Comments

# The Desert Skies said on May 31, 2006 11:06 PM:

I would be interested in hearing from anyone testing Office 2007 with assistive technology products. ...

# LLKHOUTX said on June 1, 2006 1:57 AM:

I install Office Pro 2007 Beta (with Outlook 2007 Beta) tonight. It took about a half hour to download and a half hour to install.

New look is good, but there's a learning curve.

In Word and Access, navigating the Windows common dialog to drill down to a specific deeply nested folder is a pain. 60+ second per folder.

I may have something not set correctly.

# kristan said on June 1, 2006 6:31 AM:

I'm enjoying the new Word ribbons, but have found the Access ribbons to respond to my mouse movements quite slowly (so much slow that I can't really play around with my large adp file to any extent without being frustrated at the response time).

Is there something I can do to speed up the response? (I've tried turning off the extended tooltips - which are cool by the way)

I do love the new interface though... and the new pdf features. And the exposure of the format 'size to' and 'align to' buttons. Just the little things which will make developing more pleasant and less frustrating. I also love that it just worked and understood my entire project without any additional poking.

Very well done and I very much look forward to the final product. Thanks for all your hard work so far. I will keep playing and investigating Access 2007 as much as I can.

# StepUP said on June 1, 2006 9:40 AM:

It looks like the "Auto Repeat" functionality in the record navigation bar for tables, queries and forms has been disabled. Was this done on purpose, and can it be restored?

Will the ability to change color schemes be added?

# JustMe said on June 1, 2006 10:37 PM:

Maybe off topic for this blog, but what the heck...

What's up with Infopath 2007 not having the new fancy interface (Ribbon, etc) that all the other Office products.

Come on you Infopath slackers - whats the deal? :)

But seriously, that really looks kinda unprofessional to have all the products in the suite look one way, and the one odd ball, InfoPath, still be old school interface.

Maybe its just me, but this is just screaming "RUSH JOB".

# Mark Phillipson said on June 2, 2006 6:24 AM:

I have just installed Beta 2.

Now I can see it all together it does look great!

One small thing I have noticed though - in Form/Report Design view when pressing f4 or Alt+Enter the property window displays OK but the focus is still on the current object.  So you have to use the mouse to mve the focus before editing a property.

It is the same thing with the field list also.  (This has bugged me for ages with Access 2003)

# Lou Kapeller said on June 3, 2006 2:06 AM:

Hi Clint


After my initial installation problem, which related to Windows XP SP2 I did eventually get it to install.

I have, during the past number of days days had the opportunity give the new beta version of Office 2007 a good going over, and as a result make a number of observations/comments. These are not in any particular order.

My Office 2007 score 1 to 10. 10 being the best

1. I found the product, once I understood what/where all the features on the new ribbons meant, I found the product very user friendly and grouped in a logical manner.

Score 9.5

2. The ribbon features with the softer colours and the rounded look are esthetically pleasing to the eye. Not the square look of old.

Score 9.5

3. I did like the new access version and found it very easy to use and navigate around the new features.

Score 9.5

4. Was impressed with the features of Excel/Word/Outlook. Very easy to create charts and more.

Score 9.5

5. I do have one request, and that is, I hope that when Office 2007 is finally released that the user can via the Products Option (access, word and so on), personalize the colour scheme with more colour options other than the current two listed ( Windows Vista (Grey) is too dark, and the Windows XP (Blue) is too washy looking)

Score 4

6. Having introduce a new look for office 2007, I am a bit amazed that when a user clicks on a dropdown on the new ribbons, that those dropdown styles look very much like the older XP and 2003 office versions. Is there an intention to also update these?

Score 4

7. How will a user be able to deploy the product in a runtime mode??

• Will access have the capacity to generate installation routines?? or
• Will the user have to use a third party product, such as the SageKey product, to generate installation routines??

Score unknown

Overall I found the product very good and user friendly.

Overall Score 9.5


Cheers!!!

Lou

# Thomas said on June 3, 2006 11:44 AM:

I’m from Germany and develop my application since 2001. My Access Application works with Access2007, that’s good. But it works so slowly, that I don't know what to do. With Access 2003 it takes a few seconds to start, with Access 2007 it takes minutes. During starting the application there is no possibility to cancel because the access-menu is not enabled (It seems there is no performance for starting other events). You have to wait a long time. Every action longs a few seconds. On starting you can see, that every control seems to put in one after the other. Every second one control appears. Every action is very much delayed.

Are there to many controls on my form? Is the code to extensive or is this the result of making Access2007 compatible with Access2003 or older?  If so I think I have to develop my application again. Maybe you can post information if it is possible that there could be a problem with older applications.

Thank you, Thomas

# The Desert Skies said on June 3, 2006 11:52 AM:

I would be interested in hearing from anyone testing Office 2007 with assistive technology products. ...

