5 ms·

Since Office 97 was released, I haven't noticed any features that I use on a day-to-day basis that have changed or improved much. I'm sure many things have chan

by Avitas 14y ago

Since Office 97 was released, I haven't noticed any features that I use on a day-to-day basis that have changed or improved much. I'm sure many things have changed in some subtle way; it's just that I really don't see any difference in day-to-day usage. I know that the UNICODE support added in 2003 was a lot of non-trivial work. I haven't noticed a single feature within Excel that has changed the way that I work. In word, all of the mundane features every beginner uses also appear to be functionally identical. Other more involved items I use daily such as styles, outlining, headers and footers, footnotes, indexes, templates, merging and so forth also appear to be unchanged. The biggest change I've noticed was with Powerpoint 2007. They added gobs of features and options that didn't exist before. But, I probably do 5 to 10 presentations a year, so it's not big win for me. I would love to see greater stability in Word. Large and/or complex documents have been a weekly problem with all versions for Word for as long as I can remember. I haven't noticed much difference in stability since '97 as long as Word is hosted on an NT-based OS. In the reporting of this new version, the announcement was made that this version is mostly interface changes and some add-on options. Has anyone noticed a mention of any core functionality changes, re-writes, etc?

jmpeax 14y ago
Every time a new Office comes out I have a look to see how far along the long road of functionality Word progressed to come even close to the functionality of LaTeX for Computer Science papers, and laugh. One of my friends even switched to LaTeX for his medical-based PhD after he saw with how much ease I use it, especially figure and table numbering and captions. If only the rest of the medical world could catch up and allow LaTeX in their journals instead of requiring doc.
- thronemonkey 14y ago
  Coming from someone who works in it, the whole biosciences field is woefully out of touch with good technology practices. People demand MS office documents for things that could easily be pdfs or txts all the time ><
- einhverfr 14y ago
  Yeah, for heavy-duty writing, there is nothing that competes with LaTeX out there. I am starting to understand that this is the true for designing presentations too. I can't imagine getting Powerpoint to do the things that Beamer does so easily.
sp332 14y ago
The site has more in-depth articles linked from the first little sidebar. Excel: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/first-look-excel-2013/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/first-... Outlook: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/first-look-outlook-2013/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/first-... Word: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/first-look-word-2013/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/first-...
batiudrami 14y ago
I haven't used office 2013 yet, but the idea that Office's day-to-day features haven't improved much since '97 is really strange to me. Office 2007, for instance brought a huge [1] number of features, which I use all the time. Better style settings, much better equation editor, automatic referencing and massive, massive usability improvements (especially Excel 2007) are all things that I use in almost every single document I create. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_2007#New_features http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_2007#New_features
- lancewiggs 14y ago
  Those "massive usability improvements" for you were a massive step backwards for me and many other power users. It confirmed tat my switch to OSX was the right choice, as I had to abandon all of the hard-learned short cuts anyway. I strongly agree with the original post - there has been no real pace of improvement in Office, and that's just sad.
  - einhverfr 14y ago
    Indeed by 2007 I had more or less gotten rid of Word and gone to LaTeX. I haven't looked back since. It may not be for everybody but it is wonderful as a document generation environment. I recently switched to LateX Beamer for my presentations, and all I can say is "Wow." There is no easier way to create better looking presentations than that. (Actually, in all honesty, my LaTeX experience has changed the way I have used Word in those few cases I have had to use it, for example a contract writing technical documentation for Microsoft. I think every Word user should give LaTeX a try for a while. If you go back to using Word or similar, you can but your approach to documents will be much better.)
    - viraptor 14y ago
      I'd like it if the next version of Word came with a device that zaps the user every time they try to change the font/style/size in-place. Than clippy should come out asking "it looks like you were about to do something stupid, would you like to learn about styles?"
hessenwolf 14y ago
The change between Excel 2003 and Excel 2007 is pretty significant. There are a few key functions, but mostly the row and column count limits are gone. Also, it's pretty from 2007 on. It's really easy to create something that doesn't burn your eyes out. There a few additional functions, like iferror, that save on some of the most common inefficiencies in large spreadsheets. The Ribbon interface means that you can't find any function ever. As opposed to an obvious search algorithm of looking through the toolbar menu, you have to wander your eye around non-linearly hoping to pick up an icon that looks vaguely related to what you are doing. I don't know if it is 2007, but in Excel 2010 there are sparkcharts and there is also a way to embed a table with a barchart - which is actually a pretty awesome visualisation. It's in my opinion a significant forward shift, not counting the ribbon. I still feel dirty using it though.
viraptor 14y ago
There's been one huge change in Outlook 2010 - they finally added conversation views (not proper threading though - just gmail-style folding). Otherwise as an occasional user I don't see much difference. GUI keeps changing, but that's pretty much it for me.

