I would be very deep concerned and worried if we one day cannot discuss a subject like this. Let us see what Office 2010 brings and then take another “round”!

Kind regards,
Dennis

We’re never going to agree on the business benefit of the ribbon, or the ‘approach’ we as the Excel community should take. But we can have fun discussing it, at length!

cheers
Simon

Yes, You’re right that I misunderstood Your comment – sorry.

You’re also right about the difference between the group of end users and developers. Perhaps this is also valid when it comes to MSFT Excel team that they also don’t view if from an end user’s perspective?

Kind regards,
Dennis

I said you and many people on this blog and authors and/or commentators on other blogs are not the average excel users – they are “super users”

A average excel user is a guy(or gal) working from 9 to 5 beating a deadline to submit a report/quotation/ etc etc.

These guys(and gals) are effected to a large extent by the changed UI compared to you or J walk or Dick K etc etc…..

Could You have the kindness to elaborate with the differences between a professional Excel developer and an Excel Super user?

Speaking about Excel reports. Many corporates moves to the Office SharePoint platform and produce a large number of Excel reports. In other corporates they rely heavily on SQL Server Reporting Services and it exist a great number of tools to generate Excel reports. The key point here is that today we can work with Excel in a great number of ways including automation of Excel with other tools then “made in MSFT”.

I remember when Excel 2.1d was released for DOS/Windows. At that time Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS was the de facto standard and we only used keyboard’s commands. When Windows and Excel became the de facto standard around 1990 we lost much of the productivity due to the graphical UI.

Now I will print out the new post from Jon which looks very interesting.

Kind regards,
Dennis

When was the last time you had to beat a deadline for submitting a report in Excel
When was the last time you had some one breathing down your neck asking for work to be done yesterday…..in Excel…

Almost every one on this blog and Simon’s blog and Dick’s blog and JWalk’s blog ….etc etc are “Excel Super Users” but are not working in an Organisation doing 9 to 6 kind of work.

They are either doing development work….writing books or blogs….

So a few extra clicks dont matter much…. the ribbon therefore becomes the latest toy to play with and productivity takes a back seat.

If you remember the Release of Excel 2000 – MS released a “white paper” on “increased productivity” showing how Excel 2000 was more productive than 97.

When they released Excel XP – The same white paper …..when they released 2003 the same thing….”Productivity” was the key…. Do more in Less was the tag line…

Some how this “White Paper” did not get released when the launched 2007…

MS knows its not productive….Productivity has taken a back seat in MS as well