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February 23, 2007
Office 2007: Tied Up in Ribbons
Dear Larry,
I just upgraded to Microsoft Office 2007 mostly for Word
and Excel. And now I’m totally lost and can’t find commands where they used to
be! Is this the same program?
Frustrated
Dear Frustrated,
Microsoft has long been aware that the system of housing
program commands within a cavernous menu structure was quickly reaching a dead
end. As programs became more sophisticated and the number of necessary commands
and options grew geometrically, menus soon became overcrowded. Microsoft tried
to alleviate this problem with the concept of personalized menus in Office 2000
whereby only the most important menu choices or the ones you frequently relied
on were initially shown.
For the 2007 version of Office, Microsoft elected to start
over and invent an entirely new interface. Their objectives were clear: Try to
make the myriad of commands and options more accessible, and beyond that, more
discoverable to its users. To do so, they took all the commands hidden within
the old menu system and various toolbars, rearranged them with some sense of
organization, converted them into giant toolbar buttons with images and labels,
and presented them in a tabbed format so that only one category of buttons would
be viewable at any one time. Thus came the Office Ribbon.
If you’re new to Word or Excel or one of the other Office
products, the concept quickly becomes second nature. But for those of us who
have long been accustomed to performing a task in a particular way, the new
Ribbon takes all the controls we once knew and tosses them into a stew.
Fortunately, there are a couple of things you can do to help
soften the blow. First, minimize the ribbon. Why have it constantly in your face
when you don’t need it staring back at you? To minimize the ribbon, simply
right-click your mouse anywhere on the ribbon, then left-click Minimize the
Ribbon. At least what you’re left with is something that looks a little like the
old Office menu bar. When you need to call up a command, simply click the tab
that (you think!) contains the command you’re looking for. Hopefully, after a
while, you’ll get the hang of where to look.
Here’s a second method to help mitigate the pain. See that
Quick Access Toolbar just above the ribbon? You can right-click that toolbar and
select Customize Quick Access Toolbar and fill it with many of the old commands
you know and love. For instance, I’ve customized my Word 2007 toolbar to contain
the commands for formatting fonts and paragraphs, borders and shading, and
others. I’ve even chosen the option to move the Quick Access Toolbar below the
Ribbon to make Word 2007 look a little more like earlier versions.
All things considered, it’s not Microsoft’s fault. Change for
the better is inevitable and a necessary evil. It’s just a little tougher on us
older folks who hate learning new tricks!
This is Larry Schneider, logging off.
