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Tell Us What You Think About Office 2007 Beta 2

We're two days into the public beta 2 of Office 2007, and so far 500,000 people have downloaded the beta. I have to say I'm a bit astounded that we're at a number that high after only two days... it's scary but awesome to think about so many people out there giving it a try.

Anyway, I'm sure if you've started to use the beta that you've got something you want to tell us. Maybe you're having trouble finding something in the new UI. Maybe you have a specific suggestion on how we can improve a feature. Or, maybe there's something you love and you want to make sure we know about it so that we keep it in the product.

The best tool to use to give us feedback on Office 2007 Beta 2 is called Send a Smile. Install the Send a Smile tool and two icons are added to the notifications area of the taskbar over by the clock: a happy face to click when you want to give us positive feedback and a sad face to click when there's something you don’t like.

Send a Smile is the best way to send feedback about Office 2007. Believe it or not, your feedback goes directly to us on the product team--directly to the people responsible for making decisions about the product in every area. In some cases, if you choose to give us your e-mail address (which is optional) we might contact you to follow-up and get more information.

It's important that we hear both what you like and what you don't like. The constructive feedback is incredibly valuable, but I’ve also been involved in decisions in which we've said "no one has really said that they like this new thing, so we should take it out" only to discover that people really did like it once it was already gone. So anytime you have a thought about Office 2007, positive or negative, please let us know using Send a Smile. Thanks for helping us to make Office 2007 a better product.

Download the Send a Smile tool to start sending us Office 2007 Beta 2 feedback now.

* * *

Posted: Friday, May 26, 2006 7:00 AM by jensenh

Comments

Andy said:

Jensen,

I'm really enjoying Office 2007, it's a great leap forward. What has most amazed me are the improvments in Outlook: the color coding, the to-do bar, etc. It's really amazing!

However, I really hope you could reconsider the UI of the Outlook shell. The asymmetry with the other Office apps, and more importantly, the Outlook e-mail/calendar windows is terrible.

My main argument for this is the fact that even in the Outlook shell, most of the time you're doing the same as in an Outlook content window. Most of the time I'll have an e-mail message open in the preview pane. So why can't I reply or flag that message using the ribbon as I can if I had opened that message? The same goes for the calendar and the tasks.

Also, you're pitching "shared" Office UI elements for the first time ever to the user, such as the "Office menu" instead of the File menu and the "Home" ribbon tab, which should communicate a "universal" home across all application. However, I think the message will be lost if the application that is used most of the time doesn't share these unified concepts.

Again, thanks for this great release.
# May 26, 2006 10:48 AM

LGFN said:

I don't think it is you to ask this one, but I don't have anyone else to ask, so...

I mistakemly exited SaS (by pressing the exit option on the bottom of the screen) how do I return to it once it diiapeard?
# May 26, 2006 11:44 AM

Eric Hammersley said:

# May 26, 2006 11:56 AM

Groovy Links said:

The Office 2007 team have a cool feedback-collection tool for their beta (reminiscent of the old "Report a bug" window heading from the WinXP betas)....
# May 26, 2006 1:05 PM

jensenh said:

LGFN:

On the Start menu, go to the Startup folder and click Office Information Worker Feedback Tool.
# May 26, 2006 1:07 PM

Dave Solimini said:

Jensen --

The only thing I miss from the old version are the tear-away drop-down menus that used to be on the toolbars. Specifically, the ones that set cell/table borders and cell/table shading. I find myself going back and forth to the drop-downs rather than to an easier to access (and fewer-clicks required) tear-off.

I also think that having tear-aways would not conflict with the goals of the Ribbon: They are entirely optional and not necessary to access the functionality (just making it easier to access) while reducing the number of clicks required to perform a common/repeated task.

My two cents...
-Dave

# May 26, 2006 1:35 PM

KennethVerburg.nl - Information Engineer in het Wild » Blog Archief » Send a smile said:

PingBack from http://www.kennethverburg.nl/2006/05/26/send-a-smile/
# May 26, 2006 1:42 PM

mentas said:

Why OLD editing/formating shapes in Word?
# May 26, 2006 6:16 PM

Nidonocu said:

Very cool idea for the feedback system its self! Always there and fun too! I hope this idea is used in other Microsoft betas. :)
# May 26, 2006 6:29 PM

jensenh said:

mentas:

The Word team didn't implement the new graphics engine for drawing shapes in Word for this release.  Word does support the graphics engine for Charts and SmartArt.
# May 26, 2006 8:19 PM

Alec Wasserman said:

Why cant I no produce a signature using word as an editor; in outlook?  When I cut and paste a picture in there it appears correct then when u go to use the signature it compresses the picture very very tiny.  and u cant easily edit pictures u have stored to make them smaller in there.  plz  
bring that feature back to use word as editor.  thank u.  also my motorla phone tools wont work with calendar.  I suppose some day they will update the plugin so it works again.  besides that works well

Alec
# May 26, 2006 8:42 PM

OneNote Extensibility & More.. said:

I just saw Jensen Harris' post about the Office Send a Smile tool.  Pretty much you can install...
# May 27, 2006 5:42 AM

Mike said:

I'm stunned. This tool is just cool, the concept...

