[BradD]

I've been using MS Office since 1994. I have Word, Excel, or PowerPoint on the screen most of most days. Best I can tell, these programs have not improved significantly in almost 20 years, during a time that contains tremendous technological improvements.

When I search for something in Google, most of the time, it knows what I want before I've typed in half the search string. It's smart. It's even considering what others are searching for when it's guessing what I'm searching for. It learns and gets smarter over time.

Examples of 2001-ish behavior in Office, among many such issues.

• If I copy an image into Word, change it to 3 in. wide, and repeat that a million times, I'll still have to right-click on each image and change each one. (Unless I want to write a macros that is. No thanks.) After I do this about two or three times, it should do it automatically.
  
• When I open Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, each program goes to a stupid screen that is asking what kind of file I want to create. For example in Word, a "blank document." I click the same thing every time. After about 10,000 times, and not picking anything else even once, what the #*@# does it think I want to do?!
• The spell checker is retardd (Yes, it'll leave it as retardd...). If I mis-spell the same word a million times, even right-clicking and telling it what I really wanted, it'll still keep leaving the word misspelled with a red underline instead of fixing it.
• How about Protected Mode? After about 1000 times of turning this off for each document, shouldn't the program realize I'm going to do that, and just stop going into Protected Mode? Yes, I realize there's a setting for this, but that's so 2001. Just see what I'm @#$@# doing every time and repeat that.

I have used Open Office and Libre Office and they're not as good as MS Office, so no relief there.

So, aside from my pointless rant, is there another option that's better? Is there one on the horizon? If not, then what the @#&* has happened to the free market to allow such stagnation to allow for so long?!

 

[vetteman]

I have been using Office since the early 1990s and I use it hours daily for my job. It’s boring but it gets the job done. I am more irritated with 365 and having to pay for it again every year than with Microsoft’s lack of innovation. I do not want to have to relearn how to do everything in office and have new versions of office that are not compatible with my older files.

 

[BradD]

I find the 365 web interface to be irritating also. Google's G-Suite is nothing to write home about, so MS is missing a big opportunity here.

I have been waiting for 4-5 years for Google to clean their clocks in the office suite market, but they're missing the opportunity also. Lots of problems with Google Docs et al.

I can't believe that by now someone hasn't really innovated and wiped both of these out.

 

[fx77]

Maybe that is why SLACK had a big bounce with its IPO?
Office user since 1995

 

[BradD]

Thanks fx77. I'll have to dig in and figure out what Slack does, exactly.

Does Slack use some AI features to help with the types of issues I mentioned?

Edit: Slack looks pretty cool, but if I understand correctly, it doesn't have an office suite.

 

[IndyGunFreak]

I use Office at work, and honestly I hate it. We're transitioning to Office 365, and I like it even less. At home, I haven't used Office in years, and have used Open/Libre Office.

Lately, Iv'e been transitioning a bit to Google Docs, which works fine for my basic home needs. The most annoying thing about Google Docs, is how it literally saves every time you make a key stroke. I understand the idea behind it.. browser crashes, get disconnected from the internet somehow, etc. you don't lose your changes.. but it just drives me nuts. I wish it would just let me accept the risks and edit w/o that feature, or if somehow I do go "offline" and cant save it in the cloud, let me save it locally.

 

[Rick James45]

I must be the odd man out. I think office has progressed nicely. 365 is very nice. Especially in a multiple platform and multi language company.

365 for personal use. $99/year. 5 desktop licenses and support for iOS/Android. 1 terabyte of cloud storage and email. Try doing that with the office of “2000”. It’s a deal. I piss $99 on a weekend match.

MS is also very careful about too much change. Office is one of their key business products. You can’t be too disruptive in this area. I find most user ***** about a month and then you hear. “Look at this cool new feature”. Remember the ribbon bar introduction? Hell was coming any day. Meh.

 

[BradD]

I use Office at work, and honestly I hate it. We're transitioning to Office 365, and I like it even less. At home, I haven't used Office in years, and have used Open/Libre Office.

