New Change to the Excel blog

re: New Change to the Excel blog

Art Frank — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:57:01 GMT

Is it just me, or is this new tagging messing up syndication? The RSS feed, as far as I can tell, isn't picking up any of the new posts.

re: New Change to the Excel blog

Joseph Chirilov — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:00:33 GMT

The new posts just came out today. Perhaps your RSS feed hasn't been updated yet? I haven't noticed any issues on my end.

re: New Change to the Excel blog

Hui... — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 04:21:48 GMT

I thought this Blog had gone to sleep

Power Tips is a great idea

Hui...

re: New Change to the Excel blog

Mike Rosenblum — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:01:00 GMT

Hey Joe,

I'm really psyched to see the Power Tips kicked off. It looks like it's off to a great start. :-)

-- Mike

re: New Change to the Excel blog

Ex-Fan of Excel — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 02:13:57 GMT

Here is a good suggestion for your first power tip. "How to switch from Ribbon to Classic View". Oh wait. You got rid of classic view becuase it was "burying functionality". The Ribbon is awful. I wish you guys would listen to your faithful users from the last decade, but instead you decided to listen to idiot product management and marketing execs who are trying to turn Office into and Apple product. Thanks for destroying my productivity idiots. I hope Google's new spreadsheet app steals all of your market share.

re: New Change to the Excel blog

Ex-fan of Excel — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 02:38:35 GMT

http://www.exceluser.com/explore/surveys/ribbon/ribbon-survey-results.htm

Here is a good article about what people think about the ribbon. Sounds like ribbon was built for the benefit of microsoft engineers and not users. What a joke.

re: New Change to the Excel blog

Sean — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:24:50 GMT

Come on guys, this is a blog for useful information regarding Excel. Many of us receive the initial posting as well as posted comments as these too can be beneficial. If you have complaints to make regarding Excel then I'm sure there are better places to be making them.

In response to your comments, I too was disheartened when I first started using the Ribbon. However, with time I have come to find it at least as simple to navigate as the old style menus.

With regard to productivity, the best way to improve that is to use the keyboard shortcuts to the numerous commands, thus removing the need to navigate the Ribbon. The shortcuts used in 2003 still hold in 2007. Whilst the most common commands have their own keyboard shortcuts (CTRL + O to open etc), those that don't will still respond to the keyboard shortcuts that you could use in 2003 to access the command via the menus (ALT D, F, F to Autofilter etc). I created a fairly comprehensive list of shortcuts for my colleagues so as to help them find the required commands, but also to speed up their access to them. I'm sure such lists exist online, but if not then feel free to ask and I'll send you mine. If your productivity is being affected by the Ribbon then I'd say that you're most likely not using keyboard shortcuts as much as you could be, and therefore your productivity pre-Ribbon would have been below par. My personal opinion on improving productivity would be to make people work for a month without a mouse!

As a developer I find the Ribbon is head and shoulders above the old style menus. There are too numerous reasons for me to list here, but suffice to say I am one much happier customer and avoid developing for 2003, or older, if I can help it.

So please, let's keep using these blogs for useful comments and tips (I'm hoping that my suggestion of using keyboard shortcuts is one) and keep the complaints in their relevant place.

re: New Change to the Excel blog

Harlan Grove — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:17:08 GMT

Sean - if MSFT wants these blogs to contain only 'helpful' comments, they could always moderate comments to screen out 'unhelpful' ones. That they don't means either that they don't care (and since these are their blogs, they have the right to be indifferent) or that they find some benefit to letting rants remain. Either way, GET USED TO IT!

Now with respect to the more efficient keyboard shortcuts, I completely agree that they're the quickest way to access commands either using the ribbon or the classic UI in Excel 2003 or prior. Those of us who have developed our Excel experience with older versions learned those keyboard shortcuts IN THOSE OLDER VERSIONS. How exactly would new Excel users learn keyboard shortcuts based on the classic menu?

I agree that there were some improvements in Excel 2007, but the main ones were in the worksheet and in a few of the dialogs (e.g., defined names). None of those improvements require the ribbon.

re: New Change to the Excel blog

Sean — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:52:44 GMT

Harlan,

I don't have a problem with rants per se, I apologise that this wasn't clear in my initial post, but note the title of this blog for instance, it harldy seems the place for moaning about the Ribbon does it?

I am fully aware that many people don't like the Ribbon, and probably other areas of Excel or the Office suite. I just think it would be nicer if rants were kept in their appropriate places. We all recognise your name and know that you enjoy a good old rant (usually with interesting and useful comments attached, I must add), but at least you are only doing so with regard to the topic in hand.

As to the new users, they can use the new keyboard short cuts. As soon as you press that ALT key all the letters for the Ribbon tabs should jump up, click one and then that tab reveals the letters for its commands, and so on. This, by the way, is something I am certain you are aware of, I only mention it so that any new users can also become aware.

re: New Change to the Excel blog

Sarah Talbot — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:00:17 GMT

The Power Tips link does not work

re: New Change to the Excel blog

Jake — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:42:49 GMT

Sean, Ex-Fan was asking a perfectly reasonable question appropriate to this thread - how do we get the classic menus back ? this could be answered by anyone who has tried the third-party add-ins that purport to restore this functionality

re: New Change to the Excel blog

Ron de Bruin — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:02:19 GMT

You can bring the classic menu back with only RibbonX if you want. But learn the new ribbon instead. Look forward and not back.

Ron

re: New Change to the Excel blog

Aneliya Karim — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:46:01 GMT

hi guys,

about the Ribbon - it is great on my point of view. I do like it because it is smart, convinient and finally nice.

about 'a number of past posts with the Power Tips tag'(http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/tags/Power+Tips/default.aspx)- I have a trouble 404 with it...

re: New Change to the Excel blog

Harlan Grove — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 05:25:08 GMT

'Nice' is a subjective opinion. There are a great many Excel users who don't find the ribbon nice.

As for convenient, read Jon Peltier's blog on charting in Excel 2007 vs prior versions. Excel 2007 was definitely NOT an improvement for charting.

re: New Change to the Excel blog

Sverrir — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:30:32 GMT

:( 404 Error when clicking the PowerTips links *cry*

re: New Change to the Excel blog

Joseph Chirilov — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:07:01 GMT

Seems like a number of the tags aren't working. I'm looking into it. Thanks for the heads up.

re: New Change to the Excel blog

Joseph Chirilov — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:56:39 GMT

The tags are fixed now.

re: New Change to the Excel blog

Aneliya Karim — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:26:48 GMT

2 Harlan Grove

Of course subjective as well as 'smart' and 'convinient'. But if I have difficulties charting in Excel 2003, I have the same in 2007 but at least with a nice interface :)))))

From my experience Ribbon helped me a lot understanding the Offices' tools.

re: New Change to the Excel blog

Harlan Grove — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 07:12:19 GMT

Aneliya, read

http://peltiertech.com/WordPress/changes-to-charting-in-excel-2007/

All depends on where one's preference in the ease of use vs efficiency spectrum lies.

re: New Change to the Excel blog

Ace — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 18:46:22 GMT

Thanks for setting this up, very useful. Also, what Microsoft web site is the best to use for complaints about the ribbon?

Restrict Access

Mike — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 19:06:10 GMT

I have a large folder with both Word and Excel documents stored.

One workpartner accidently selected an excel document rather than the associated word document and e-mailed that file to our client.

I don't want him or any-other workpartner to be able to send my excel files.

How can I restrict that?