Trying to like Word 2016 or Excel 2016

Posted on by Lynn

I much prefer Word 2007 to Word 2016, and that preference goes for Excel too. In fact, I will candidly say I hate the newer versions of all the Microsoft Office products. Really hate them.

However, I also hate to see myself sticking with something just because I don’t like change. Because of that, I’m challenging myself to use only the new versions for the next week. If after that, I want to return to the 2007 versions, then I’ll do so with no regrets. :D

Here’s what I don’t like about the 2016 versions (was also applicable to the 2013 versions). I’ve had them on my computer since early September, but just haven’t been able to bring myself to use them much at all.

  • Fonts look terrible on my computer in the new versions.
  • Menus and borders in the new versions take up more space. In a side by side comparison of the same document, I get fewer lines of my spreadsheet visible in Excel 2016 and fewer lines of text in Word 2016. That’s without the ribbon visible. I didn’t check how it looked with the ribbon because that’s not how I typically work.
  • The style set icons are so much less readable than the simple list from Word 2007.
  • The flat icons and colors of the menu are not appealing to me. In fact, I find them very busy and hard to identify when I’m skimming the menu. They all blend together.
  • It takes at least 1 extra click to get to my recent and pinned documents list than it does in Word 2007 or Excel 2007. I just discovered that this isn’t actually true if I set up my quick access toolbar with the “open” icon on there. That takes me directly to the pinned doc list. It only makes me feel like it’s taking more clicks because it’s a page and not a menu that comes up, but the number of clicks is the same.

I do, however, really like the way the search function for Word 2016 works now, by moving into a sidebar and allowing me to see the list of results. That’s the reason I’m giving myself the challenge to use the 2016 versions for a week. If not for that, I probably would have just said forget it and stuck with 2007 anyway.