# Clint Covington said on June 3, 2006 12:48 PM:

StepUP,
Not sure what you mean by the auto-repeat functionality in the nav bar. Can you elaborate?

Mark,
We will look into the focus issue. Maybe we can do something...

Lou,
Glad you find the new version approachable. We do have some more theme work coming down the pipe so stay tune. There will be a runtime but we are still working out the details.

Thomas,
Your application should be compatible. It sounds like you are running into some low memory constraints on your machine. Are you sure the app is running on comparable hardware? From a perf perspective we think Access 2007 is looking pretty good overall--there are still lots of things to tune and tweak but our internal numbers look good. Lets investigate your hardware/memory situation first.

Desert Skies,
We made big investments in accessibility. Here is a series of blog posts by a team member on the topic.

http://blogs.gotdotnet.com/thirdoffive/archive/category/12142.aspx

# tony heyes said on June 3, 2006 1:28 PM:

I've taken the Office 2007 BETA which installed fine (if you ignore the 420Mb file size!) but:

(1) I can't install the download on two computers - is that deliberate? On my lap top its fine, on the desktop there's a DLL missing.

(2) When I try to use Access 2007 to connect to a mysql database on my web site Access reports failure to find the mysql driver in system info though I am able to connect to the database using the same driver in the Windows ODBC Administrator.

Has anyone been more successful?

regards

Tony Heyes

# StepUP said on June 3, 2006 1:31 PM:

Clint,

By auto repeat I mean that the records scroll repeatedly while the record forward or back button remains clicked. All prior versions of Access had this.

# Wayne said on June 4, 2006 9:39 PM:

How will the ribbon in Access 2007 effect existing Access applications?  Can it be hidden on a global scale? If not, the ribbon will cause problems for forms that have been designed as full screen or near full screen in earlier versions of Access.

How will Access 2007 handle custom menu bars in existing Access applications?  Will custom menu bars be able to be assembled with the ease of earlier versions?

# Wayne said on June 4, 2006 9:39 PM:

How will the ribbon in Access 2007 effect existing Access applications?  Can it be hidden on a global scale? If not, the ribbon will cause problems for forms that have been designed as full screen or near full screen in earlier versions of Access.

How will Access 2007 handle custom menu bars in existing Access applications?  Will custom menu bars be able to be assembled with the ease of earlier versions?

# Wayne77 said on June 5, 2006 3:36 AM:

I don't think all users will be happy that "Clear" type is being forced upon us.  Personally I find that it contributes to eye strain.  When I say "forced upon us" I realize that it can be turned off at the application level, but why should we have to do this if we have already turned it off at the operating system level?

When it is turned off, Office fonts look lousy because they are obviously designed to be viewed with cleartype turned on.  Not a good situation in my humble opinion.

# Wayne77 said on June 5, 2006 3:50 AM:

It seems that if an Access 2003 database with custom menu bars is opened using Access 2007, the ribbon disappears and the custom menu bars display as they did in Access 2003.  

This doesn't appear to be the case for databases written in Access 2002 or 2000.  When these are opened in Access 2007, the ribbon remains and the content of what was the custom menu bar appears under the "Addins" tab of the ribbon.

Is there a reason for this inconsistency?  There are lots of databases in use that were written in Access 2002 and 2000.  

# kapeller said on June 5, 2006 8:49 AM:

Quote

"How will the ribbon in Access 2007 effect existing Access applications?  Can it be hidden on a global scale? If not, the ribbon will cause problems for forms that have been designed as full screen or near full screen in earlier versions of Access.

How will Access 2007 handle custom menu bars in existing Access applications?  Will custom menu bars be able to be assembled with the ease of earlier versions? "

I have tested this using an existing access database where I had a custom Menu.

It worked no different than the earlier version (2002/2003). I was able to use my custom menu as designed and intended to be use.

# kapeller said on June 5, 2006 8:50 AM:

Quote

"How will the ribbon in Access 2007 effect existing Access applications?  Can it be hidden on a global scale? If not, the ribbon will cause problems for forms that have been designed as full screen or near full screen in earlier versions of Access.

How will Access 2007 handle custom menu bars in existing Access applications?  Will custom menu bars be able to be assembled with the ease of earlier versions? "

I have tested this using an existing access database where I had a custom Menu.

It worked no different than the earlier version (2002/2003). I was able to use my custom menu as designed and intended to be use.

# Craig Alexander Morrison said on June 5, 2006 11:21 AM:

The ribbon is going to cause problems with any existing Access application design that has large forms and a menubar. The complete waste of screen real estate for the add in ribbon item and the display of the original menu looks very tacky.

For many of our Access applications it will not be worth the effort redesigning all the large forms. So these applications will stay in Access 97/2003 format for the forseeable future.

