cold dead raw fish (CDRF)

PowerPoint 2007: Answer to "Power Point ignores font color changes to hyperlinks !?"

In versions of Office prior to Office 2007, you would have used the Format menu to change font colors.  But of course like most of the other menus you're used to, they've gotten rid of that menu too.  Now you're directed to the "Design" button panel.

But when you're editing your link text, you'll notice a handy little semi-transparent window that shows up  near your text.  How cool!  You don't even need to go up to the menus anymore, they bring it to you!  As you move your mouse towards the ghostly font formatting menu, it becomes less transparent, and you can click on it.  And hooray, it includes font colors!

Except... IT COMPLETELY IGNORES the colors you choose in that little hovering options box.  There are 3 different  colors there, but none will change the color of your link text.  No warming is given, no explanation, it's lets you go through all the motions, and then just silently refuses to do it.

Instead, they want you to create an entirely new Color Theme to change that text color of your highlighted link.  They do clone the current one you have.  Microsoft has a video and text description of how to do this.

This does have the advantage of changing ALL of your links, which is usually what you want; in the old Power Point it was kind of a pain to hunt for each link and change its color.  I don't know how you would have links in different colors if you needed that - maybe use plain text and add colors and underlining.

The video is quite amusing.  The narrator claims this is really easy to do... and offers two suggestions.  The first method goes by a bit fast if you're not used to PPT 2007, and the dailog boxes are a bit "busy".  But the second method, involving "matching color formulas" is a hoot.  If you listen to the entire video in one fell swoop, it really does sound like techno-babel at its finest.

I do understand that the new methods are meant to give a most consistent look to all the links in all the slides in your deck.  But I fault Microsoft for the following items that could have been address:

1: For them to proactively bring up a formatting menu with color options, and then SILENTLY IGNORES THOSE CHOICES, is simply unforgivable.  They should either suppress the menu, or explain to me why they are ignoring me AND offer to fix it the "right way".

Adobe Photoshop has a nice warning when highlighting and copying pixels, if you are accidentally on the wrong level.  It notices that you've taken an action, but it also notices that it didn't have any effect.  At this point it pops up a helpful warning dialog box explaining that your action had no effect, and suggesting why the cause might be.  VERY HELPFUL on Adobe's part.

2: In Powerpoint's Design / Themes / Color menu, which I did wander around, it would never occur to me to "Create New Theme Colors..." just to change the color of one piece of text.  That dropdown menu shows a long list of pallets which appear to let you change the entire color theme of all of your slides!  And they present a bunch of canned themes, none of which I wanted; I just wanted to was to change just one item.  And the "Create New...", being at the bottom of that menu, looked like something I would only use if I (a) Wanted to change all colors of all items on all slides, AND (b) wasn't happy with ANY of their predefined sets of colors.  So that path of menus seems "drastic" on TWO levels of logic, whereas what I wanted was to change just 20 characters on one slide.

So when I did buzz around that area, their prescribed menu paths seemed very drastic, whereas what I wanted seemed quite simple, so it looked like the completely wrong direction to go in.

Office 2007 needs lots and lots of refinements to recover from all theses changes.  They confuse experienced users, and I would argue are not really much more helpful to new users either.

The idea of button bars / menu ribbons, or whatever they call them, is a nice idea, but Office's implementation is so confused that it serves neither experienced nor novice users well.

Office 2007: Answer to "Where is the Edit -> Undo... menu option!?"

In my continued quest to help folks find where Microsoft has hidden all the menu items we've learned to use over the years, the latest is Edit -> Undo.  Who knows!  I've given up looking for this one.  It's not on the "Home" tab, nor on the stupid round flag button in the upper left corner, at least  not that I've seen.

But thank goodness you can still use Control-Z.  This will do the same thing as the old Edit -> Undo.  (Hold down the control key and press letter Z)

By the way, Google Docs has a nice "revision history" tab, sort of like having multiple Edit / Undo levels.

If you are running Office 2003 or before, do not upgrade to Office 2007, YOU WILL HATE IT!!!!!  They have broken everything.

Excel and Word 2007: Answer to "Where did the Edit menu go!?" (and Formatting)

In previous posts I've already whined about the "removal" (hiding) of the File menu, where the Print... menu has gone, the replacement of the File -> Page Setup... menu and how to set Landscape printing.

If you've used Office '07 you've probably noticed that, instead of menus, Office 2007 has these button tabs, or menu-button-panel things.  Kind of a nice idea for new users, but can be confusing for folks who are used to the old menus.

For example, once you've visited the Page Layout or View tabs, you might be wondering where the Formatting and Edit menus went?  Simple formatting and Edit -> cut / copy / paste now live on the "Home" button bar.

Of course, if you've every used a Microsoft product before, you might think it would be under something like "Formatting" and "Edit".  Like, if View and Page Layout have changed from menus into those button bar tabs, then there should be a button bar for Formatting, and another for Edit commands, right?  Well... apparently not.  Those are considered "Home" functions now.  If you had sharp eyes, you might have noticed that you started on the Home tab when you fired up Word (or Exel, Power Point, etc).

This is a particularly odd wording choice.  Something called "Home" sounds like a web browser thing, like maybe something that would bring up your home page, or maybe the Microsoft Office support home page, but certainly nothing to do with editing.  Or maybe "Home" would be where the File menu is, like creating or opening files when you first startup the program?  Wrong again, those functions are now on that weird circle flag thing in the upper left corner.

I mentioned at the start that replacing menus with the newer tabbed button bars *could* be a nice idea, especially for new users.  But Office 2007 misses the mark.  Some of the tabs are poorly named, and they've removed the most common ones that any experienced users would look for.  When when Apple or Google docs gets around to this, they'll do it right.