The Office team is the best team at Microsoft!
# May 27, 2006 9:40 AM

tomc said:

I've been concerned about MS Office 2007 for quite a long time. But I noticed that there still is a problem with "Symbol Instert" in beta2 which has just released.

(Actually, that problem had come with the first pre-release version.)

In Word, for example, in the “Insert” Ribbon, insert symbol is just alright. But if you click the "More Symbol" which is on the bottom of the gallery of "symbol", you might know the problem that the opened dialogue got something wrong.
# May 27, 2006 12:15 PM

ThomThom said:

I just installed the beta and one that came to my mind was that I couldn't notice any way of choosing where to install it. I have a system where I install programs on a different partition from my Windows partition. Did I miss it, or is there no such option`?
# May 27, 2006 12:46 PM

Satisfy Me said:

I was asked the pther day about the number of different Microsoft sites that are available for providing...
# May 27, 2006 2:40 PM

Kenneth Auchenberg said:

Hej folkens
Faldt lige over dette blog-post af  Jensen Harris, som omhandler at man kan installere et...
# May 27, 2006 4:56 PM

Kenneth Auchenberg said:

Hej folkens
Faldt lige over dette blog-post af  Jensen Harris, som omhandler at man kan installere et...
# May 27, 2006 4:56 PM

Stefan KZVB said:

Here's something I really do not like about the new GUI:

Some of the items on the QAT can't be found anywhere on the Ribbons. Especially Undo and redo are those. The user can remove those icons and they are gone. That's hard to support for the service desk!!!

Those and also Open, Save as, Print should really be on tabs. So they would be on a defined place and the GUI would be more consistent.
# May 27, 2006 8:28 PM

DCMonkey said:

I'm dissapointed that Excel is still a MDI style app. I often find myself referring to multiple spreadsheets and don't like having to do a bunch of extra window management (maximizing Excel, restoring the current spreadhseet. Dragging the two spreadsheets I want to view into position). I've got a big monitor (and am considering adding a 2nd), and usually run my apps at less than full screen. I'd like to  be able to just drag my spreadsheets into the position I need at any time. I also don't want to have to explicitly launch separate instances of Excel to get around this.

I do, however, like what you've done with the close buttons, once I figured out how it worked.

# May 28, 2006 4:21 AM

Steve Richards said:

I used to love the tear off menu's for the drawing menu for example.  The ribbon is great but I do find myself going backwards and forwards a lot,  Being able to tear off an element of the ribbon so its always available would be great.  btw I know that there is a tiny personalised icon strip, but its not an alternative.
# May 28, 2006 4:44 AM

Roland said:

Love the new UI, especially the Live Preview!

However, the Floaty doesn't seem to support Live Preview yet. For example, if a select text and then scroll through the fonts in the Floaty, there is no Live Preview for the currently seleced font.

Hope you'll add this until the final.
# May 28, 2006 12:42 PM

Tim Long said:

If you like Office 2007, send a smile. If you find something you don’t like, send a frown. After complaining...
# May 28, 2006 6:06 PM

Antony said:

Seriously impressed - ribbon just 'makes sense'.

However, who changed =rand(10,10) in Word?  Where have my quick foxes gone??  haha
# May 28, 2006 8:04 PM

Laura said:

OK, Office is not allowing me to add any accounts.  Keep getting a bunch of errors.  Also, can't add the send a smile app.  It says I don't have the authority, which doesn't make sense since my account has admin. authority and even after I disable the antispyware and firewall, it won't let me.  FYI: I'm also beta testing Windows Live OneCare
# May 29, 2006 3:17 AM

mcic said:

Just to say I think the Office 2007 beta is awesome.  It by far improves on Office 2003 which was the best office suite around yet - and the new improvements to graphics - particularly on Powerpoint - is great.  Can't wait to the final product; although the existing Beta 2 is already excellent!
# May 29, 2006 4:56 AM

Tiernans Comms Closet said:

Jense
Jensen Harris has a post on his site entitled “tell us what you think of office 2007 BETA 2”....
# May 29, 2006 10:42 AM

LGFN said:

Can anyone tell me what's that "Remember Me?" on the bottom of this blog?
# May 29, 2006 2:33 PM

Colin said:

I gotta say I really like in general most of the UI improvements in Office 2007, but I'm *really* disappointed in the inconsistent way that the Office Apps act as hybrid MDI/SDI apps - and are not even inconsistent between themselves.  And I think it's gotten worse, not better.

