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Where Did That Feature Go?

No matter how good of a job we did organizing features in the new UI, there's always the chance that you might run into a feature you're having trouble finding for the first time in the new UI.

To help with exactly this scenario, we created a few security blankets. One of the coolest ones is a tool we're calling the "Interactive Command Reference Guide."

This tool is an interactive mockup of the UI for Word 2003, Excel 2003, and PowerPoint 2003 that runs in your web browser. You can click on the location of any feature in the Office 2003 menus or default toolbars and the tool will show you exactly how to get to it in Office 2007. You can also hover over the commands to see the Office 2007 location in a tooltip.

The below links will only work if you have already installed Office 2007 Beta 2, and there are still a few bugs in the tool... but try it out and tell us what you think!

Word 2003 to 2007 Interactive Command Reference Guide

Excel 2003 to 2007 Interactive Command Reference Guide

PowerPoint 2003 to 2007 Interactive Command Reference Guide

Posted: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 7:00 AM by jensenh

Comments

Andre said:

Why do I have to accept cookies to use the guide? And cookies from webtrends.com, msn.com and live.com sucks!

"Microsoft Office Online Beta Authorization Error" also sucks! I didn't even agreed to detect the installation.
# May 30, 2006 2:26 PM

Bryan said:

I also had a problem with that error, but after fiddling with a few things and reloading the page a few times I got it to finally load. Besides for the problems, I think it's really cool and could be useful to many people.
# May 30, 2006 2:28 PM

jensenh said:

Andre,

I'm not sure why so many cookies are required, but I'll try to find out.

You will have to run the tool which verifies that you have Office 2007 Beta 2 installed, so if you reject that part of the page, it is true that page won't load.
# May 30, 2006 2:57 PM

Chris said:

It won't let me in if I use Opera. It says that Opera is not a supported browser. Come on guys; this in 2006, not 1998.
# May 30, 2006 3:03 PM

Chris said:

It won't let me in if I use Opera. It says that Opera is not a supported browser. Come on guys; this in 2006, not 1998.
# May 30, 2006 3:05 PM

Aaron M. Hall said:

Works perfectly fine in IE and Firefox... Perhaps for all of Opera's efforts to become great, they forgot that they're the small fish in a big pond and have to work a little harder.
# May 30, 2006 4:25 PM

ck said:

very cool tool, you should consider shiping something like that in office 2007 itself, like under help.
# May 30, 2006 6:39 PM

Guess Who said:

Hi,
I finally felt secure about downloading beta 2. So I did, and it is drop dead gorgeous. However, the blue clashed with my XP theme (bit to light), and the gray just looked horendous with my theme (standard XP blue). However, I'm sure it's going to look wonderful with Vista. I am extremely ready to drop the $300 (or so) for Office as soon as it comes out. Good Job all you folks! Especially pleased with the Powerpoint ease of things.

P.S. I was slightly disappointed that the pane's hadn't been absorbed into the ribbon or a gallery but hey, it's a beta. Also, I floundered a little in the first 30 seconds, after that it was easy as pie.

P.P.S. Never even noticed the ribbon was slightly bigger than the toolbars. Good job on that! Only after I had a side-to-side of 2k3 and 2k7 did I realize it.
# May 30, 2006 10:56 PM

Byron said:

What a great idea, and it came just at the right time for me.

Excellent blog Jensen - keep it up!
# May 31, 2006 12:26 AM

KC Lemson said:

AWESOME! I have been needing this. Can't wait to try it out tomorrow from a b2 machine.
# May 31, 2006 1:01 AM

Chris said:

@Aaron M. Hall

Or, the application developers could just test it with Opera, see that it works, and remove the stupid browser detection script.

There are standards too, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms.

(Sorry about the double post. There server was acting funky when I hit it yesterday [Lunch time in Redmond].)
# May 31, 2006 4:14 PM

Michael Plasmeier said:

I have a funny feeling this website UI is going to be at http://office.microsoft.com/ and replace what is there (it looks currently awfully like 2003)  Which is a good idea because the current Office site UI is one of the reasons I bought 2003 a bit after it came out - Michael
# May 31, 2006 6:32 PM

IOrtiz (Puerto Rico) said:

My cool 3-D types in Power Point turned into plain letters, ruining my presentations.How do I fix this? Also, where are the basic tools like: File, Edit...?
# June 1, 2006 3:06 PM

OutOfCoffeeException said:

# June 1, 2006 8:08 PM

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

Stefan KZVB said:

"Where did that feature go?"

...some users will ask themselves after they accidentially removed i.e. the Undo-Button from the QAT via the context menu.

What I want to say:
It would be nice if Office asked the user to confirm the removal of items from the QAT. This would avoid that this context menu would become nearly as dangerous as ctrl-alt-"-"...
# June 6, 2006 5:18 AM

Shruti said:

Do those links still work?
# June 9, 2006 2:42 PM

Zaine Ridling said:

Couldn't get the links to work in IE7 all day Friday. Dang man!
# June 10, 2006 1:41 AM

David Overton's Blog said:

Hi,
I love the new interface on Office 2007, but I occasionally can't find something that I knew exactly...
# June 12, 2006 4:59 PM

Cagwin said:

I really like this reference guide. I wish I new about it a month ago when I was trying to locate a feature and couldn't find it in the help menu.

Office should definitely make this available when they release 2007.
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# June 24, 2006 3:41 AM

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# July 4, 2006 7:49 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 6, 2006 1:29 PM

JB said:

Is there an Outlook 2003 to 2007 Interactive Command Reference Guide?
# July 7, 2006 4:10 PM

James Morgan - IW Lead for Retail. Microsoft Corporation » Blog Archive » You mean….we don’t need to retrain everyone? said:

PingBack from http://jamorgan.wordpress.com/2006/08/14/you-meanwe-dont-need-to-retrain-everyone/
# August 14, 2006 1:26 PM
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