Excel 2003 menus in 2007
Those delightful folks at Codematic have heard our pain.
Whilst it may not solve world poverty, and there are other similar tools around, at a range of price points, this one is the easiest to deploy. And its cheap enough, and there are discounts for multiple licences.
It doesn’t fix all the things that are wrong with the 2007 UI (2003 does that ;-)), but it does address the main one – the shuffling around of commands, by putting them back in their familiar place.
There is a free demo version so you can imagine the productivity of a compatible user interface.
Read all about it at the link, any questions drop me a line, or leave a comment here.
I hope the server farm doesn’t buckle under the download pressure!
cheers
Simon
Smurf on Spreadsheets 
Wednesday, 15th July, 2009 at 1:38 pm |
this looks brilliant. if (when probably) I am forced to upgrade, I will definitely be getting this. I’ve had limited exposure to the 2007 UI so far and everything I’ve wanted to do has required a more clicks than I currently use. A tool like this or a lot of keyboard shortcuts will be my only hope of remaining productive in the short term.
Wednesday, 15th July, 2009 at 7:09 pm |
Kudos Simon for the work you put into building a tool like this.
However, I fear tools like this one only serves to prolong the inevitable pain that all Office users will have to experience one day.
Wednesday, 15th July, 2009 at 7:55 pm |
Good work Simon. It’s the only Ribbon-tamer I’ve seen that has been built from a user’s perspective – all the others seem to be just old-style toolbar copies without any thought to real-world usefulness.
Wednesday, 15th July, 2009 at 9:17 pm |
Thanks for the compliments guys. I think its an excellent tool too, but I can’t take credit for writing it. Sam did all the hard work, and the smart work, I just did a bit of grunt stuff. So well done Sam.
Mike, I know what you mean – eventually it probably makes sense to learn where they put things. Unless they shuffle them again in 2010, and beyond.
The great thing about this tool is it can help for that first week or two, or give you a breather during a busy time when you don’t have the patience for ‘hunt the command’. When you don’t need it so much you can just unload it, or load it as you need it.
I’m planning a post about exactly this so we can maybe discuss it more then