Specific annoying features:
- Double-clicking on the upper-left-corner button doesn't close anything, unlike everything else in Windows.  I guess it should do OfficeSymbol->Close.  Note that in Office 2003 and previous this is *very* inconsistent  - double-clicking the control menu closes just the document you're working on in Word (correct) but close *everything* in Excel.

- Word is *somewhat* SDI (with caveats below) but Excel is still MDI - except that it still creates a taskbar button per document, thus breaking the Taskbar button = Window paradigm.  Note to mention it makes Window management with Excel a pain, especially if you're working with multiple Excel and, say, Word documents.

- Inconsistent behaviour on the OfficeSymbol->Close button.  If you have more than one document open, it will behave as expected, closing the window.  But for a signle document, it will leave the window open and you have to use the "Exit word" command to actually close the window.

It would be really great to at least provide the option (maybe it's already there?) to have these things behave consistently.  It would be great if they could just act maintain the simple document=task=window paradigm of, say, Notepad.exe.  

I'm guessing it's too late (perhaps just way to difficult without a rewrite?) to turn Excel in a proper SDI-paradigm application but if you could make the Close/Exit/double-clicking behaviour consistent with normal Windows 95 UI conventions (which have been around for more than 10 years!) I think that would be a great improvement.
# May 29, 2006 6:36 PM

Make You Go Hmm: » Send a smile or frown during Office 2007 testing said:

PingBack from http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20060529/3371/
# May 29, 2006 8:46 PM

Quick Online Tips » Send a Smile : Give Feedback on Office 2007 Beta 2 said:

PingBack from http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2006/05/send-a-smile-give-feedback-on-office-2007-beta-2/
# May 30, 2006 9:29 AM

Francis said:

I would prefer that Office apps remain MDI. Otherwise, working with multiple documents at the same time can be very unwieldy.

[For the sake of consistency] why not implement what IE and other browsers have, tabbed browsing? Only here it would be "tabbed editing" for the child windows. The tab bar need only appear when more than one document is open in the given application.
# May 30, 2006 11:10 AM

TrevF said:

So far very impressed.  The only issue i have encountered is that with Windows Desktop Search 3.0 installed Outlook never closes.  Instead it stays open in task manager taking up more and more resources.  I can't see why this would happen.  Can anyone advise?
# May 30, 2006 12:08 PM

Bart Wessels' Blog said:

Binnen een paar dagen zijn er wereldwijd meer dan 500.000 mensen die de Beta 2 versie van Office 2007...
# May 30, 2006 2:52 PM

Brain Burps said:

Sometimes I find stuff like this that we do and I just smile - which is ironic given the functionality...
# May 31, 2006 7:14 PM

Stevens said:

I like the Office 2007 Beta but am having a problem with Outlook. My old emails imported fine (except for an extended rendering delay) but any new emails delivered to me now are have the message body of the email removed. Anyone else see this?
# June 1, 2006 1:17 AM

IW Partner Resources said:

Reading Jensen's blog, I found out about a couple of new Office 2007 resources which I thought I would...
# June 2, 2006 5:42 AM

David Overton's Blog said:


This is such a simple concept and such a great way to offer feedback. Simply press the faces if you...
# June 2, 2006 6:43 AM

Irfan said:

I miss speech recognition.
they shudnt have removed it cos i use it alot!!
:(
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# June 5, 2006 5:35 PM

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# June 5, 2006 5:35 PM

doncampbell's weblog said:

Please give us your feedback (suggestions, bugs, wishes) for Beta2.  Here are a few ways: ...
# June 7, 2006 11:21 PM

Enter the Tatrix » Providing feedback about your Office 2007 Beta 2 experience said:

PingBack from http://tatham.wordpress.com/2006/06/19/providing-feedback-about-your-office-2007-beta-2-experience/
# June 18, 2006 3:21 PM

Julian Franklin said:

Office 2007 (beta2)has a lot of promise, apart form being enormous(800 odd Mbs for Word) and you are able to navigate the ribbons used instead of menus, you can begin to trust it a bit.  My problems with it are:

It does not seem to have a task bar - very inconvenient as have to use Task Manager to find things that are already running!

