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Post by Propmaster on Feb 3, 2010 11:04:45 GMT -5
My ODAR office just converted to Office 2007. Zoinks! I'm not sure who decided it was "better" to have to click on a tab (it is NOT a ribbon, because it neither flows nor ripples) on the far right of the screen, then click on something on the far left of the screen to get a menu to click on a third thing rather than the standard, universally understood and accepted "menu bar" where, once you click on something, the next click is automatically right underneath it. The lunacy of this interface boggles my mind. Reconstituting the menus, if they felt there was a more "intuitive" grouping would be one thing, but a giant, two-inch crayon drawing of what I might like to do is outrageous. And worse - worst of all, in fact - is the complete lack of customizability. In fact, for a good laugh, you can read the help entry on customizing the ribbon, which basically says, "we made it perfect, leave it alone or you'll ruin it." In fact, the only thing I think could have made it worse would be Social Security installing it so that the only thing you could adjust - adding your frequently used buttons to the "quick launch" thingy, would not save any changes over a restart. Haha, wait - that's what they did! So all of my decision-writing macros (not autotext, we can "work around" the lack of reasonable functionality in this regard) are impotent because I am not going to reinstall them all every day. I don't know why Microsoft changed the interface (yes I do, they wanted to make everyone buy something new) or why SSA thought we should upgrade a perfectly (kind of) good word processor (yes I do, Microsoft wanted to sell them new ones), but the added incompetence of Systems apparently not testing the change-over with the entire user community (or, I guess, with decision-writers who are computer illiterate) boils my blood. Not to mention that now the OCR in DMA doesn't work (the program that converts TIFF exhibits to text so I don't have to retype a huge (but important) block of text) because they didn't seem to remember to make it compatible. Ack.
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Post by Propmaster on Feb 3, 2010 11:13:08 GMT -5
Oh yeah, and 2007 runs and starts much slower than 2003 (I just noticed that again when I loaded a document, and it needed a progress bar to load the "template").
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Post by maxlaw on Feb 3, 2010 11:39:51 GMT -5
Far be it from me to defend Micro$oft, but I will say that it grows on you. I hated it at first, but after a couple of weeks I came to prefer it to its predecessors. It helped that I bought it to use and home and played with it a lot. My agency participated in the Home Use Program so I was able to scoop up a copy for $20 (and that was a year ago, now it's down to $10). I have no idea if SSA/ODAR participates or not, but it's worth a look - my agency didn't publicize it well at all.
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Post by Propmaster on Feb 3, 2010 11:46:12 GMT -5
Far be it from me to defend Micro$oft, but I will say that it grows on you. I hated it at first, but after a couple of weeks I came to prefer it to its predecessors. It helped that I bought it to use and home and played with it a lot. My agency participated in the Home Use Program so I was able to scoop up a copy for $20 (and that was a year ago, now it's down to $10). I have no idea if SSA/ODAR participates or not, but it's worth a look - my agency didn't publicize it well at all. When you say it grows on you, do you mean you become used to it, or that you developed ways to eventually do things as fast as you used to do them when there were menus? (Also, did you have the ability to customize buttons, which we don't have?)
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Post by decadealj on Feb 3, 2010 12:20:35 GMT -5
Sure hope you all get to benefit from Word 7 too. Nothing was broken so management had to fix it- just another example of "What more impediments can we create to help you meet your monthly body count"!
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Post by Propmaster on Feb 3, 2010 12:31:30 GMT -5
My ODAR office just converted to Office 2007. Zoinks! ... In fact, for a good laugh, you can read the help entry on customizing the ribbon, which basically says, "we made it perfect, leave it alone or you'll ruin it." ... I just have to share it because it is one of the most humorous things I found in my exploration of Office 2007: "The Ribbon, which is part of the Microsoft Office Fluent user interface, is designed to help you quickly find the commands that you need to complete a task. Commands are organized in logical groups that are collected together under tabs. Because each tab relates to a type of activity, such as writing or laying out a page, it is not possible to customize the Ribbon without using XML and programming code. Things you can't do - Add to or rearrange the commands on the Ribbon.
- Change or remove a command or group on the Ribbon.
- Add tabs to the Ribbon, unless you use XML and programming code.
- Switch to the toolbars and menus from earlier versions of Microsoft Office.
- Change the font or font size used on the Ribbon."
If it didn't affect my work so much, I would be on the ground with laughter. We can't change the ribbon because commands are organized in logical groups. Hahahaha. Because everyone knows that all people who use word processors do so in exactly the same, logical way. And it's so friendly the way they warn you, "you can't emulate that with which you're familiar, so stop trying to find a way!."
