back to article Outlook, Office 2007 slowly taken behind the shed, shots heard

A decade after their release, Microsoft Office 2007 and Outlook 2007 today fell out of extended support. Gaze teary-eyed at your installation discs. The software has entered the Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. The cutoff has been coming for some time, of course, but if you're of a nostalgic bent, the Outlook 2007 epitaph is …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Mushroom

    No more security fixes from Microsoft

    Really?

    And how exactly is this different from those Microsoft products that supposedly still receive security fixes?

    1. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: No more security fixes from Microsoft

      I see in today's (10-Oct-17) update bundle a couple of security updates for Office 2007.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: No more security fixes from Microsoft

        Probably the last ones.

  2. herman

    How is it different? Well, for starters, MS will not introduce new bugs anymore.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      They'll just update Windows 10 instead so Office 2007 stops working.

  3. Nolveys

    Wow, ribbons are 10 years old now. It's funny how MS's shit ideas of yesteryear barely even register on the shit scale compared to their new shit.

    Ten years from now Office will include an obligatory feeding tube connected to a canister of solid waste and people will still buy it. People will say (over the fecal gurgling sound) "remember when the worst thing MS did to us was to monitor everything we did? Those were the days."

    1. FozzyBear
      Happy

      I have to admit Nolveys,

      The picture you paint of Microsoft in the near future is overly optimistic

    2. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Don't fool yourself, the ribbon is still shit.

      Yesterday in Outlook 2013 I wanted to do an advanced search. But there's no search options in Outlook 2013’s ribbon. I went through all of it and found nothing.

      Instead you need to start a useless quick search so the search tab magically appears (which you may not realise as you're looking at the quick search bar) and you can then choose a hidden drop-down option at the end of the ribbon to get an advanced search.

      Time wasted: best part of five minutes.

      Multiplied by: x people = x * 5 / 60 person hours.

      The fact that more shit has come along since doesn't detract from the fact that the ribbon is still as shit as it ever was.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I sympathize, but you make the common assumption that MSFT create user interfaces when in fact they are merely visual distraction from the true power of the keyboard shortcut. In this case, Ctrl-Shift-F. Brings up the Advanced Find panel right away.

        1. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

          Re: true power of the keyboard shortcut

          Assuming consistency between versions. The comment previous to yours (Red Bren) sheds some doubt on that point. Taking the whole idea one step further: that was something WordPerfect did to perfection. All we need now is for MS Word to implement Reveal Codes* (Alt F3) and we will have gone full circle.

          *The full implementation, that is.

        2. Dan 55 Silver badge

          The problem is that normal menus, as well as categorising options better than the ribbon can, continually remind you of keyboard shortcuts whereas the ribbon doesn't.

          With Outlook 2003 I would probably have immediately remembered the advanced find shortcut as it's listed next to other more used menu options. Since the ribbon everything's hidden or buried and I've forgotten it.

        3. Roland6 Silver badge

          when in fact they are merely visual distraction from the true power of the keyboard shortcut.

          So, given the lack of documentation etc.etc. please explain how firstly you found out about Ctrl-Shift-F and other keyboard shortcuts and then committed them to muscle memory?

          This fundamentally is the reason why the Win8 and more recent Windows UI's suck, it is almost as if MS read Donald Norman's book: 'The Design of Everyday Things' (first released as 'The Psychology of Everyday Things') and deliberately decided to reject well-founded design principles.

          The Ribbon, was intended to replace keyboard shortcuts, with my children it has been easier for them to get started and produce stuff, by visually exploring the ribbon and clicking on the image of the effect they are desiring, my daughter is starting to get more fluent, but is hindered by the lack of an obvious proficient/expert user option ie. keyboard shortcut.

          Interestingly, both iOS and Android also suffer from some of the same brain dead 'designer' thinking, where users have to learn (from other sources or trial and error) to swipe starting from particular parts of the screen in particular directions to achieve certain actions.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            @Roland6, I sympathize! In my case I was highly incentivized to find keyboard shortcuts as I spent my formative years on vi, elm and pine and my muscle memory needed to get retrained in a hurry when I moved to a more corporate job. (I still miss pine, and haven't quite reconciled myself to mutt, for Gmail.)

            MSFT's UI standards are infamously inconsistent (even on the keyboard, in the same app) but they do document them. For Outlook, see here:

            https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Keyboard-shortcuts-for-Outlook-3cdeb221-7ae5-4c1d-8c1d-9e63216c1efd

            Also on the Ribbon there is the poor-man's shortcut of hitting Alt by itself and then the displayed letter above each ribbon element. Not as good as just knowing the shortcut though. Good luck!

    3. ad47uk

      And yet, there is still very little software that uses the ribbon, so we are still going between to different menu systems. Not that i really use the ribbon anyway as i do not use office.

      TBH, i do not think any software I use have a ribbon menu system.

  4. Mr Dogshit

    Quite rightly

    The clue's in the name - 2007. We all know software years are like dog years, Office 2007 is like Office 1911.

    1. Gotno iShit Wantno iShit

      Re: Quite rightly

      A decade after their release, Microsoft Office 2007 and Outlook 2007 today fell out of extended support. Gaze teary-eyed at your installation discs. The software has entered the Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.

      Jump for joy you mean. The most shit version of office there has ever been is now 100% dead and buried. Hooray.

