I'm Just Sharing

Three years ago I went to a presentation at a company that was showing some brief clips of the Office 2007 package items. I have to admit that it looked alien to me, and I pretty much told myself that it was something I wasn’t going to be considering at any time soon.

Fast forward to now. I’m presently working on a big project, and, of course, many of the files I received were in the newer format. I actually had the program laying around for about a year that someone had given me, and I figured it was as good a time as any other to load it to see what it was all about for myself. I loaded it into a totally different directory, though, so it wouldn’t erase what I already have.

Then it was time to go, and I pulled up Excel first, since most of what I was going to be doing was on that. I can’t lie; it still looks alien to me. Microsoft decided to go with what they call a “ribbon” look rather than the words we’re used to seeing, and man, was I confused! I couldn’t even figure out how to open a file, so I double clicked on the file and had it ask me if it could connect to this new program, which of course I agreed to.

Working within the spreadsheet itself is just like it’s always been, but after that it takes time to figure some things out. For instance, instead of headings I know very well like “file”, “edit”, and “format”, they now use “home”, “page layout”, “formulas” and “review”. They kept “data” and “insert” and “view”, thank goodness. When you click on one of the headings in Excel 2007, instead of a list of stuff you get the ribbons. But there’s a lot more stuff, and it might not be worded like what you were used to. It took me almost 30 minutes before I could figure out all the basic things I needed.

The same thing occurred with Word, but not to the same degree. That’s probably because I’ve never quite known how to do all those things that Word supposedly can do for you; I’ve always been more of a numbers guy, so I use Word mainly just to write.

I haven’t even tried to open PowerPoint or Access yet; no need, since I rarely use either one. I will say this, though; I do believe that once I’ve had more time with Excel 2007 that I’ll like it just fine. I assume the same might be true for Word 2007 at some point as well. Thing is, there’s supposedly an Office 10 version coming, and they’re not going backwards, which means the ribbon is going to be staying. This is one of those times where we’re going to have to change our technology at some point, kicking and scratching if necessary.

I know many of you have already switched, but I’m betting the majority haven’t, which is why I’m writing this now. If anyone else has positives or negatives they’d like to share, by all means please do. And this points out why it might be a good thing to at least pop in to the webinar I’m doing with my friend Renee, as she talks about Excel 2007.