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Post by atlantis on Feb 3, 2010 13:00:05 GMT -5
Prop, Your TIFF issue should be fixable. Have your systems person check to see if the TIFF imaging is associated correctly with the Microsoft Office Document Imaging program (MODI) He/she will have to fix this on every users machine individually. We do not have this problem in our office.
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Post by maxlaw on Feb 3, 2010 14:02:19 GMT -5
When you say it grows on you, do you mean you become used to it, or that you developed ways to eventually do things as fast as you used to do them when there were menus? (Also, did you have the ability to customize buttons, which we don't have?) The former. You've already seen some the more endearing aspects of the customizing. I won't bore you with the details, but Micro$oft lost a patent infringement suit over the whole thing and had to pull the customization capability it had built it. I suspect your agency got the new compliant version.
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Post by Propmaster on Feb 3, 2010 14:56:55 GMT -5
Prop, Your TIFF issue should be fixable. Have your systems person check to see if the TIFF imaging is associated correctly with the Microsoft Office Document Imaging program (MODI) He/she will have to fix this on every users machine individually. We do not have this problem in our office. Agreed, except there are 60,000 workstations and they haven't finished rolling it out to everyone yet, much less prioritized how they are going to fix things.
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Post by morgullord on Feb 3, 2010 15:25:48 GMT -5
Prop,aster, it is an unfortunate fact that you are waiting in the SSA deli for service. The sign board says: "Now Serving 4" and you are holding ticket 59,998.
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Post by karaj on Feb 3, 2010 20:40:42 GMT -5
Propmaster, I felt the same way when they replaced WordPerfect with Word...anyone remember the good ol' FFF macro, better known as the "Maine macro".., which allowed us to do a favorable decision in a matter of seconds, RFC & all..that was years ago & they still haven't come with anything as efficient...it's a sad situation.
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Post by northwest on Feb 4, 2010 6:34:42 GMT -5
I agree that it's horrible we lost the ability to customize the toolbar. I used to have a nice clean toolbar with my frequently used functions. I was shocked when the customized toolbar I made in Office 2007 had disappeared the next day. My IT person told me they were working on it. I didn't, however, have Propmaster's problem of the "ribbon" being on the far right; mine is at the top of the screen. Maybe it's movable. (I'm at home now, on my nice Mac, so I can't check). I hated how big and fat the "ribbon" is, until I learned I could condense it by double clicking the active tab name. Expand the width again by clicking a tab name. Here's one thing I prefer about Word 2007: Relative ease of expanding autotext compared to Word 2003 once you learn how to do it. In WordPerfect (the best program in this respect), I'd made a lot of autocorrect and autotext entries that would automatically expand. In Word 2003 I could only insert an autotext by clicking on a button I'd put on my toolbar, then selecting an autotext name from a dropdown list, and then hitting insert. In Word 2007, it's just 2 steps. I type the name of the autotext, then click F3. Here's an example of how I use this. I made a document with the grid in different colors based on age categories. (It's also more readable than the CFR version because I replaced all the " marks with text). I highlighted all this and made it an autotext called *grid. Now if I type *grid, then click F3, the document pops up. But my one-click macros weren't working yesterday in Word 2007.
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Post by valkyrie on Feb 4, 2010 7:25:21 GMT -5
I was just wondering if they could make things any slower...
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Post by privateatty on Feb 4, 2010 8:29:02 GMT -5
I was just wondering if they could make things any slower... . At my Agency I can't load any software into their computer so I brought in my own.
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Post by decadealj on Feb 4, 2010 9:01:50 GMT -5
Just in case there is some Management Official that reads this blog (like the Commish maybe), who can make a differemnce, did it ever occur to you that just because you add something new, you don't have to destroy what was, i.e. word perfect, word, etc. New doesn't necessarily mean better. Has it ever occurred to you that a new learning curve reduces productivity? Kind of reminds me how delighted I was to be able to still find an M-14 when the M-16s didn't work as advertised. Back to my cave!
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Post by judgegal on Feb 4, 2010 10:56:56 GMT -5
I 'm not happy having to adjust to Word 07, either. Our HOSA did something with the "ribbon" to add frequently used commands. At that time he said we will also be switched to Vista. I'm horrified. Everybody hated Vista, that's why MS developed Windows 7. But the govt apparently has to be at least 2 years behind the times.
Does anyone have any experience with switching to Vista at SSA? Can it really be true?
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