I am also concerned that the TCO is going to go through the roof. This divergence from industry standards (CUA) established in 1989 is not going to be generally accepted. I feel it is a large gamble to have removed the option to revert back to Menu and Command Bars in this version of Office. No doubt you are doing this from a position of market dominance, however I think it will only delay the acceptance of the new interface and hence delay the adoption of this next version of Office.

# Erik Rucker said on June 5, 2006 4:12 PM:

Tony, the MySQL issue should just work, I'll log a bug.

StepUP, the repeat behavior you're looking for should also work, I'll log a bug.

Ribbon UI and Add-ins - the way this works for 12 is as follows.  If you've completely replaced the Access 12 UI, we'll show your custom UI just like we would in 11, with no changes.  If you have extended the UI rather than replacing it, we'll put your new controls in the Add-ins tab.  The reason for this is that we couldn't figure out where else to put them since all the reference points are gone.  Where does something that used to be 1/2 way down the Edit menu go in the new model?  Using the ribbon customization functionality, you can move it to wherever you'd like and take advantage of all the power of the new ribbon UI (although at the cost of having to write more code).

# AdamB said on June 5, 2006 7:07 PM:

Connecting to a sql database using an ADP seems to take much longer than it did in 2003.

Did you guys do anything to make that happen?

It is practically unusable if you try to open a table and edit information.

Note the SQL server I've connected to in the ADP is in an offsite data center; but it was not this slow in 2003. 2003 would load up the table slowly, but once loaded was very responsive. 2007 seems to take for ever both loading and editing data in cells.

Did you include anything in the roadmap about maintaining or improving performance of Access when connecting to SQL server via an adp?

# Wayne77 said on June 6, 2006 4:23 AM:

"The ribbon is going to cause problems with any existing Access application design that has large forms and a menubar. The complete waste of screen real estate for the add in ribbon item and the display of the original menu looks very tacky."

"For many of our Access applications it will not be worth the effort redesigning all the large forms. So these applications will stay in Access 97/2003 format for the forseeable future."

Craig has hit the nail on the head here.  Surely the best case scenario for Microsoft is for current Access users to migrate to the new version as soon as possible.  

The issue of the ribbon consuming so much screen real estate and hence stopping large or fullscreen forms from displaying corrrectly is a huge one.  As Craig rightly points out this issue will stop users of current databases form migrating to the new version.

Surely the ribbon issue would not be too difficult to fix before the final release.

# Keith Wilby said on June 8, 2006 8:12 AM:

Can I install the 2007 beta with Office 2003 without issue?

# Neillson said on June 8, 2006 5:16 PM:

My Access 2000 database opens fine in 2007, but its Objects (as listed in the Navigation pane) don't respond to right-clicking, so no comments, properties, etc. Also, both queries and tables have the nomenclature "datasheet" instead of "query" or "table". I have no trouble using or editing the objects themselves, however.

And the Ribbon...  I don't like it. Modern monitors have lots of crisp real estate, and the best MS can do is fill it with oversized icons and fuzzy text?  Why is there no option to use smaller icons, or text only? Or hide it permanently and use text menus.

The Office 2007 ribbon, with its big icons, pale colors, and indistinct font rendering makes me think this version is designed to look at rather than use.

# Wayne said on June 8, 2006 6:36 PM:

The "fuzzy" text is not just a funtion of the ribbon. "clear" type is turned on for the whole of MS Office 2007 despite the user having it turned off at the operating system level.

If "clear" type is turned off at the application level, the fonts look just as lousy, but in a different way. They are now sharp but have extra pixels hanging off them everywhere.   This is because they were designed to be viewed with cleartype turned on.  

Give us Arial or Tahoma fonts please!

Neillson, do any of your databases have custom menu bars?  What happens to them when you open the database in Access 2007?  I think you'll find you don't like what you see.  Access 2003 custom menu bars work OK, but in my experience any version prior to 2003 shows the ribbon with the custom menu bar items sitting on it in a most undignified manner.

Database developers usually use custom menu bars extensively.  I think MS needs to lift their game in this area of Access 2007 before developers will be rushing out to purchase the new version.

# Lee said on June 9, 2006 6:09 AM:

The colour scheme across the whole Office 2007 suite has to be the worst thing - it is hideous and I have to agree with Neillson and Wayne's points above regarding the fonts.  The light blue colour scheme in particular I found to be very uncomfortable to look at for extended periods, and this is on a new high-res Dell laptop with a sharp, bright screen.

Other than that, I really like the added form designer capabilities - those are most welcome.

I was dismayed to find though, that under the hood, the trusty old VBA Editor has not been updated at all... surely it should be enhanced with some of the useful stuff that VS .NET can do.  At the moment it's practically the same as it was 10 years ago!

