C. Moya wrote...
You're probably right. But my feeling is that MS is on the ropes in many
ways. It would behoove them to add a little spring to their step. Office
2007 has the potential of being a huge disaster.
....

Responding from the Excel newsgroup.

It all depends on whether corporate buyers will act like critical
thinkers or lemmings. If like the latter, they'll probably adopt Office
2007 at a slightly slower rate than they adopted Office 2003 (slow
lemmings getting slower). If they think about the upgrade, then some
will adopt quickly for the new features, and some will decide not to
update any time soon. The not-any-time-soon group will include
companies that have heavy investments in Excel and/or Access
applications that had made heavy use of modifying the default menus
and/or created several special purpose toolbars. That is, if the
reprogramming cost of converting toolbars to either the ribbon or task
panes is perceived as too great, then a fair number of companies will
likely wait for the next version after Office 2007.

As for the wonderful new themes and the inconsistencies between
applications, Microsoft was faced with a choice: be embarrassed by
these inconsistencies or be embarrassed by not shipping a new Office
version until mid-2007 at the earliest. They chose the option that
would bring in more revenue (what a shock!).

As someone whose Office usage is roughly 70% Excel, 25% Access, 5% Word
and have changed the default operation for .PPT files from Open to Show
(since I only view the @#$% things and never create 'em) and don't use
Outlook for e-mail, my UI preferences are probably skewed compared the
the 'average' Office user. Still, it was VERY USEFUL to be able to dock
some toolbars on the right or on the bottom of Excel and Access
application windows. The new Office 2007 UI eliminates that
functionality. And unless the feature some poor, dumb user wants is on
the current ribbon tab, claims that it'd be easier to find in the
ribbon seem specious to me. In case it isn't clear yet, I do just kinda
sorta hope that Office 2007 is a disaster sales-wise. But there's a lot
of lemmings out there.

In article , Darkrats wrote:
Has anyone given some thought to how these Office 2007 themes are applied.
The change is instant, so I'm assuming the colors etc are stored somewhere,
and one only has to change a registry setting or some such thing to make the
effect. If this is the cast, and either MS will show us how, or someone can
find the files, we could color or theme our Office 2007 anyway we wanted.
Any thoughts on this? Maybe a MVP could suggest this to someone who can
really listen at MS.

I was hoping Patrick would pop in with a how-to on this; I see he's at least
come up with an authoritative answer. Not the one we wanted, but at least we
don't have to make anymore head-dents in this particular wall.


"Steve Rindsberg" wrote in message
...
In article , C. Moya wrote:
Am I the only that thinks Office 2007's silver scheme in ribbon apps
looks
"dirty?"

Perhaps not, but at this point it's a done deal. Not much to be done
about it.

And in any case, this group is a collection of users and volunteers; MS
gives
us the sandbox but doesn't join in our playtime here. We're pretty
sympathetic
to a bit of needed venting, but can't do much beyond lend a sympathetic
ear and
offer the occasional "Hear, hear". ;-)



-----------------------------------------
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================




-----------------------------------------
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================

I was hoping Patrick would pop in with a how-to on this; I see he's
at least
come up with an authoritative answer. Not the one we wanted, but at least we
don't have to make anymore head-dents in this particular wall.
I wished I could. MS was clear that we can't do it. If anyone wants to
try and find a hack, give it a try...

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]
--------------
http://pschmid.net
***
Office 2007 RTM Issues: http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/11/13/80
Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh (B2TR):
http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/09/18/43
***
Customize Office 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/customize
OneNote 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/onenote
***
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