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The trouble is that a lot of support time was wasted in older Office versions because people had accidentally moved buttons around and lost them, or because one user had moved buttons around how they wanted them and another user then couldn't find the buttons they wanted.
Fine if you're the only user of the PC, but for most offices it's as daft as letting people rearrange the keys on their keyboard.
If they'd never put toolbar customisation in in the first place almost nobody would be asking for it now.
Regards
Nelviticus
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It takes almost zero time to learn how to customise a toolbar, and, once it has been customised, the toolbar requires zero maintenance, and zero "extra clicks" to reach the functions that are on the toolbar.
It takes time every day to use a ribbon that has been "customised" the way someone at Microsoft has decided it should be laid out, and, if anyone dares to make changes to the ribbon, it takes considerable time to put it back the way you want it after an update has reverted it to what the Microsoft employee likes.
How can moving from (almost zero + zero + zero) to (time lost by every employee every day + considerable time to put it back the way you want it) possibly be construed as constituting a productivity benefit?
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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If you really want to use WallaceWord(TM) instead of Microsoft Word then you can very easily build yourself your own ribbon, which appears before all the Microsoft ones and won't get moved/removed with any updates, with the Custom UI Editor[^]. However a) most people never customised their toolbar anyway and b) for new users the ribbon - the layout of which was designed with a lot of thought and study, not just scribbled out on the back of a napkin - is a lot easier to use than the old toolbars/menus.
The point being that for some individuals (me included) who liked to fiddle and heavily customise their toolbars, the ribbon has been a restriction. But for the vast majority of users taking away (easy) customisation has been a significant improvement. I say this as someone who supports Office in a place with a lot of non-technical users - and as someone who, in Office XP, had changed every single button on the two main toolbars. My initial annoyance has faded now I've seen how much of an improvement it is for 99% of users.
Regards
Nelviticus
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Nelviticus wrote: you can very easily build yourself your own ribbon
I did. I built a ribbon that included only the tools (and styles) that I use when writing MSS, and incorporated it into a template that opens automatically for MSS docs.
I kept wondering why it kept disappearing, and why it kept detaching itself from MSS docs. Turns out it was updates kept ****ing it up.
I'm now happily back in Office 2003, where the template and toolbar work as well as they always worked -- i.e. every time, without any glitches, and taking up a lot less screen space than the ribbon.
Nelviticus wrote: as someone who, in Office XP, had changed every single button on the two main toolbars
Hmm. Bad idea. You should have created new toolbars, instead, then attached them to new templates so they could be used or ignored as required. It was quick, easy, and a lot less hassle. And it allowed you to create buttons for things that do not have buttons (e.g. styles), and make them persist. The ribbon has made all that a damned sight harder.
Before, you could have sent a one-pager to all "non-technical" users, showing them how to customise their "user experience", thereby improving their performance.
With the ribbon, you'll have to go to each of their machines to do it yourself -- and then teach them how to back up .dot files, so they can restore them when an update screws them up.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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But that's because toolbar customization, in many applications, was ALWAYS ON, meaning an accidental click or drag would (re)move a button.
Personally, I love the idea that Raymond spends his nights posting bad regexs to mailing lists under the pseudonym of Jane Smith. He'd be like a super hero, only more nerdy and less useful. [Trevel]
| FoldWithUs! | sighist | µLaunch - program launcher for server core and hyper-v server
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I guess each environment has different problems. We've ca. 400 XP Professional boxes here and I've never heard a trouble call because of lost or missing buttons.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert
"It's a sad state of affairs, indeed, when you start reading my tag lines for some sort of enlightenment. Sadder still, if that's where you need to find it." - Balboos HaGadol
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Maybe a 'favourites' ribbon would help ?
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V. wrote: Maybe a 'favourites' ribbon would help ?
Yes! A sub-ribbon, underneath the main ribbon, where you can drag buttons that you use frequently!
Then you could hide the main ribbon itself, leaving just the single row of sub-ribbon buttons!
I'm all in favour! 
V. wrote: Stop smoking so you can: Enjoy longer the money you save.
I'm trying! I'm trying!
Stop bluddy reminding me about those wonderful tubes of smoldering vegetable matter!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mark Wallace wrote: A sub-ribbon, underneath the main ribbon
Office 2007 has the Quick Access Toolbar. It isn't drag and drop, but it's fairly close to what you're talking about. It's that small row of buttons next to the main Office button on the top-left.
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The quick access bar takes care of the basics (until it's reset by an update, and you have to build it all over again), but it can't be assigned a group of styles, the way a normal toolbar could, and it doesn't change according to the document template you're using.
I know that this is a dev board, so the more complicated things that should be done with templates (especially before Word is given to non-technical users) aren't a focus -- devs do everything with the Normal template, or maybe with a template that is "complete" by dev standards, but proper documentation systems are a lot more complicated than that.
E.g. if a non-techie user has to write a memo, then there should be only the styles and functions required for writing a memo available -- it's up to sys admin to create and enforce the templates used (the next time you receive a memo that has to contact three separate databases, and is full of graphics that have to update before the document will open fully, you'll think of this).
Worse (and this is one of the biggest problems), if a dev has to write a user document, which will be handed to customers, the look and feel of that document must conform to the standards that are applied to all documents that are handed to customers. But devs tend to have their own ideas about that (or just don't care), so the copy of Word they are given has to be locked down so tight that they cannot possibly do anything that breaks the standards.
Locking it down doesn't make it any harder to produce a document, BTW; it just makes it impossible to do the whole thing in Comic Sans, makes sure that the document structure is correct, prevents pasting of external database or file-system links, and allows the document to be added into a content-management system so that chunks of it can be sourced into other documents very quickly, etc.
It's a nightmare to try to do that since v.2007, and, once you've done the mountain of complicated (and template-destabilising) work, it can all be wiped away by an update to Outlook or PowerPoint.
So, the choice is between:
1. Implememting and maintaining a labour-intensive and slow system with tech writers in the middle, to check and amend every scrap of paper that devs produce (great for team spirit -- NOT!)
2. Looking like complete bleeding amateurs to your customers/prospects.
3. Upgrading back to Word 2003, so none of the extra work and maintenance is necessary.
Unfortunately, too many people are believing all the hype about the ribbon, so they're soldiering on with option 1, or ending up with option 2.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mark Wallace wrote: a single line of buttons, each one selected by the user because it is needed, it is a complete waste of time.
1. Customize a Quick Access Toolbar which is in upper-left corner by default.
2. Tell it to appear below the ribbon in place of a standard location (there is an option to do it in a customization dialog).
3. Minimize the ribbon (right-click).
Now you have expandable menus+your own toolbar.
Hope this helps ---
Greetings - Jacek
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but, as for office 2007, I need some time to find where the functions are located.....
Regards,
unruledboy_at_gmail_dot_com
http://www.xnlab.com
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