Any and all opinion are welcomed to help enlighten me.

And by the way, Ron deBruin, an Excel MVP has an excellent site at
http://www.rondebruin.nl/0307commands.html. It is related to Excel, but
may
prove valuable for Word and PowerPoint as well.

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote in message
...
The experience seems to be that the new UI is more intuitive for brand-new
users and not too difficult for casual users to get used to. Longtime
power users, the ones who knew where every command was on every menu and
where every button was in every dialog or on every toolbar (and had their
toolbars and menus extensively customized), are the ones who are really
suffering.


Interesting. As an aside, and as a "power" user of Excel (mainly - since
Office 95) - I never had any cause to do ANY customization of toolbars.....I
wonder why people are so obsessed with it?

"Gordon" wrote:

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote in message
...
The experience seems to be that the new UI is more intuitive for brand-new
users and not too difficult for casual users to get used to. Longtime
power users, the ones who knew where every command was on every menu and
where every button was in every dialog or on every toolbar (and had their
toolbars and menus extensively customized), are the ones who are really
suffering.


But, since we represent less than 1% (I guess) of all users, we don't count!

Interesting. As an aside, and as a "power" user of Excel (mainly - since
Office 95) - I never had any cause to do ANY customization of toolbars.....I
wonder why people are so obsessed with it?

Quick examples:
In Word, I always use "Format Paragraph... Line and Page Breaks Page
Break Before OK" which is 5 clicks. (This is because I abhor manual Page
Break as they have too often caused me grief...) Therefore, I added this
command to the tool bar... Now, one click.
In addition, I often need to get to the “Advanced Layout� tab (Object
Format) to adjust object position on a page, or to get information. Normally,
this is between 4 and 6 clicks away (depending on what you did last time you
displayed the Object Format dialog). So I have a macro that opens it directly
and I have added a button on the drawing toolbar...

If you do many repetitive tasks or often use the same tools to do diverse
tasks, it is definitely helpful to be able to customize the toolbars... This
is why 2007 is a pain to those who used to have extensive customizations in
order to make their job easier. One QAT to customize isn’t the same as over
20 toolbars you can customize according to the type of tasks that needs to be
performed...

I'm constantly finding things to add to the toolbar in Word 2003, though
every time I do, it is with a twinge of sadness, realizing it will be much
more difficult in Word 2007. LIke Jean-Guy, I have a button for "Page break
before" (though I don't actually use that one often) but also buttons for
"Keep with next" and "Keep lines together" (and thanks, Robert Franz for the
attractive button icons). One big advantage of all of these is that they're
toggles and display the state of the current paragraph, so it's easy to see
whether a paragraph has the given formatting (the square bullet tells you
they have one or more of the above, but not which one).

Just the other day it occurred to me that there might be a button for File |
Send To | Mail Recipient (As Attachment). I figured I might have to create
my own button icon (or use the one for the existing E-mail button, which I
never use), but to my delight there was not only a readymade command but one
with a button icon! I slapped myself silly for not realizing this many moons
ago--so many wasted mouse clicks!

BTW, Jean-Guy, I understand you can have different QATs for different
templates--not the same as having toolbars you can turn on and off in any
template, but a start.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"Jean-Guy Marcil" wrote in message
...
"Gordon" wrote:

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote in message
...
The experience seems to be that the new UI is more intuitive for
brand-new
users and not too difficult for casual users to get used to. Longtime
power users, the ones who knew where every command was on every menu
and
where every button was in every dialog or on every toolbar (and had
their
toolbars and menus extensively customized), are the ones who are really
suffering.


But, since we represent less than 1% (I guess) of all users, we don't
count!

Interesting. As an aside, and as a "power" user of Excel (mainly - since
Office 95) - I never had any cause to do ANY customization of
toolbars.....I
wonder why people are so obsessed with it?

Quick examples:
In Word, I always use "Format Paragraph... Line and Page Breaks Page
Break Before OK" which is 5 clicks. (This is because I abhor manual Page
Break as they have too often caused me grief...) Therefore, I added this
command to the tool bar... Now, one click.
In addition, I often need to get to the "Advanced Layout" tab (Object
Format) to adjust object position on a page, or to get information.
Normally,
this is between 4 and 6 clicks away (depending on what you did last time
you
displayed the Object Format dialog). So I have a macro that opens it
directly
and I have added a button on the drawing toolbar...

If you do many repetitive tasks or often use the same tools to do diverse
tasks, it is definitely helpful to be able to customize the toolbars...
This
is why 2007 is a pain to those who used to have extensive customizations
in
order to make their job easier. One QAT to customize isn't the same as
over
20 toolbars you can customize according to the type of tasks that needs to
be
performed...

"buttons for "Keep with next" and "Keep lines together" (and thanks, Robert
Franz for the attractive button icons)."

Hi Ms Barnhill, in the previous posting you mentioned the above. Where can I
get these icons or are they a closely guarded secret? ;-)
I have searched Mr Franz's website (Scientific guide) but cannot find such
icons.