Lately, Iv'e been transitioning a bit to Google Docs, which works fine for my basic home needs. The most annoying thing about Google Docs, is how it literally saves every time you make a key stroke. I understand the idea behind it.. browser crashes, get disconnected from the internet somehow, etc. you don't lose your changes.. but it just drives me nuts. I wish it would just let me accept the risks and edit w/o that feature, or if somehow I do go "offline" and cant save it in the cloud, let me save it locally.

I had high hopes for Google Docs. Unfortunately, the functionality is very 1997.

The continual saves are a little irritating.

The enormous downside to Google Docs is that the files are only accessible if you still have that Google account. A few years ago, I gave Docs a good test drive for a few months and accumulated a few folders full of documents. Later, I had to delete that Google account and start another, and I have yet to figure out how to get back into those documents.

 

[BradD]

I must be the odd man out. I think office has progressed nicely. 365 is very nice. Especially in a multiple platform and multi language company.

365 for personal use. $99/year. 5 desktop licenses and support for iOS/Android. 1 terabyte of cloud storage and email. Try doing that with the office of “2000”. It’s a deal. I piss $99 on a weekend match.

MS is also very careful about too much change. Office is one of their key business products. You can’t be too disruptive in this area. I find most user ***** about a month and then you hear. “Look at this cool new feature”. Remember the ribbon bar introduction? Hell was coming any day. Meh.

Different kinds of features are important to you and me. Granted, MS has done a lot to integrate various parts such as Office, OneDrive, and Outlook.

My big problem is in the applications themselves.

In 1998, we set bookmarks to get back to important pages. In 2019, we go to the address bar and type about three characters and it already knows where we want to go 80-90% of the time. We go to a login page and it already knows what should go there. If we're filling out long forms, the browser can often fill in much of a page, such as street addresses, etc. We didn't do anything to set up that stuff -- the program just took care of it automatically.

Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are still in 1998 mode. If every time I open Word, I choose "Blank Document," then why can't it just take me there and skip this step? If every time I download an attachment, it goes into doofus protected mode, and I turn it off, then why can't it take a hint and just turn that off for me? Yes, I realize that can be turned off, but that's so 1998. Competitors took Netscape Navigator's head and now we have better products. I wish someone would do that to MS Office.

As for "too much change," the kinds of improvements I'm after wouldn't require any work on the user's part. That's the whole point. Web browsers just started acting more intelligently and we barely even noticed.

 

[shadowgunner9]

I never toiok a typing class. I cannnor t type.

 

[jmohme]

My wife used to use Excell a lot in her work, but believe it or not, her needs exceeded the capabilities of Excell so her employer had to replace it with something that would not choke on her huge ammounts of data.
So I guess you are correct that it has kind of stagnated.

For me and my modest needs, the only changes I have ever noticed in Excell and Word is the incompatiblity between files of one version and another. I never really understood why.

I don't remember what the replacements name was and she is at the mother ship in California this week so I can't ask at this moment.

 

[Rick James45]

BradD, please don't take this as me being a S.A. Just explore a little bit. :horsey:

I'll give you one of many solutions to your issues above.....

This under Word - Options - General.
Uncheck "Show the Start Screen...."

 

[peng]

Most of your issues are you not knowing what options to check in the software.

I think Excel is the most amazing piece of software ever devised. Since I know and use about 10% of it's power, kind of hard for me to say it's outdated.

As an engineer I used lots of UNIX stuff for CAD, and mathematical data manipulation, but Excel is still my gold standard. Frustrating at times but so powerful.

 

[BradD]

BradD, please don't take this as me being a S.A. Just explore a little bit. :horsey:

I'll give you one of many solutions to your issues above.....

View attachment 585200

This under Word - Options - General.
Uncheck "Show the Start Screen...."

Most of your issues are you not knowing what options to check in the software.

I think Excel is the most amazing piece of software ever devised. Since I know and use about 10% of it's power, kind of hard for me to say it's outdated.

As an engineer I used lots of UNIX stuff for CAD, and mathematical data manipulation, but Excel is still my gold standard. Frustrating at times but so powerful.

Thanks guys. I realize there are lots of settings that can be used to customize the software for a particular user. I have used some of these settings, such as turning off Protected Mode. I guess I should go look at the other settings to find ones that'll decrease the irritation.

[Edit: BTW, one problem with changing the settings is that I use Office on four different computers. I have to make these changes everywhere. Another example of 1998 methods not working well in 2019.]

