Microsoft's New Office UI is Now Rolling Out To Everyone (theverge.com) 53
Microsoft is starting to roll out its new Office UI to all users this week. The visual update was originally announced earlier this year and went into testing over the summer. Now it's starting to roll out to all Office 365 and Office 2021 users. From a report: This new Office UI is designed to match the visual changes in Windows 11, and it includes a more rounded look to the Office ribbon bar, with some subtle tweaks to the buttons throughout Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. It's a relatively simple refresh, and Office will now match the dark or light theme that you set inside Windows. The new look can be toggled on or off using the Coming Soon megaphone icon in the top right-hand corner of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote.
Vertical space (Score:1)
I'll stick with C, where I can.
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But... things will be "more rounded" and the buttons subtly tweaked! How can you not like that? How? :-)
And, there will soon be a "megaphone icon"!! (Although that may just be an icon of a HUGE phone, either way -- Why?)
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The only thing wrong with your comment is that it's confusing, because the ribbon doesn't take up any vertical space unless you're actively using it.
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The only thing worse than the ribbon is a ribbon set to auto-hide. It's bloody annoying to have the ribbon jump out when you accidentally mouse too close, and be hidden when you want to e.g. check the properties of a paragraph.
iConic (Score:3)
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If the ribbon is taking up a third of your screen height you may want to buy a new laptop with a screen resolution larger than 800x600.
8^)
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I just opened up Excel on my 15", 1920x1080 laptop screen, and it takes up about 25% of the screen. Not a third, but still far too much, and a lot more space than the old menu plus two rows of toolbars, which also required fewer mouse clicks on average.
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The ribbon is just the ribbon, if you're counting the title bar, the file menu, and the cell/formula editor bar you're not being honest.
I just measured it on my little monitor... on a 1920x1080. The Ribbon, including its borders is 100pixels tall. So... not a third, not 25%... 100pixels... 9.2%
On a 4k monitor with 125% UI scaling turned on... it's... wait for it ... 125 pixels. Or 5.7%
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Ribbon interface is really good interface and I will never go back to the classic toolbar. And you have 'Quick Access Toolbar' that even obviates use of the ribbon for most common use cases. I have some 19 tool buttons placed in my Excel 'Quick Access toolbar' and it fits and shows up well on a 13 inch 1920x1080 laptop screen.
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Restore menus and replace the ribbon with classic toolbars: https://www.officeclassicmenu.com/en/download.php [officeclassicmenu.com]
Maybe I"ll see it in 2-3 years? (Score:2)
So, unless this new office version works on Win 10, I won't be seeing any of these changes soon.
Anyone out there working for very large companies moved to Win 11 yet?
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Anyone out there working for very large companies moved to Win 11 yet?
No, we're a Windows 10 shop, but I just got the "new fancy wonderful" Office Suite look. As far as UI changes, this is pretty light, still irritating to see change just for the sake of change. Few things more frustrating to deal with end user support when shit's changed like this. Even as simple as it resets whether you have the ribbon pinned down or not. I can't even imagine how many "my buttons are all gone!" calls the IT lackeys had to answer.
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Also end users: "Oh, the CEO emailed me from his gmail account and needs me to wire $1,000,000,000 to this account in Belize I've never heard of? No problem!"
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End users: "OMG my program's border color changed slightly!! MUST CALL IT!!"
Also IT: Report any unusual behavior immediately as it may be MALWARE!!
Re: Maybe I"ll see it in 2-3 years? (Score:3)
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I hate the ability to co-edit any documents.
You don't have to. I find it to be a huge time saver. To each their own.
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Who I heard may be making a comeback...
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I don't see any of my job sites moving to Win 11 any time soon.
So, unless this new office version works on Win 10, I won't be seeing any of these changes soon.
If you use O365, yeah, you'll see it now, even on 10. O365 has auto updates unless your org has them disabled. Two weeks ago, I rebooted my workplace Win10 laptop, fired up Outlook, and there you have it, crappy Win11-style interface. And there's no option to change to the old visual style, a 'la classic interface option in Windows.
As for 11, no... we won't even look at moving until its matured some.
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I don't see any of my job sites moving to Win 11 any time soon.
And what does this have to do with Office365? Nothing. You'll get this update irrespective of what Windows you run.
Anyone out there working for very large companies moved to Win 11 yet?
No. Why would they? No large company in the world has decided to move to a new OS that hasn't been widely released by the vendor themselves yet. MS is still in the Windows 11 trial phase, they haven't even finished rolling it out to normal users yet.
I guarantee you every IT department in most large companies has a series of Windows 11 test machines in place and are starting the process of quali
Office by subscription (Score:2)
Re: Office by subscription (Score:2)
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I'm sure the change will muck up something you need that used to work. I'd check Microsoft for fever if it didn't.