Many thanks in advance
DeanH

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

BTW, Jean-Guy, I understand you can have different QATs for different
templates--not the same as having toolbars you can turn on and off in any
template, but a start.


Thanks for the info, this is good to know.

I will keep this in mind whenever my company is ready to make the "big"
switch...

Additionally, there are hundreds and hundreds of Word tools that are not on
any toolbar or under any menu (I printed them out once and it was over 4
pages long and I still don't know what half of them do). Without
customisation, you cannot get at them at all - in fact, most users don't
even know they exist because they don't know where to look. So creating a
custom template with custom tools for a particular application for 'dodgy
users' can be a boon to productivity: once the user knows that there's a
magic tool to do a complex task, it will be used.

Terry Farrell

"Jean-Guy Marcil" wrote in message
...
"Gordon" wrote:

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote in message
...
The experience seems to be that the new UI is more intuitive for
brand-new
users and not too difficult for casual users to get used to. Longtime
power users, the ones who knew where every command was on every menu
and
where every button was in every dialog or on every toolbar (and had
their
toolbars and menus extensively customized), are the ones who are really
suffering.


But, since we represent less than 1% (I guess) of all users, we don't
count!

Interesting. As an aside, and as a "power" user of Excel (mainly - since
Office 95) - I never had any cause to do ANY customization of
toolbars.....I
wonder why people are so obsessed with it?

Quick examples:
In Word, I always use "Format Paragraph... Line and Page Breaks Page
Break Before OK" which is 5 clicks. (This is because I abhor manual Page
Break as they have too often caused me grief...) Therefore, I added this
command to the tool bar... Now, one click.
In addition, I often need to get to the “Advanced Layout� tab (Object
Format) to adjust object position on a page, or to get information.
Normally,
this is between 4 and 6 clicks away (depending on what you did last time
you
displayed the Object Format dialog). So I have a macro that opens it
directly
and I have added a button on the drawing toolbar...

If you do many repetitive tasks or often use the same tools to do diverse
tasks, it is definitely helpful to be able to customize the toolbars...
This
is why 2007 is a pain to those who used to have extensive customizations
in
order to make their job easier. One QAT to customize isn’t the same as
over
20 toolbars you can customize according to the type of tasks that needs to
be
performed...

Hi Jean-Guy,

While the Quick Access Toolbar has only one position, it does have the ability to have multiple sections that can you can have come
and go as needed.

The standalone (always there) entries are stored (in Word's case) in a separate XML file, Word.QAT, but you can add QAT items to
specific templates or specific documents if those help with task related actions. You can attach a template (Alt, T, I) that has a
custom QAT section as well as pull in custom made (not customized built in) Toolbars from older versions into the Add-In tab.

Then there is http://toggletoolbar.com which demonstrates a way to use [Task] Panes in Word 2007 as a way to 'host' groups of
commands (i.e. a version of floating toolbars). MVP Greg Maxey was looking into doing an article (I think) on how to do that with
Word, but I don't know how far along he's gotten with that.

=================
"Jean-Guy Marcil" wrote in message
...

Quick examples:
In Word, I always use "Format Paragraph... Line and Page Breaks Page
Break Before OK" which is 5 clicks. (This is because I abhor manual Page
Break as they have too often caused me grief...) Therefore, I added this
command to the tool bar... Now, one click.
In addition, I often need to get to the "Advanced Layout" tab (Object
Format) to adjust object position on a page, or to get information. Normally,
this is between 4 and 6 clicks away (depending on what you did last time you
displayed the Object Format dialog). So I have a macro that opens it directly
and I have added a button on the drawing toolbar...

If you do many repetitive tasks or often use the same tools to do diverse
tasks, it is definitely helpful to be able to customize the toolbars... This
is why 2007 is a pain to those who used to have extensive customizations in
order to make their job easier. One QAT to customize isn't the same as over
20 toolbars you can customize according to the type of tasks that needs to be
performed...
--

Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

I would never classify myself as a power user, but I do claim to be competent
at using Word, Excel, and Access - and know enough about PowerPoint to get by
with simple presentations.
I have always disliked those operations that took multiple mouse clicks to
activate. I have thus been an advocate of Toolbar modifications, since I
first learned how ten years ago. The inflexability in Office 2007 is very
vexing. Kind of like my local government dictating the type of vehicle I can
park in my driveway, which they attempted to do.


"Gordon" wrote:

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote in message
...
The experience seems to be that the new UI is more intuitive for brand-new
users and not too difficult for casual users to get used to. Longtime
power users, the ones who knew where every command was on every menu and
where every button was in every dialog or on every toolbar (and had their
toolbars and menus extensively customized), are the ones who are really
suffering.


Interesting. As an aside, and as a "power" user of Excel (mainly - since
Office 95) - I never had any cause to do ANY customization of toolbars.....I
wonder why people are so obsessed with it?