Why so many people hate Office 2007 and 2010

Most of the time, when driving to work, I am caught up in a traffic jam. Whether I leave early or a bit later, they will always be just there where I have to drive. Most of my co-drivers hate them but over the years I started being so used to them that nowadays I welcome them, except when they make me arrive too late at the customer where I have to teach a class that day.



Years ago I used to amuse myself by keeping statistics. I would count how many people where reading while driving, how many of them were poking into their nose and how many of them would eat whatever they caught by doing so. There were some other things I would count while waiting to advance yet another ten meters or so but I suppose that you can imagine them yourselves as nowadays not many people are still able to drive jam-free to work.


But ever since I started teaching again I quit keeping statistics. Instead I use the time to think things over. In the morning I prepare my class, thinking of ways to make the subjects to teach less boring. You do not want your students to fall asleep after lunch and you also want to avoid becoming bored yourself. To my mind it is impossible that a student can learn a lot in a short time if the trainer himself is not showing some enthusiasm for the subject he is teaching. And believe me, some of the topics that we have to teach can be pretty tedious for not having to repeat the word ‘boring’ too often.


In the evenings however, I use my jam-time to evaluate the training I gave that same day and to think about things that keep baffling me. And one of these things was trying to understand why so many people hate Office 2007 and 2010 while, once you know them, they are just a wonderful tool to produce much nicer looking documents than one could ever before. This question had kept me busy for some time and in the end I came up with a, to my peanut-brained mind, plausible answer which I would like to share with you tonight.


People keep telling me that they hate the new Office versions because they cannot find these functions back that they are used to use to format documents, calculate excel tables and so on. That was the onset why I started searching for an answer and one day, while standing still in yet another jam, trying to find the phone number of a customer in order to warn him that I would be late, it dawned on me that all the names were listed vertically.


And all of a sudden I realized that in life we have been conditioned to look and read vertically. Imagine being in a restaurant and reading the menu. If every single plate would be written horizontally you could, as a matter of speaking, have your starter at ‘Comme Chez Soi’ while having your desert at ‘Villa Lorraine’. If all the books were written on one horizontal line, some of them would be so long that we could start in Belgium and read ‘the End’ somewhere in Tuscany. And all these years, when using a computer and clicking on an item in a menu, the functions pertaining to them would appear vertically on the screen.


And then Microsoft decides to change the way to present all the functions, that they have to offer, in Ribbons. As the available tabs in 2007 and 2010 look a bit like the different items on the earlier menu’s, one is more likely to expect some menu popping down and does not know what happens when at first sight nothing has changed on the screen. And that just because we are not used to have things pop up horizontally.


I have tried this philosophy out on a lot of my students who kept telling me that even after a year they still could not find their way around Office 2007. I also talked about this to people who are about to migrate to Office 2010. I just tell them that they should start getting used to look horizontally instead of vertically and that they can even start to do so upon leaving my class. Just getting out on the street and quitting to look at the ground. I tell them that practicing even before the new version is installed has some advantages. Not only will they remember to look things up horizontally when clicking on a tab but they will also re-discover how beautiful life can be as they will see much more than the pavement that they will be walking on. But I also do warn them for the only disadvantage that they might encounter while practicing on the street. Sooner or later one will be bound to oversee an obstacle on his path as he forgot to look down. I would not like to be sued because I did not warn them!


This little philosophical thought of mine might sound very silly but some people have been telling me that my story has helped them to remember that they had to look in another direction while clicking on one of the tabs of Office 2007 or 2010.


Another trick to get used a bit faster to the new Office versions is to take the time to look at every single icon on the ribbon which appears when clicking on one of the tabs. It will familiarize them faster with the new look and before they know it, they will remember where to find things back.


Now, if this trick of mine fails which is bound to happen in most of the cases because who am I to think that what I think is right, here are some links to interactive guides which can help you to find your way back in the new versions. When using them you will see that you get a 2003 screen onto which you can click on the menu and the item that you need and once done, Microsoft will show you on which ribbon and where you can find that same item back in the new Office versions.


So, now you know that I will not only be writing about the daily things that happen in my life but that I will also write down some tips and tricks to help you make work more enjoyable. Or is that just wishful thinking of my part?


Access 2003 – Access 2007
Excel 2003 – Excel 2007
Outlook 2003 – Outlook 2007
PowerPoint 2003 – Powerpoint 2007
Word 2003 – Word 2007


Click here to find the same features for Office 2010. You might have to scroll down a bit to find the list of products that have this interactive guide available.