Here's my point: The application should figure that stuff out on its own.

These programs are still operating the same way they did in 1998, and there are obvious (IMO anyway) deficiencies. Think about what else has changed drastically since 1998? We had never heard of a smart phone. I don't think I even had a flip phone until about 2001 or 2002. DropBox was still about ten years away. The first time I saw a USB connection was in about 2000. My 17 in. computer monitor weighed about 50 lb. We were using AltaVista and it was laughable compared to Google of 2019.

BTW, right now, I have Word, PPT, and Outlook open. It's unusual that Excel isn't open. I know they're the current best. I just can't believe someone hasn't come up with something better.

 

[Rick James45]

I use Office on four different computers. I have to make these changes everywhere. Another example of 1998 methods not working well in 2019

I understand 100%. I use the Windows version at work, so a lot is managed through something called Group Policies. At home, on Apple, the settings seem to just follow me from MB Pro to iMac.

Now, specifically about 4 machines you mentioned. IF you have admin rights and take some time to look around. Most, if not all the tweaks are in something called the registry. If you are comfortable, you can tweak one machine to your liking, find the keys, export them and import on the other PCs. If this is something you are not familiar with, then I would recommend finding a geek friend. If you don't know the registry so well, you can really screw stuff up.

I would be hard pressed to believe anyone would want to go back to 1998 software or even further back. Can we say WordPerfect 5.1 ? Lotus 123. Amipro? XYZ Write. Now I am showing my age.

 

[BradD]

I understand 100%. I use the Windows version at work, so a lot is managed through something called Group Policies. At home, on Apple, the settings seem to just follow me from MB Pro to iMac.

Now, specifically about 4 machines you mentioned. IF you have admin rights and take some time to look around. Most, if not all the tweaks are in something called the registry. If you are comfortable, you can tweak one machine to your liking, find the keys, export them and import on the other PCs. If this is something you are not familiar with, then I would recommend finding a geek friend. If you don't know the registry so well, you can really screw stuff up.

I would be hard pressed to believe anyone would want to go back to 1998 software or even further back. Can we say WordPerfect 5.1 ? Lotus 123. Amipro? XYZ Write. Now I am showing my age.

I remember going from WordPerfect blue screen and Quattro Pro to MS Word and Excel in Windows 3.XX in 1994. I had used Lotus 123, but not a lot.

I've never heard of Amipro or XYZ Write, so I guess you're older than me. LOL

I should probably work a little harder on customizing MS Office on my various computers. Next time I think about it, I'll get in there and see what I can find. I've done some of this before, but it's been a while. Not going down Registry Alley, though. I went from computer guy to computer user long ago.

 

[Rick James45]

Your candor and honesty is great. Same here, I work in the industry. When I get home I don't want to mess with stuff. Hence the Apple environment and XBOX One for games. So nerd at work, User at home.

 

[mmcbeat]

A little bit of a thread drift. The company I worked for pre-internet was all about Lotus Smart Suite. I remember when there there was a new version we would get a package of over forty 3.5 inch floppies for the update. Took the better part of an afternoon to install.

 

[Rick James45]

A little bit of a thread drift. The company I worked for pre-internet was all about Lotus Smart Suite. I remember when there there was a new version we would get a package of over forty 3.5 inch floppies for the update. Took the better part of an afternoon to install.

We use to say, how do you know a Nerd was drunk the night before? You wake up and OS/2 is installed with the Amipro suite. Talk about feeding disk.

 

[bdcochran]

I use Apache and I explain why.
1. As one member wrote, there haven't been any enhancements in Word/Excel in years.
2. As another member wrote, sometimes older Word files could not be opened.
3. I did not want to pay $99 a year to have the same old software each year, ASSUMING, that the newer software would be able access and handle the older files.
4. One year, Microsoft did one of its operating system updates and it dinged the Word package so that some key features were eliminated. Of course the Microsoft person dealing with Word issues denied that Microsoft had damaged existing software, even though I was of many who observed the problem.
5. I gave up years ago on Microsoft support.
6. Recently, I had to re-install Apache. No problem, just go on line and download. Microsoft makes it much more difficult.