LibreOffice (Score:2)
Use LibreOffice
what kind of people? (Score:3, Funny)
What kind of person even gives a shit if buttons are more rounded or not? what kind of person does the rounding and imagines they accomplished something? what kind of person thinks it's innovation and tech news?
Are their mothers crack whores? where they dropped headfirst on concrete after birth? is this the future of tech?
How about fixing that shitty-ass non-discoverable non-intuitive ribbon, you worthless pieces of human shaped shit?
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Arseholes. Arseholes. Arseholes.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
THe ribbon was fixed in 1995.
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What kind of person even gives a shit if buttons are more rounded or not? what kind of person does the rounding and imagines they accomplished something? what kind of person thinks it's innovation and tech news?
UI developers -- They have to routinely justify their existence; they think this counts. (It does not.)
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To be fair, after Microsoft fired most of their best programmers, this is all that is left that they can accomplish. Every single one of my friends that worked there have been fired for not getting promoted fast enough even if they were really good at the job they had.
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The same or similar statements could be made for people that get upset when these types of UI changes are implemented.
8^)
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people that get upset when these types of UI changes are implemented.
They're upset about the laundry list of stuff that the devs don't fix (like the ribbon itself) in favor of spending time/resources on round buttons instead. And then, to add insult to injury, the marketing department calls it "innovation" and stuffs it square up the asses of the tech rags.
Don't piss on me and tell me it's raining.
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Recently, I saw a YouTube video of a guy comparing alternative web browsers, citing his growing concerns of privacy with Chrome and newer versions of Firefox. He said he wanted more control over the browser. The first alternative browser he reviewed was PaleMoon, and he immediately dismissed it as a non-contender since its interface was "ugly and dated".
I can understand concerns about Firefox forks when it comes to features and security, but I find it amusing that the whole point of the video was discussi
Screw the UI just give me Lambda! (Score:2)
I have a work enterprise 365 account, without beta or office insider. There has been talk about Lambda function working in Beta for years now. Why can't they just give me a useful function in excel, vs UI elements that I don't even care about either way.
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Libreoffice is Free and Waiting for You (Score:5, Informative)
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But it doesn't have to rounded tool-bars. We must have rounded toolbars to show we are a modern company in touch with the creative synergy of the best and brightest. -PHB
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Does it still have compability with MS Office's documents like complex formatting, layouts, etc.?
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Yes but it lacks sharepoint integration, can't have multiple people working on the same document, don't come with Teams or Outlook. So really what's the point? The kind of people who use Office are those who need to use Office or those people working in companies for which LibreOffice isn't a viable or feature complete alternative. Those who don't use something like Google Docs.
What about getting a decent UI? (Score:3)
I appreciate the changes but ... how about going back to being a decent GUI WIMP app with pull-down menus? Something that does not require us to use the mouse or to hunt down for how to reach some features? Be a decent Windows app. I understand that the riboon is the distinctive feature of Office, but why can't they offer pull-down menus as an alternate option?
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It also no longer respects the "always show scroll bars" setting, and now hides them on a regular basis. Drives me bonkers.
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They should definitely be there natively, but I restore them with https://www.officeclassicmenu.com/en/download.php [officeclassicmenu.com]
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Something that does not require us to use the mouse or to hunt down for how to reach some features?
All of Office's keyboard shortcuts are still there. Also a drop down menu is just as much hunting and clicking as a ribbon when you don't feel the need to learn where the options actually are. If you're hunting then that's kind of your own fault.
HOLY SHIT (Score:4, Insightful)
"...a more rounded look to the Office ribbon bar"
Unbelievable innovation.
Oh wait, they just changed border-radius from "3px" to "6px"...never mind.
A good thing (Score:2)
It's so beautiful... (Score:2)
But it's all flat with no contrast whatsoever. How can anyone use that for more than an hour? I sure hope this low contrast fetish ends sooner than later. And I'd dearly love to have my window title bars back some day.
Fix the apps, don't edit the look. (Score:2)
1. Make the O365 App actually work on iPhones. You can't even transfer a contact with it.
2. You want everyone on Sharepoint, right? Ok, then make it work. Build more into O365 so that all the Office apps function as well in Sharepoint as on the desktop.
3. Migrate VBA to Sharepoint.
4. Make Sharepoint 'mountable' as a local drive.
5. Re-write Microsoft Access so that it functions on Sharepoint
Slashdot should be on board with these changes (Score:2)
They re-added a contrasting element between the menu items and the document / content. This was a point of much contention the last time a story was run on how the UI changed in Office.
Everyone's rejoicing right? Oh of course not, we only point out bad things on this site, not objectively good ones.