I don’t have Windows 8, but I am guessing the ribbon in the OS is similar to what they did to Office?
I am (or at least, was) an accomplished Excel user. I never preferred Windows, but there were some things that I did like, and I liked Outlook and Excel. Great products, in my opinion.
Then my company had me upgrade Office from Office 2003.
What an abortion. I cannot believe what they did to the interface, never mind performance. Simply opening a document is so sluggish it makes me grit my teeth every time I have to do that, which is often.
But it is the “Ribbon” interface that has me flabbergasted. It makes ZERO sense to me, and after using it for months, I still struggle with it. I find it extraordinarily inefficient and non-intuitive.
Looking under “View” to find macros?????
What were they thinking?
I think that is a valid complaint because that would be, at least in my mind, an edit function.
They should have left the categories alone to what people were already familiar with.
I work in IT and I remember when they took away my Office 2003 way back when. I too did’t like the ribbon but you know, you had to adjust. They changed many of the keystroke shortcuts that had become almost muscle reflexes for me.
So just this year, I’ve been consulting at a client who still has an XP box with Excel 2003. Oh boy, does it cause a hugely partial vacuum. Just take a peek at the differences in conditional formatting and you’ll see an example of what I mean.
And as for Outlook? Newer versions blow the 2003 version away by light years. I am stuck with Outlook 2003 for a couple more months as well at this client.