by Avitas 14y ago

jmpeax 14y ago

Every time a new Office comes out I have a look to see how far along the long road of functionality Word progressed to come even close to the functionality of LaTeX for Computer Science papers, and laugh. One of my friends even switched to LaTeX for his medical-based PhD after he saw with how much ease I use it, especially figure and table numbering and captions. If only the rest of the medical world could catch up and allow LaTeX in their journals instead of requiring doc.

thronemonkey 14y ago
Coming from someone who works in it, the whole biosciences field is woefully out of touch with good technology practices. People demand MS office documents for things that could easily be pdfs or txts all the time ><
einhverfr 14y ago
Yeah, for heavy-duty writing, there is nothing that competes with LaTeX out there. I am starting to understand that this is the true for designing presentations too. I can't imagine getting Powerpoint to do the things that Beamer does so easily.

sp332 14y ago

The site has more in-depth articles linked from the first little sidebar. Excel: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/first-look-excel-2013/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/first-... Outlook: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/first-look-outlook-2013/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/first-... Word: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/first-look-word-2013/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/first-...

batiudrami 14y ago

I haven't used office 2013 yet, but the idea that Office's day-to-day features haven't improved much since '97 is really strange to me. Office 2007, for instance brought a huge [1] number of features, which I use all the time. Better style settings, much better equation editor, automatic referencing and massive, massive usability improvements (especially Excel 2007) are all things that I use in almost every single document I create. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_2007#New_features http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_2007#New_features

lancewiggs 14y ago
Those "massive usability improvements" for you were a massive step backwards for me and many other power users. It confirmed tat my switch to OSX was the right choice, as I had to abandon all of the hard-learned short cuts anyway. I strongly agree with the original post - there has been no real pace of improvement in Office, and that's just sad.
- einhverfr 14y ago
  Indeed by 2007 I had more or less gotten rid of Word and gone to LaTeX. I haven't looked back since. It may not be for everybody but it is wonderful as a document generation environment. I recently switched to LateX Beamer for my presentations, and all I can say is "Wow." There is no easier way to create better looking presentations than that. (Actually, in all honesty, my LaTeX experience has changed the way I have used Word in those few cases I have had to use it, for example a contract writing technical documentation for Microsoft. I think every Word user should give LaTeX a try for a while. If you go back to using Word or similar, you can but your approach to documents will be much better.)
  - viraptor 14y ago
    I'd like it if the next version of Word came with a device that zaps the user every time they try to change the font/style/size in-place. Than clippy should come out asking "it looks like you were about to do something stupid, would you like to learn about styles?"

hessenwolf 14y ago

The change between Excel 2003 and Excel 2007 is pretty significant. There are a few key functions, but mostly the row and column count limits are gone. Also, it's pretty from 2007 on. It's really easy to create something that doesn't burn your eyes out. There a few additional functions, like iferror, that save on some of the most common inefficiencies in large spreadsheets. The Ribbon interface means that you can't find any function ever. As opposed to an obvious search algorithm of looking through the toolbar menu, you have to wander your eye around non-linearly hoping to pick up an icon that looks vaguely related to what you are doing. I don't know if it is 2007, but in Excel 2010 there are sparkcharts and there is also a way to embed a table with a barchart - which is actually a pretty awesome visualisation. It's in my opinion a significant forward shift, not counting the ribbon. I still feel dirty using it though.

viraptor 14y ago

There's been one huge change in Outlook 2010 - they finally added conversation views (not proper threading though - just gmail-style folding). Otherwise as an occasional user I don't see much difference. GUI keeps changing, but that's pretty much it for me.