It doesn't like being closed down from the 'X' in the corner of the window on Word, so is reluctant to close and invokes the 'inform Microsoft of an error' box after saving and attempting to close. The 'X Exit Word' button is better but not always.

Things vanish from the ribbons such as Print Preview - when it has been there before.

There is no Lookup on the Selling context mouse menu now.

Big problem with Outlook (beta2)is that it is good for viewing your emails once but when they've opened, the body text vanishes and leaves only the header, so got to have a retentive memory!?

Still, I suppose it is under development which is why we've all got it for free until its on the market - fixed I hope.

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# June 21, 2006 12:25 AM

daern said:

Nice simple one:

Why can't Excel and Powerpoint use the same windowing UI as Word? Specifically, their use of a semi-MDI interface for handling documents, with a fudge to make each MDI child have a task button.

This is a real pain if you ever want to open two documents in two seperate windows on a multiple-monitor system :-( It's also very confusing for users...

Thanks,

Daern
# June 22, 2006 4:59 AM

Kurt said:

Jensen,

it would be interesting to learn how much feedback you have received via Send a Smile so far. It must be in the thousands of comments by now.
# June 22, 2006 6:05 PM

lesbian rape said:

Best of all people w can talk...
# June 23, 2006 4:39 AM

Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog said:

Over the last month, you've sent us thousands and thousands of comments about Office 2007 Beta 2 using...
# June 23, 2006 8:33 AM

Sam Y said:

This seems like nifty idea/implementation of a feedback system.  Any chance of releasing source code or opening things up in such a way that we could take advantage of this for our own usability tests and the like?  Even totally unsupported source code would be fine.
# June 23, 2006 7:44 PM

SomeOne said:

The user interface color (sky blue) is plain UGLY! the who interface looks too much like MSN Messenger 7.5x which sucks!

My $0.02
# June 26, 2006 9:51 AM

SomeOne said:

Forget to say that I suggest that you guys replace this sky-blue color of the UI with black while will be a better match/compliment the coming Windows Vista...

The sky-blue really sucks for any application... :)
# June 26, 2006 10:03 AM

Jennie said:

I have only tried Outlook so far and it keeps crashing - it omes back again quickly but its a bit annoying. Also, I can't read the content on some messages - they just come through as blank pages!
# June 28, 2006 12:45 PM

Jeff G said:

I love the new look of office 2007.  One of the issues I am seeing on Outlook though is that if I pull up one of my coworker's calendars one day, it will continue to sync down that entire calendar even after I remove it from my favorites list of calendars.  This drastically decreases performance in Outlook when running in Cached mode.  Also, I can't stand the new desktop search tool.  There have been numerous times before I uninstalled it that it was utilizing over 100MB of ram on my machine and would just keep growing if I didn't kill it and eventually uninstall it.
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# July 2, 2006 1:26 AM

Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog said:

Today's Guest Writer: Rich Grutzmacher
Today I present guest writer Rich Grutzmacher, Program Manager...
# July 3, 2006 4:54 AM

Eric Nelson - Development for WinFX for ISVs said:

This little tool missed me - hence I am guessing it missed others. If you are running Beta 2 and would...
# July 4, 2006 9:30 AM

dae’s weblog » Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog : Tell Us What You Think About Office 2007 Beta 2 said:

PingBack from http://daep.dyndns.org/2006/07/07/jensen-harris-an-office-user-interface-blog-tell-us-what-you-think-about-office-2007-beta-2/
# July 6, 2006 6:06 PM

Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog said:

Today's Guest Writer: Rich Grutzmacher
Rich Grutzmacher is a Program Manager on the Office User Experience...
# July 11, 2006 10:00 AM

Salil Divakaran said:

Powerpoint older version files are not
displaying properly in the Slide Show.
# July 17, 2006 3:05 AM

Dan's Archive said:

# August 4, 2006 7:46 AM

Stu Downes » Beta Software said:

PingBack from http://www.sdownes.co.uk/2006/08/08/beta-software/
# August 8, 2006 4:11 PM

Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog said:

This morning, the Beta 2 Technical Refresh of the 2007 Microsoft Office system became available for download....
# September 14, 2006 5:00 PM

pschmid.net - Patrick Schmid: Putting You & I back into Office 2007’s UI - Beta Overview said:

PingBack from http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/10/01/48
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