Via the US ISV Developer Team Blog
Microsoft Office 2007 SP1 will be available for download Dec 11. The improvements in 2007 Office System SP1 are in response to direct feedback from power users at large organizations or indirect feedback from home and Office users through the Dr. Watson bug-reporting system.
I haven’t seen any details about what’s been done, but don’t expect any UI changes or charting improvements. They might have fixed some stuff, buy I’m not getting my hopes up.
If they have made it faster that will satisfy 95% of my complaints :)
I cant stand the fact that the shortcuts don’t work if you are too quick.
Try Alt O,C,A which used to autofit columns in 2003 and still however, in 2007 it only works if you type like a chicken (Pick and Peck).
“power users at large organizations ” – Are these the people fascinated with the transparent blue charts…
Sam
I love the poll results. Right now, with around 40 responses, it’s high at the top and bottom ends (primary users vs. those who will resist as long as possible), and low in the middle. I can’t imagine using it as my primary office productivity suite; if you take out the word “productivity” you’d have a better description (I feel it makes me less efficient, not because of the ribboin per se, but because of poor dialog design).
In general with SP1, I don’t expect any changes to the UI, particularly no changes to the dialogs, which I find especially frustrating. I don’t expect much improvement in speed or in charting, other than the minimal improvement to charting of “large” data sets (a few kpoints). I have no special knowledge of the SP1, despite having taken part in its beta: I could not really sense any difference. Then I had to rebuild the laptop that 2007 was installed on, and I did not reinstall the SP1 beta, and it still felt the same.
I totally agree with Jon. I think “poor dialog design” hits it right on head. I’m thankful for the classic keys still working and am sure I’ll eventually pick up on the new shortcuts. However, the fact is that whether I do Alt-D-S or Alt-A-S, the data sort dialog still opens up with the OK button selected as opposed to the logical first sort criteria you get in “classic Excel.” You have to tab forever to get to where you want or do a Shift-Tab, Tab. It just makes no sense. Even less logical is the fact that the Shift-Tab selects the entire sort column and the subsequent Tab highlights the first dropdown. If Shift-Tab is the opposite of Tab, Shift-Tab, Tab should take you back to where you started.
Sadly, we got word last week that Office07 would be rolled out within the next few weeks. I will reluctantly switch over. Despite the fact that I’ve forced myself to use it at home for the past six months, I am not much better than on day one. I considered the “classic” menu addins, the problem is that any way you get to a lousy dialog, you still get a lousy dialog. I’ll probably buy one anyway, though, because my toolbar is very customized (it’s just the letters A-Z) and I have too many shortcuts and macros attached that I am too used to using to let go of. I doubt anyone outside of here would understand, but going from my custom Alt-N to an Alt-E-S-V to paste values would drive me endlessly nuts. I do that hundreds of times a day. I know 100 keystrokes vs 300 is nothing, but it feels like something. In fact, that is probably my chief complaint. ’07 probably is not much slower to use than before, but it feels like it is.
I havent moved to Office 2007 yet. It’s the Alt-E-S-V that makes me nervous about switching.
Paste special is one place where it could be argued Excel 2007 is a clear improvement. It adds a Shift+Ctrl+v shortcut for Paste Special. The value part you’d need to type yourself. I’ve been using this shortcut in OpenOffice for years. Nice for Microsoft to catch up finally, even if they are shamelessly stealing UI bits and pieces from their remaining competitors.
I could oversimplify: the good bits of the Excel 2007 UI (this, the new sort dialog [compare against Gnumeric’s]) show Microsoft stealing the better UI functionality from its competitors; the bad bits, e.g., the ribbon, are completely home grown.
“direct feedback from power users at large organizations”
If thats not some sort of UI improvements what will it be?
Well I guess we’ll find out tomorrow. (probably some Outlook polish or something)
Sooo glad I have the choice to stick with 2003, I just havent seen a compelling reason to re-learn Excel to use 2007. Maybe I’m missing something?
A quick assessment of performance finds that:
A simple benchmark test recalculating 8000 trig functions 1000 times: 30% faster
VBA subs using built in VBA functions with no spreadsheet recalculation: no change
VBA subs with use of worksheetfunction calls: no change
This means that using worksheetfunction in VBA is still about 5 times slower than it was in 2000/2003 versions; disappointing.
These tests were with a Pentium Core2-duo running Vista.
Hehe Doug. Yea, faster would be very much welcomed. I wonder…
I agree with most of you guys (and the poll participants of course). “Speed” improvements are always welcome… ;-)
My experience with Office 2007 doesn’t go beyond the beta. But with v2003 and previous ones i did use it daily in my work and private life of course.
What i really miss in so called new versions to convince me to switch is the ‘lack of gui enhancement’. I’d rate rexpect some “revolutionary new” GUI to get an aging donkey – like me – a new start.
I come from the engineering field so i have to deal with rather complex applications on a daily basis. And there, i have to deal with clumsy and rather annoying user interfaces than something innovative and productive to ease my life using them. So my ‘incentive’ to learn something new would be some mayor improvement, that makes the use of software (-ANY- software of course) much, much easier. I think the last major leap in software usability was the change from DOS to GUI based applications (btw. wasn’t this GEM 1.0…or am i wrong?). So i think i will stick with the old versions until i’m convinced that the change is worth while.
I hope i didn’t get too carried away and , ;-)
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