      Personally I'm still crying over the death of Office 2003. Well I would be were it not for the non-persistent XP VM with Office 2003 I keep. My productivity rate at the weekends using that is streets ahead of in the week using.... Fuck knows what version, MS are too embarrassed to admit these days and got rid of Help -> About (Hint: you need a VBA call to find out now)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "ot rid of Help -> About (Hint: you need a VBA"

        Now it's in File -> Account -> About <product> - at least for my Office 365 subscription.

      2. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: Quite rightly

        Personally I'm still crying over the death of Office 2003. ... My productivity rate at the weekends using that is streets ahead of in the week using....

        The trouble I have is that whilst I prefer the menu UI of 2003, the 2007 versions of Excel, Outlook, Visio and Project contain some notable functional improvements...

        1. Gotno iShit Wantno iShit

          Re: Quite rightly

          The trouble I have is that whilst I prefer the menu UI of 2003, the 2007 versions of Excel, Outlook, Visio and Project contain some notable functional improvements...

          Tis true, they do. For my use case those improvements are outweighed (by a country mile) by the detrimental effects of The Fucking Ribbon™. Constantly flicking back and forth between tabs just takes time. I used to customise the toolbars so that all the commands I needed were visible all the time. I can't do that with the ribbon, the buttons are too big and there are commands that don't exist any more. EG the alignment options in Visio, I use them a lot so it is a PITA that they are in a nested turdbiscuit¹ requiring multiple clicks for one action. You cannot customise the ribbon to have the alignment tools as 1 click buttons, the commands don't exist. Nor can you get round that omission by making macros and tying them to ribbon buttons.

          In Excel I don't use styles as they fall apart but I can't get rid of styles thingummy from the ribbon on the Home tab. It gives me visual indication of when Excel is creating styles (meaning the styles list is imploding and I need to clean it before my file is totally corrupt) so it has to stay. Nor can I make it smaller. Nor can I add buttons of a sensible size to the Ribbon.

          Pivot tables are improving, conditional formatting² is much more powerful and so are other things I use but the every day inconveniences are simply dominant.

          ¹ Thing that's a button on the ribbon that expands out into a non intuitively arranged set of nested buttons in a menu like structure. But that's a mouthful so turdbiscuit is the name now.

          ² A constantly imploding disaster in 2007 but good from 2010 on.

    2. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

      Re: The clue's in the name - 2007

      So.... Windows 10...

      Are we talking Current Epoch?

  5. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

    Like a worm on a hook

    I have saved all my ribbons for thee

  6. SVV

    Look at it this way

    After 10 years of maintenance, our product is still so riddled with bugs and security holes that we're just giving up.

  7. wyatt

    I have Office 2007 and we use Office 365, guess someone will need to assign me a license so I can be upgraded. Strange that our IT Support haven't identified this and taken a proactive approach? Guess they've got their (our) moneys worth out of it!

  8. UncleNick

    Metro? Ribbons? No ta...

    Microsoft UI problems, chaps? Just paper over the top with the version you're used to.

    http://www.ubit.ch/software/ubitmenu-languages/

    http://www.classicshell.net/

  9. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    Office2003 was the best. None of that fancy-pansy ribbon shmot stuff.

    I hate the ribbon with a passion. Most useless piece of twaddle ever programmed.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Actually, I found the ribbon to be easier to use than the many tiny buttons of 2003.

    AC for obvious reasons, lets see if I get triple figure downvotes.

    1. Primus Secundus Tertius

      @AC

      My record for downvotes is about 40, on a totally different topic.

      I, too, quite like the ribbon. Have an upvote.

    2. Red Bren
      Unhappy

      I dislike the ribbon, not because I'm not open to change, but because I like to have some say in the matter. Had the ribbon been introduced as an interface choice, I would have tried it, decided I preferred the old menu buttons and carried on productively, while other people who preferred the new interface could do the same.

      But what I really detest is the replacement of all the keyboard shortcuts; years of muscle memory training that now actively slows me down as familiar finger movements now cause unexpected or downright destructive results. And thanks to the simultaneous removal of menu buttons, I have no familiar mouse-driven way of achieving the task while learning the new shortcuts.

  11. tony2heads

    Picture

    Should be Old Yeller (the dog from the movie).

    Had been useful but now liable to be infected.

  12. Alistair
    Windows

    due to work I have MS.

    (I Think perhaps that sentence should stand on its own)

    L.O., pidgin, evolution work fine for me - Evo can pull my mail -- although getting all the security settings right to talk to O365 is PITA, L.O. can do all I need in the Document/Spreadsheet requirements. PP is a manglemess tool and I don't be a manglemess. Sadly I needs must Visio and the OSS world just has not *quite* gotten there yet. Thus Visio 2010 and 2016 on Win7 in a KVM instance. I've gotten 2010 to run in wine although there are three (nudge) functions that don't quite seem to work the way they should there.

    RIbbons vs real menubars? I can get the drift from all the arguments running around. If you want a buggered up, confusing, play with your brains and make you insane interface, I give you Lotus. That. By Itself. will make you accept ribbons from MS. Never mind when some idiot gets a cue and starts writing plugins for your lotus that screw with the dropdowns and menus.

    anyhow, about time MS threw out some more old garbage, I can only imagine it has the perfume of last summer's compost about now.

  13. Kev99 Silver badge

    You'd think after ten years microsoft would have gotten the code right. It's more likely they're dumping them to force people to buy their overpriced bloatware and fatten wall street's pockets.

  14. Mr Dogshit

    Can't believe people are still whining about the ribbon

    Try it for fifteen minutes and you'll find there's nothing unnatural weird or wrong with it. Works fine.

  15. CFtheNonPartisan

    They lost me after 2002, that is pretty similar to LibreOffice :)

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