Although Office 2007 has some improvements, I am floored by the number stupid changes they've made that confuse anybody who's ever used their products before.  Some stunningly bad ideas.

Excel and Word 2007: Answer to "Where did the File -> Print Setup -> Landscape option go!?"

In previous posts I've already whined about the "removal" (hiding) of the File menu, where the Print... menu has gone, and the replacement of the File -> Page Setup... menu.

Another common task is how to just get your document to print in Landscape mode (wide instead of tall).

In Office 2003 you would do:
File -> Page Setup
(new dialog comes up)
click Landscape radio button

This has also been moved to the new Page Layout button / menu thingy.

Under the Page Layout area, look about 1/4 of the way over, for the "Orientation" icon with the dropdown arrow, it's between "Margins" and "Size".  It has the options for Portrait and Landscape you're looking for.

By the way, once you've done this, where did all the formatting and font stuff go!?   :-)

No worries, that's back under the "Home" menu button panel thingy.

Of course, if you've ever used a Microsoft product before, you might think it would be under something like "Formatting".

And something called "Home" sounds like a web browser thing, like maybe something that would bring up your home page, or maybe the Microsoft Office support home page, but no, it's where the formatting and copy / cut / paste commands are now located.

Although Office 2007 has some improvements, I am floored by the number stupid changes they've made that confuse anybody who's ever used their products before.  Some stunningly bad ideas.

Excel and Word 2007: Answer to "Where did the File -> Print... menu go!?"

In their continued effort to destroy their own software, Microsoft got rid of the File menu in Excel 2007.  Well... no, not really, it's still there, they took the label off, and now it looks like a decoration. They replaced it with a rounded circle in the upper left corner with a little picture of 4 colored squares.  It looks like a bit like the Microsoft "flag", except with squares instead.

MOST, but not all, of the old File menu's options are there, like "Save", "Save As..." and "Print...".  So "File -> Print..." is now under the round circle flag thingy in the upper left corner.

Note that, even though Print... has been moved there, the File -> Page Setup... is NOT there, those features who have been separated out and moved 2/3rds of the way across the screen.

Although Office 2007 has some improvements, I am floored by the number stupid changes they've made that confuse anybody who's ever used their products before.  Stunningly bad ideas.

In their continued effort to destroy their own software, Microsoft got rid of the File menu in Excel 2007.  Well... no, not really, it's still there, they took the label off, and now it looks like a decoration. They replaced it with a rounded circle in the upper left corner with a little picture of 4 colored squares.  It looks like a bit like the Microsoft "flag", except with squares instead.

MOST, but not all, of the old File menu's options are there, like "Save", "Save As..." and "Print...".  So "File -> Print..." is now under the round circle flag thingy in the upper left corner.

Note that, even though Print... has been moved there, the File -> Page Setup... is NOT there, those features who have been separated out and moved 2/3rds of the way across the screen.

Although Office 2007 has some improvements, I am floored by the number stupid changes they've made that confuse anybody who's ever used their products before.  Stunningly bad ideas.

Excel and Word 2007: Answer to "Where did the File -> Page Setup... menu go!?"

In their continued effort to destroy their own software, Microsoft hid the File menu in Excel and Word 2007.
They took the label off and replaced it with a rounded circle in the upper left corner with a little picture of 4 colored squares; it looks like a bit like the Microsoft "flag", except with squares instead.

But this File menu replacement (the round button with the little flag) doesn't have Page Setup... on it!  Nor is there something like a "Print Setup..." under the Print menu.

So instead the main window now has a  "menu tab" called Page Layout.  More noticeable, but not where veterans would expect.  If you click it, you get a bunch of icons.  Would it have been a big deal to leave Page Layout in the circle-file-menu replacment menu as well?  Or as an option under the main Print menu?

But wait, you still need to translate all the things you've learned into these new buttons.

How would you set the page width, to print all of your columns on one page?

In Excel 2003 it would be:

File -> Page Setup
(new dialog comes up)
Scaling: Fit to: 1 page(s) wide

In Excel 2007 it would be:

Click over to the "Page Layout" button menu.
Look about 2/3rds of the way over to the right, under the "Scale to Fit" section (labels are BELOW their button group, instead of above)
Change the "Width: Automatic" dropdown to "1 page"

If you've never used Microsoft Office before, this probably makes as much sense as the old way.  But really, how many gainfully employed people have never used a Microsoft product prior to Office 2007 ?  There are some, young people, or people with their first computer (and if that's you, welcome on board by the way!), but they've broken it for everybody else.

Although Office 2007 has some improvements, I am floored by the number stupid changes they've made that confuse anybody who's ever used their products before.  Stunningly bad ideas.

Excel 2007: Answer to "Where did the File menu go!?"

In their continued effort to destroy their own software, Microsoft got rid of the File menu in Excel 2007.  Well... no, not really, it's still there, they took the label off, and now it looks like a decoration.  They replaced it with a rounded circle in the upper left corner with a little picture of 4 colored squares.  It looks like a bit like the Microsoft "flag", except with squares instead.

MOST, but not all, of the old File menu's options are there, like "Save", "Save As..." and "Print...".  I'll blog separately about where they hidden some of the other basic everyday features.  On what planet is a circle with 4 squares more "obvious" than the word "F i l e" ?  If you had NEVER used a computer before, I suppose "File" isn't very obvious either, but it's not 1980, so that argument doesn't hold.

Although Office 2007 has some improvements, I am floored by the number stupid changes they've made that confuse anybody who's ever used their products before.  Stunningly bad ideas.