So at work I’m being forced (yes, forced) to use Office 2007. I believe this relates to us somehow not being prehistoric creatures{.imagelink}. I just want to go on record saying this is against my will.

Anyway, here are some issues I found so far. Enjoy. This is your future.

One nice addition is the sidebar. Don’t get me wrong here – most of this post is me complaining – but this is a nice new feature. On the side you get a little todo list. On this todo list are your todo items. Here is a picture of one of my todo items.

Where should I click

Let’s say I’ve completed it, because I’m a diligent worker. Where would you click to mark it complete?

If you’re me, you’d click that little checkbox. You’d click it five times. You would do this because Office is quite slow and you figure the first few just didn’t “take” – so you keep clicking. Nothing would happen.

You see, whomever designed this feature decided you would, in fact, have to click the little flag. This is apparently what people in the Office division do. They finish something on their todo list, grab a flag (I assume they all have these attached to their desks), and wave it around signifying they have completed their task. That is why this system makes sense to them.

Here’s another fun one. Suppose your manager sends you a task to complete. You usually accept or reject the task.

upperleft1.jpg

Apparently whomever designed this thought it’s more likely you will delete your task. And then view details (which, for a task you are just sent, are pretty useless).

This leads to the most annoying bug in the world. It affects me every time I try to send a mail.

paste.jpg

When I click an icon to send, I expect it to be in the upper-left. That’s where it should be. That’s where it always is. Now, this is where they decided to put – for some reason – “Paste.” That is right. So instead of sending mails, I keep pasting crap into them.

The last thing I have is (again) in Outlook. In the other Office applications, if you hit something like “Alt-E” (used to be Edit) and then U (Undo, under the Edit menu) there are no menus, but they know people still use their old shortcuts, so it lets you get away with it. No such luck in Outlook. So instead of undoing something, I keep just hearing a subtle beep to tell me I’ve stepped out of line. I believe they should hook up some kind of electrical shock system.

At least I’d learn faster.