Office 15 beta ready for fondling by early 2012 Microsoft will spin out its first test build of Office 15 in January next year. WinRumors discovered that Microsoft is in the process of preparing the beta, after sources familiar with the vendor's plans tipped off the website. Office 15 is the codename for Redmond's upcoming version of its productivity suite. It's understood …
You don't need a keyboard for input any more. You can use Dragon dictate like me. I find it saves me a lo<RING> <RING> <RING> <RING> <RING> SOMEBODY ANSWER THAT BLOODY PHONE. Honestly if he leaves it here again I will flush it down the ###### toilet. Where has he sloped of 2 again anyway? Is he hiding in the coms cupboard again?
Another rumour has it that MS was bored with the ribbon that they subjected everyone to in 2007.
The new user interface will be Latin only and with no icons, because MS thinks that users are starting to get used to the ribbon and need something else to hinder their progress.
How un-orthodox. I would expect a Mass of complaints to Russian (rush in).
I finally worked out what "the ribbon" that everyone complains about is - the onscreen options banner that I've been casually using with no particular training for years.
I like Windows 7 and I also enjoy working with Office 2010 and quite frankly I don't see them topping this success anytime soon.
Still, I think that is one big benefit of using MS software; they also don't drop support for their stuff on a whim. People like me can continue using their environments for many more years to come, no matter how many new versions of Windows will ship.
Its also the one thing which I think MS has the advantage in comparison with Linux / Open source software. Very often you don't have a choice /but/ to upgrade if you wish keep receiving (security) updates.
I find the current Office interface very friendly - it just takes a little time to set up your Quick Access Toolbars (If you hadn't set them up in Office 2007 and imported them, that is!).
I have the icons I need and only those I need on a slim border at the top of Outlook, Powerpoint, Word, and Excel; maximum screen utilisation with no satin hair accessory in sight.
If all those ribbon haters spent as much time (or even a fraction of it) learning how the ribbon works as they did complaining on the web about how it's too difficult, they would be able to _stop_ complaining on the internet, saves themselves a lot of time in the long run, and perhaps be a bit happier.
Not only can current versions of Office read files created in pretty much all previous versions, but Microsoft have released a compatibility pack for Office 2003 to allow it to read files created in more recent versions.
Or, to put it another way - what are you blathering on about, man?
GJC
"Not only can current versions of Office read files created in pretty much all previous versions, but Microsoft have released a compatibility pack for Office 2003 to allow it to read files created in more recent versions."
Future versions can *read* earlier version documents just fine.
But all bets are off if you expect all of the formatting to LOOK the same though.
Ditto for their official 2010 to 2003 document conversion utility.
Result is very messy, and that's not counting the painfully wrong formatting either.
"vote with their feet and went from OOo to LibreOffice..."
There is a Bug^H^H^HFeature in LibreOffice Calc that removes gridlines if you change the cell background colour.
The original intention was to mimic Microsoft Excel.
Many people quite rightly argued that if they wanted to use Excel, they WOULD have used Excel.
The powers that be finally admitted the change was short-sighted, and revered changes for the next major release (v3.5)
We're still waiting. This is a year down the track, on a release that split from the Sun OpenOffice because they didn't like how things were going.
Sounds like the blind leading the blind...
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