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

I’m still no fan of dictator apps. I never liked using them, and I’ve hardly ever tried to build one. It’s too hard to remove (and keep track of) all the built in goodness of Excel. The StartFromScratch setting in RibbonX makes the ribbon easier to control, but there are still lots of other things (shortcuts, settings for calculation, and so forth) that make it a challenge no to mess up the user’s normal Excel experience. Most of my apps complement Excel’s normal functionality, coexisting with Excel.

I haven’t gotten into VSTO and .Net yet, but when I do, I’ve already determined that your blog will be one of my main sources for help. In this area you’re far braver than I (of course I have no clients pushing me into it as yet). Using VBA to fiddle with the ribbon hasn’t been too bad. I find it almost easier than using the awkward Custom UI Editor. Again, if not for helpful people out there, namely the authors of RibbonX: Customizing the Office 2007 Ribbon, I could not say that about VBA and RibbonX.

I’m a professional Excel developer for the last 20 years or so, I use built-in functionality in Excel, VBA, classic VB, VB.NET together with MS Access, SQL Server databases in my solutions.

For the last couple of years I moved more and more to the .NET platform to develop managed COM add-ins solutions for Excel. I also develop from time to time VSTO solutions.

I can agree that business people should *not* become programmers to customize and automate different tasks in Excel. However, MSFT is strongly focused on .NET platform and future versions of Excel will probably get more close to it.

But from what I can understand the VBE Editor will be available in the next coming version of the Office suite.

Jon,
Upto Excel 2003 I was not a friend of dictator applications. But with the release of Excel 2007 with the Ribbon UI I got the perfect companion. One line of XML code and all the built-in tabs are gone and with some additional XML code I create a customized Ribbon UI.

I also work with the Ribbon UI via third-party tools when developing managed COM add-ins and VSTO solutions. On .NET platform and together with the tools it’s a joy to work with the Ribbon UI. I’m the first to regret it but the available tool to work with the Ribbon UI with VBA is less attractive. In this context VBA is treated as the second class citizen…

Kind regards,
Dennis

I know what you’re saying, and normally I would agree. If this new paradigm actually added to what we could do, people would be excited to learn how to make the new interface work for them.

Unfortunately this new paradigm is taking away functionality and harming productivity. People are so upset about this that they can’t even see any potential benefit brought by the new interface.

This is not a matter of familiarity. I really tried very hard to like this new interface. I read all the blog posts, I tried all the examples, I worked at it. I have been using it for going on 4 years. I am sufficiently familiar with the interface to know my inefficiency is not due to lack of knowledge in the interface. I can point to specific problems with the interface, many of which are caused by the interface working against the inherent physiology of human vision, cognition, memory, and understanding.

This might sound odd, but what exactly does Excel have to do with .NET? Is Excel going to be re-written as managed code?

Not everyone is a programmer, nor should one need to be one to customize such a program. And if you have to learn a new programming language (or whatever you want to call XML) in order to do so, there’s a problem.

I’m not even necessarily referring to VBA developers, but everyday users who’ve been disoriented and made less productive by the new UI. Your suggestion is to accept it without complaint, but wasn’t it user suggestions that changed it in the first place?