Comments on: A Wake Up Call for Pre-Office 2007 Users

By: Amit | Web Design

Amit | Web Design — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:15:05 +0000

With the new Office (the 2007) design, look & feel, Microsoft have made a giant leap. True that it takes time to get use to the new ribbon and to get around quickly.. But once you are familiar with it, you rock!

We do a lot of researches on the web, and using Excel macros,
we have improved our research speed in 30%. That huge!!

Using OneNote have improved our research information control (nothing get lost now) and with the sharing files abilities, now everyone can contribute to the project.

So to summary it all, we are more then happy with the tools that comes in the Office 2007.
We looking forward to the new one… ;)

With the SP2 support for open source files,
our CRM improved since we don’t have to “fight”
with our clients anymore :)

The 2007 was a great investment with benefits to us.

By: LJ

LJ — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 00:33:06 +0000

I upgraded to Office 2007 — twice — and downgraded again. The third time I kept Outlook 2007 and ditched the rest.

The reason? There was no clear learning path to go from standard menus in Word and Excel 2003 into the new “context” options.

In my opinion, this was a big design mistake. If one wants people to upgrade quickly, it has to be painless.

Sure, I could have taken the 2 days to learn the new Excel, but the truth was I needed to access the pivot table formulas *immediately*. I don’t have the luxury of time to learn software that has radically changed its interface.

By: Jim Courtney

Jim Courtney — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 09:58:03 +0000

Tom, Copernic had also been recommended to my by an acquaintance who is pretty brutal about recommending products for everyday use; certainly worth a try if you don’t want the full Office upgrade. But when the price for an Office 2007 Upgrade was right, I jumped.

Steve, favorable reports from other users was certainly in the “back of mind” when I made the decision to upgrade. Thanks.

Jon, improving Outlook’s search is a “killer feature” for my activities when my Outlook archives contain lots of useful business information. And frankly I find myself using fewer keystrokes for many activities.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 01:30:20 +0000

Goodness, people – take a chill pill. Is it because it’s election season?

I upgraded to MS Office 2007 and could never go back. I’m not going to list the benefits – those kinds of reviews are everywhere. What I can tell you is that everyone I know who has actually used it says that, after a day or two getting used to it, it’s a vast improvement in usability alone.

Am I biased? Sure! It’s just me talking here. But I love it and highly recommend it. Great post here.

By: Tom Richards

Tom Richards — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:07:51 +0000

FWIW, I use Copernic Desktop Search v2.3 to search through my Outlook 2003 mail rather than the built-in search options. It’s really quick, has keyboard shortcuts to reply/forward mail from and the preview pane is very handy.

By: jonpeltier

jonpeltier — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 10:44:24 +0000

Why did you call this a “wake-up call”. You claim that Outlook 2007 works better than previous versions, but I don’t know which previous version. You claim you didn’t ever use Outlook XP, which indicates you may have stuck with 2000. That’s immaterial anyway, because improving Outlook’s search is not a killer feature.

Here’s a wake-up call for potential Office 2007 users. The new ribbon interface is a chore to get used to, but that’s not the biggest problem, because we’re all smart enough to figure it out. The whole interface including redesigned dialogs and the loss of easy customization, undockable toolbars, and tear-away palettes, makes users much less productive than any previous version of Office. What used to take one or two mouse clicks and a couple inches of mouse travel, now takes three or more clicks and a foot or more of mouse travel. The trusty old F4 (or Ctrl-Y) shortcut key, used to repeat the last action, once saved many keystrokes at each use, but has been hobbled in 2007, as has the Ctrl-Z Undo command.

Before you go willy-nilly upgrading because of a nice enhancement of one program, make sure you understand what you sacrifice.

By: Hipshot

Hipshot — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 03:38:40 +0000

Its called Google desktop…..It searches your email, faster, better, and looks inside docs etc etc.
How much did MSFT pay for this tripe?

By: Matt Brezina

Matt Brezina — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 01:18:11 +0000

Hey Jim,

I’m sorry to hear that you didn’t have a great first experience with Xobni. Most users happily use Xobni daily, but in some cases our users have experienced a performance hit – Outlook is a tough nut to crack. We think the pain point in Outlook and in managing personal information is large enough to warrant the effort we have put and will continue to put into Xobni. Hope you’ll try us again soon.

Thanks,
Matt
Founder, Xobni