# Alan Cossey said on June 10, 2006 12:28 PM:

Since I work with front ends that are used on both my PC and customers, it is helpful for me in Access 2003 to quickly see which back end tables are linked to by going into Design View then right-clicking to get up the Properties tab. In the Description field I can see the connection string, e.g. DATABASE=C:\Customer Systems\fred\freddata.mdb;TABLE=tblAssets. This tells me easily which back end I am connected to. When I try this in Access 2007 on an Access 2003 mdb, there is nothing in the Description field at all.

# Alan Cossey said on June 10, 2006 12:36 PM:

Please ignore my last comment about not seeing the connection string in the Description field in a table's properties. I was looking at a non-split database. Doh!

# Sébastien Caisse said on June 10, 2006 5:00 PM:

Comment 1:
The Quick Access toolbar, when placed in the application title and in full-screen, shouldn't "force" the user to move the mouse down to click it, the same way the File menu works.

Comment 2:
When in "tabbed window" mode, the X to close the applications is on the right (which I love), albeit when the proporties pane is displayed/removed, it moves around... So I move the mouse to the upper right and accidentyl close the properties pane instead of the "subwindow" (since MS seems to no longer call the MDE windows...) I think the tab listing should take the entire left area isntead of move about... of not the entire app area so it doesn't move about.

I'd like to point out (again) how I like this placement for the X, as talking to the IE7 dev team, apparantly, the guidelines for tabbed windows for the "vista" look is that the X should be on the tab itself - which is increadably annoying since you have to actually look for the active tab and then click on it where as right now you just flick the mouse to the (somewhat upper) right and click it... (Yes, I know about Ctrl-F4, this isn't the point though.)

Comment 3:
- Create a table view
- Remove the navigation pane
- Open an excel document, place both windows a little bit offset.

I find it a bit annoying that the application icon (which is now the "File" menu if you wil...) is the Office one. I have to look at the application title to make sure I'm actually on a excel/access when looking at them. Though it's easy to develop quick tricks to differentiate them, I see not why there isn't a disctinctive mark on the windows indicating their actual purpose...

Comment 4:
I agree that the "Menus" shouldn't have just dissapeared... Instead perhaps either could be enabled? I find it a bit weird that microsoft is "imposing" these new ribbons  (however more friendly they are then menus) rather then "sliently bringing people to use them"...
I sure hope you enable a way for it to be defaulted in hidden mode (Ctrl-F1) -- and revert it that way once and item has been chosen!

Generic comments:
Other then that it seems like a spiffy looking update. There are quite a few feattures which I'll find handy - though I won't be able to use them until 3-5 years since I don't think I'll be able to convince clients they'll need to upgrade to 2007 (they still run 2000 - and it was a hard to get them there in the first place since they still had 97 lurking on sime computers...)

I beleive that the font looks and what not are set by the selected theme rather then forced, hence it will probably adapt to the (then) vista theme and shouldn't be an issue with people apprantly having trouble with the selected colors.

Someone asked how to see the comments in the object listing: Simply right click on a group (say Tables) and select View By -> Details.

# Robert H said on June 21, 2006 12:24 PM:

I support an existing Access front end for about 25 offices in a governmental capacity. I wanted to do an initial look-see, as I shared concerns of others here that the real estate changes for forms, underlying code, even the Jet engine might be significantly screwed.

Did a download and install on my laptop. Went well but I made the mistake of clicking 'upgrade' instead of new version...more later...

1. For those of us using the Task bars the ribbon will take a 12 month adjustment.This is no small learning curve. Not having the alternative is problematic - especially for personalities who have difficulties making adjustments to these things.

2. Most of my stuff seemed to work OK in Access 2007. From other posts here there are concerns though, including large forms, fonts etc.

3. Glad that the VB interface looks the same.

4. When my users start getting Access 2007 it will require a rebuild of my front end - hours of wasted time, training, etc. (spring 2007).

5. Went to uninstall the beta. Said it was successful.  Wrong. Still got Office 2007 all over my PC, including all the dlls. Now I get to decide whether I try to reinstall 2003 over 2007 - you guys all know how much fun that sort of thing can be.

Comments?

rh

# Garrett said on July 27, 2006 11:55 AM:

I've read, and am still reading, about the enhancements of the Office 2007.  However, I haven't really found out how to revert back to Office 2003, or Office XP.  Apparently, .pst files are not backward compatible.  Is this true or just a bad rumor?  Also, does ActiveSync work with Outlook 2007 yet?  I've tried working with a handheld using ActiveSync, but it's just not working.  Any suggestions?

# Mike Post said on September 23, 2006 12:15 PM:

Only complaint so far is the instability of Outlook 2007.

It keeps crashing and I keep reporting it and it keeps crashing.

I have opened task manager a few times and noticed that the Outlook process is running multiple times.  When I close all but one it seems to respond better.

What's Up with that?

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