The ribbon bar a dozen years on

[drossall]

Am I the only one who has never adapted to the Office ribbon bar? I just find it a horror from a usability perspective. The ordering and placing of things makes no sense, and mouse movements are enormous compared to proper menus. It doesn't seem as though most other packages I use have ever adopted it.

I use Classic Menu for Office, and I know I could use LibreOffice or similar if the file compatibility were good enough.

Interested to know whether I'm the only dinosaur...

[Kim]

I haven't adapted either, but I use MS Office so infrequently that most of my knowledge dates from the XP era.  I suppose the sane approach is to learn to drive it by keybaord.

LibreOffice gets spooled up for the occasional trivial spreadsheet or bit of word processing, but I've never tried to use it for anything complicated.  That seems to result in shouting when barakta does it.

Google Docs seems to have a nice clean UI, though it's functionally limited.

[Mr Larrington]

Another user of Classic Menu here, triceratops that I be.

[T42]

WTF ribbon bar? I'm still using Office 2000.

[barakta]

I have got a bit more used to the ribbon bar but I don't fucking like it.

I find it tiring to have to "google" for how to do stuff all the time cos it's not in logical WORD menus. I resent the lack of choice but don't know if you can use classic menus with Office 2016 and I have no install privs on my work machine anyway.

I have taken to adding the most commonly used "non keyboard shortcuttable" features to the quick access bar so I can avoid the ribbon as much as possible.

Libre Office is a work of Stan, it's different enough to Real Office to confuse and is a buggy piece of crap. I prefer Google docs which is more keyboard navigable and less bugger and horrid than libre office which I only use for reading docs or very basic text input.

[drossall]

I find it tiring to have to "google" for how to do stuff all the time cos it's not in logical WORD menus.

+1

[hubner]

If more people used the proper open file formats (.odt etc) and not Micosoft's proprietary and secret ".doc", there wouldn't be the compatibility problems.

[Kim]

If more people used the proper open file formats (.odt etc) and not Micosoft's proprietary and secret ".doc", there wouldn't be the compatibility problems.

Well yes, but with the exception of a few weirdos, people don't use Microsoft products because they like them or even because they think they're good at the job.  They use them because it's what's on their computer, or because everybody else does.

I reckon Google Docs is making more inroads than LibreOffice ever managed.  Frying pan, fire...

[Jaded]

I hate it. It is just stupid, no idea what they were thinking.

[Mrs Pingu]

Why do they keep sodding moving things? Since moving to Office 365 I couldn't even find the shapes tool the other day, because they'd buried it under something called 'illustration', which if you're looking for the way it used to be, your eyes just slide over.
I think they just do it to make more experienced users paranoid about having techno fear.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Threads like this remind me that although I use Office most of the day most days, I actually don't know much about using it beyond the basics. As do certain tasks! (I think I've finally got templates sussed, though I might hear tomorrow that I haven't.)

[drossall]

I find that templates are sadly under-used. Colleagues at work provide "templates" that are just ordinary Office documents for you to copy. And styles aren't used much either. I learnt them on Pagemaker (and early Web pages).

[Jaded]

The problem with templates has always been where they were saved. Hidden away inside the file system and lost when you changed machines.

[Kim]

The problem with templates has always been where they were saved. Hidden away inside the file system and lost when you changed machines.

That certainly doesn't help, but I reckon the people who don't use templates would still manage to get it wrong if they were a bit more obvious.  A bit like people replying to any old email by their intended recipient, completely breaking the threading.  The merits of doing things properly are sufficiently subtle to be lost on them

[Jaded]

I used to make templates, lock important cells and password the sheet to prevent those cells being changed.

It was pretty much the only way to have spreadsheets that wouldn’t get destroyed.

[Ham]

I'm also a Classic Menu for Office purchaser/user, but over the years I have learned Teh Seekrits Ov Teh Ribbin and these days and, given the capacity for customisation I actually use it more than classic these days. The menus were always a dog's dinner anyhow (why was page setup in "File" for heavens sake?), so really it is just a matter of getting used to the new stuff and - heaven forfend - using help when you need it, which actually works well.

[tonycollinet]

I hate templates. They're always designed by someone who thinks they are using a piece of paper.

[Ham]

I find that templates are sadly under-used. Colleagues at work provide "templates" that are just ordinary Office documents for you to copy. And styles aren't used much either. I learnt them on Pagemaker (and early Web pages).

Word's implementation of styles is what makes me hanker after WordPerfect, on a daily basis. Please don't get me started on Powerpoint's implementation, thank you, life is just too short.

[drossall]

It can be pretty bizarre, what with them being stored in the paragraph marker at the end of the paragraph, so you apply a style and it doesn't always take effect how and where you expect. However, it doesn't seem any more or less bizarre with styles than with manual application of formatting to each piece of text. And at least styles let you sort it out again more quickly. Usually. Sometimes, you'll change a style in one place and another piece of text will change in a different way. I've had endless issues with bullet styles - reduce the indentation in one place, and it increases for no obvious reason somewhere else. But styles are still quicker.

If you don't like other people's templates, make your own.

[Kim]

I hate templates. They're always designed by someone who thinks they are using a piece of paper.

I think that goes for Word documents generally, tbh...

[Morat]

I still don't like it either. It just doesn't stick in my mind.

[ian]

It's a truly terrible UX, but like most things, I've got used to it. Tbh, most other Office-style application tend to be forced to ape the faults of Office whether they like it or not.

The things in Word that I really hate are styles, it's such an awful implementation of something that is (or should be) quite simple. I never figured out themes either, it ought to be useful to apply your colour palette and styles globally, but again the UX is so awful I've never had the will to spend the undoubtable hours figuring it out.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Yep, the styles and themes are entirely unclear and quite probably unnecessary. But that's because of the way they are and the way they're described, nothing to do with their placement in the ribbon bar. Though TBH I don't remember what Word was like before the ribbon bar.

[ian]

Re styles, it's per se the ribbon bar, just the godawful implementation of styles in general – a quite simple and supremely useful concept that's done better in every single other text application.

[caerau]

If you are all talking about what I think you're talking about - I'm going to be the naysayer here and say that I love it.  Sorry 


Though - it has to be said - I've ALWAYS avoided their styles and themes stuff forever.