Usability Studies, My Butt -- and Office 2007 Installation Woes

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If you have worked with Microsoft products to any degree (I have, I was actually a beta tester for Microsoft's BASIC COMPILER back in 1985 - before some current script kiddies were even born) - then you know that Microsoft (and, to be fair, many other vendors) has developed a finely - honed penchant for buzzwords and name-changing. A big ingredient of this seems to be the year (hopefully) that the software was introduced.

I think "Windows 95" was the first one, but I could be mistaken. Followed of course, by Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Office 97, Office 2000, Office 2003, and now - (gasp!) - Office 2007. Frankly, with all the issues in the last few years, I wish they'd just learn to drop the year off the names and come out with it WHEN IT'S READY.

I speak with great trepidation, since the RTM is downloading from my MSDN Subscription as I write this. It's taken a long time to get used to some of the nice features of say, Excel 2003 - features that went horribly awry in Office 2007. For example, if I wanted to chart some data, the chart icon was right there, up at the top. All I had to do is select the columns of data (holding down the CTRL key to select multiple columns), hit the chart icon, choose a chart type and bingo! Nice chart. Where is it on Office 2007? Well, I actually did find it recently - you have to choose "Insert" and then it shows up in the choices. Of course, the icon is completely different, turning what used to be a pleasure into a real learning curve and a chore. It's taken me weeks to find the drawing tools so that I can draw crummy support / resistance lines on my stock charts.

How about if you just wanted to undo something? I used to be able to just hit ALT-E-U (Alt -Edit -Undo). Dang! It's not there now. In fact, I haven't been able to find it yet, and I'm probably gonna start using this puppy tonight. All I get is this weirdo semi-transparent popup saying something like "Office Alt-Key combination started - press correct key to continue". Well of course I started an alt-key combination! What the HELL did you do to it? I want it BACK!

Soon, I'll be switching to Windows Vista. I shudder to think about it, because I know they've got new "stuff" in there and some of the "Classic" options that I probably would want simply aren't provided anymore.

This is what "usability studies" do to perfectly good software, folks. So, here's the deal. Can I send you a bill for my loss of productivity while I am re-learning what you've supposedly "improved", moving me from the familiar into the unknown? How about my psychiatrist's bill (he only speaks Portugese)?

Heh. Don't hold your breath.

N.B. Uh Oh! It installed fine on my notebook, which only had Office 2003. The upgrade was flawless. On my "main box", which had Office 2007 Beta, I got a dialog:

"Setup is unable to proceed due to the following error(s):
The 2007 Microsoft Office system does not support upgrading from a prereleased version of the 2007 Microsoft Office system.
You must first uninstall any prerelease versions.
Correct the issue(s) listed above and re-run setup."

This is after I unistalled everything from the Beta, and even used the latest version of the MSICUU.EXE utility to "cleanup" traces, and rebooted.

Here is "one" answer:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/FX101633871033.aspx

If you have Office Web Components installed (even Office 2003) you need to uninstall that first!

Well! I tried that, and I tried using the MSICUU "cleanup" utility to remove all traces of anything with "12" in its name, and it all STILL DOESN'T WORK.

And the Final Score:


Well, the last and final "culprit" was Microsoft Expression Web Designer Beta. Apparently, this uses some "Office 12 Stuff" and had to be removed. Removal wasn't easy, though - there was no Add/Remove Item for it in Control Panel. I had to stumble through the lovely MSI's in Windows\Installer by most recent date order, mousing over each until I found the 2 offenders with the right metadata descriptions.

Then, a right-click and "Uninstall" (or, MSIEXEC /x pathtopackage) and they were gone, and Office 2007 ("12") presented me with a nice "enter your product Id" dialog.
Peter, 1, Betas - ZERO! Yay. It's us against them, man, and we are gonna win!

N.B. Mark Dawson was kind enough to post a comment with a link to Jensen Harris' UI blog about the "helper" links from Office 2007. The comment system blew away the long link, so I'm adding it here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/05/30/610907.aspx
Peter has been active on the C# and other MS newsgroups, has had samples at gotdotnet.com (now codegallery.com) that have been downloaded over 56,000 times, and has written numerous articles for eggheadcafe.com, for which he is a co-founder, and MSDNAA sites. He has also been a technical reviewer on books from Prentice Hall, Manning and other publishers. Peter was a Microsoft MVP for 10 years. Peter was born and raised in New York City, and after a stint as a jazz musician playing contrabass with the Robert Hunt Trio, migrated to sunny Florida, where he was hired as a rookie Financial Consultant at Merrill Lynch in Orlando, specializing in Corporate Services. It was at Merrill that Peter realized computers and technology were his forte. He spent his last few years at Merrill developing real – time computerized trading and and stock charting program using advanced technical analysis indicators, some of which are his own inventions. In 1997, he moved on to architect and serve as lead developer on a number of innovative web-based and middleware solutions for the healthcare and financial services industry.

Comments

  1. Anonymous3:19 AM

    Hi Peter,
    I felt exactly the same way when I first started using Office 2007 a couple of months ago, I found performing simple tasks like adding a TOC or changing page margins unfamiliar and my productivity did drop overall for a short while. However after using the new software and interface for a while I would definitely not want to go back, the context ribbons which replaced the old menus in my opinion are very well thought out and in general the tasks you want to perform pop right up infront of you :-)

    I guess usability is a difficult thing to measure, is it defined as being how easy it for a complete novice to master the system or as how easy it is for someone who is used to doing something a certain way to be reprogrammed to do the task a new way. Definitely there are systems out there that are not very usable but people have been trained how to use them and therefore find them familiar, when presented with a "more usable" solution there productivity might drop for a while.

    I think that Microsoft has taken a good step, generally it is a tough call, do you keep things the same and then just tweak in which case you have people complaining that the upgrade is just a name change :-) and that Microsoft never does anything new or do you go for a complete change where people then complain that the software is not similar enough to what they are used to. Maybe there is a common ground between the two extremes, but I am no usability expert :-) all in all I think the product has improved.

    Mark.

    ReplyDelete
  2. peterbromberg10:05 AM

    Mark,
    Your comments are valid. I tell you what is really missing here - a "Migration Assitant" or at least an "Old Fart's" migration tutorial that would make it easier for Office 2003 upgraders to find all the replacements for the productive things that they now have to unlearn.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous4:16 AM

    Looks like they have a helper for finding commands in the new office ui:

    http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/05/30/610907.aspx

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous4:18 AM

    Hmmmmm, the link seems to be too long for this blogg system or IE7 is not rendering it correctly for me, try again, split over morethan one line:

    http://blogs.msdn.com/
    jensenh/archive/2006/05/30/
    610907.aspx

    ReplyDelete
  5. peterbromberg7:05 AM

    Mark,
    sorry about the links getting cut off, and thanks for the "wrapped" version.

    ReplyDelete

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