Sorry I bought Office 2013

Anonymous
2013-05-02T21:46:05+00:00

I think I made a huge mistake. At least, I see it as such right now. Maybe, someday, in the far distant future, I might think on it differently. I managed to get MS Office 2013. I hate it. I can't figure it out. They took all the functionality out of it. It opens to some stupid blue and white page that says Open, and has an arrow facing left. I can't find how to find my documents to view or work on. And that ugly, horrid, absolutely stupid "ribbon" is the worst mistake they have ever made -- except maybe for Vista. And there's something on here about "account". Whatever that is. When I did find a way to find a document to look at, half the page was taken up with that "ribbon" thing that is absolutely ugly and a waste of space. What was wrong with the nice little tool bar that had what was needed on it? Is there a way to set up my own personal toolbar? I haven't found a way yet. I tried to do a personalization, and manged to hide that ridiculous "ribbon" so it's not cluttering up my screen. I added the icons I want on the top, but when I click the folder that is supposed to show me my documents, it takes me out to that blue and white page, but not to the documents. I have to figure that out, someday. Otherwise, this is a complete waste of money. I really should demand my money back.  And I haven't even looked at Excel yet.

I'd love to get rid of the ribbon thing and get my toolbar back.  And, have a way of finding my documents without having 5 steps to get there.  I want to just open the little folder and have my documents there to search through.  Is there a way to do this?  If not, I would gladly trade Office 2013 for Office 2003!  At least that was a very functional, easy to use program.  This is one definitely not intuitive.  I'm not an amateur with computers.  I think of myself as being relatively competent.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-07-29T16:45:40+00:00

    Hint: it would be nice if you pasted a link to your other question (if you want more help with it) (I found it by clicking on your name, but many people are not aware of that shortcut).

    Word 2010/Office 2010 (and 2007) have the same "minimize" ribbon function.  In Word 2010 it is a little arrow beside the the help button (blue circle with white question mark) on the right end of the ribbon.

    Tip: all three versions also have a keyboard shortcut to toggle the minimize ribbon function

    <CTL><F1>

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-07-29T14:03:53+00:00

    I am also an experienced and reasonably competent user and I found the learning curve from 2003 to 2007/2010 quite steep because the interface was so different (2007 and 2010 are pretty similar).

    Now, half my office is on 2013. I still have 2010 but had to use another computer yesterday and found the things that things have completely changed again. I'm not talking about regular editing functions - I can figure those out - but more advanced features like custom templates that I am relying heavily on and which I have to teach to other people to use. I had built specialized Word templates and wrote a detailed job aid on how to install and use them. Now I have to rewrite the instructions completely -- but I cannot even figure out how to do it myself anymore. I have another post asking about this problem in this forum, so won't get into it here.

    By the way, someone showed me how to hide the big ribbon thing (which is much bigger in 2013 than in 2010) by hitting a little arrow in the corner somewhere. I can't tell you where right now because I'm back to using 2010 on my own workstation. This is actually a pretty nice feature because you can hide/show it as needed.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-07-13T06:46:53+00:00

    It's worse than that; I think the functionality is there, MS has simply made it next to impossible to find with any efficiency. All it would take is for 'Help' to contain keywords that an office 2003 user (like myself) would use to figure out where to perform various tasks, but it doesn't. It seems like a straight-forward task, adding keywords and/or instructions to 2013's Help database based upon the classic commands and menus, but they didn't seem to do it. But hey, it's not like Office 2003 was only recently made obsolete by MS. Oh, wait. It was.

    I bought Office 2013 to avoid having to get used to Open Office; It turns out that Office 2013 is worse.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-12-03T03:56:20+00:00

    Great points and thank you for your response. I wish that I was in a position of power that I could do something but it's really rather embarrassing that an organization as large as the one (that will go unnamed) pulled something like this upgrade without proper training and testing. Reminds me a lot of  big brother's healthcare site! I'll say it again and I will do it, I will forward your post to IT, I'm sure it will help. I just realized that may sound wrong/different than it's meant. Many times words don't land on paper as they are intended. I mean that I will send it to IT and that the xsduw!!6y3 over there will probably delete as "they know what's best".  I hope Jay see's this part too!!

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  5. Anonymous
    2013-12-03T03:51:03+00:00

    Thank you, I will forward your response to IT. It will surely help.

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