office 2013 Office 2013: Annoying things

[Ambroos]

Hello!

I was just trying out Office 2013, been playing with it for a while. Aside the fact that it seems to be (much) slower than Office 2010 everything seems about okay. One thing that annoys me slightly is the cursor animation, it makes me feel like I'm a slow typist even though I'm absolutely not.

One huge thing I absolutely hate right now is the inability to choose another color for the user interface. The white is WAY too bright, especially when it fills your entire display. It's extremely uncomfortable to work with and it makes your page drown in the user interface - especially on bigger displays. I don't have it installed anymore, but the black theme in 2010 was really comfortable to work in, putting the focus completely on your content. But now everything is white, and there is no way to change it.

[HawkMan]

Honestly I don't see a problem with the white. it's not terribly bright, I can clearly separate the document form the not white but grey gradient background.

seriously people. pull down your brightness setting and contrast setting to reasonable settings.

[rfirth]

seriously people. pull down your brightness setting and contrast setting to reasonable settings.

They never learn, do they.

The world does not need a new MS Office suite every other year. There is nothing wrong with Office 2010.

LibreOffice/OpenOffice is on a 6 month development cycle! And the world doesn't need a new version of Chrome and Firefox every 6 weeks either :rolleyes: /s

Microsoft isn't releasing a new MS Office suite every other year... they are releasing a new Office suite every 3 years lately. Basic math?

2003, 2007, 2010, 2013...

Besides, nobody is forcing you to upgrade. Don't want it? Don't buy it. Stop speaking for everybody.

People will complain about anything and everything

[Active.]

Honestly I don't see a problem with the white. it's not terribly bright, I can clearly separate the document form the not white but grey gradient background.

I just think it's a little weird how there's no clear separation between the collapsed ribbon and the document content. I do like how it looks. Not so sure I'll actually enjoy using it.

[Dan~]

Hawkman, my settings are correct. It's not the fact it's bright for me anyway, it's just the fact that outside the document is white aswell, there's no definition or different style in all honestly.

Maybe, just maybe the background outside of the document is slightly a different shade of white.... it needs to be darker really #C0C0C0

I think this will be changed anyway, it's just a preview after all and everything works fine, just the whiteness needs rectifiying which I'm confident it will be, as there's more than one person moaning about it

[HawkMan]

I just think it's a little weird how there's no clear separation between the collapsed ribbon and the document content. I do like how it looks. Not so sure I'll actually enjoy using it.

You mean something like this border line around the document ?

[HawkMan]

Hawkman, my settings are correct. It's not the fact it's bright for me anyway, it's just the fact that outside the document is white aswell, there's no definition or different style in all honestly.

It's not white, it's a grey gradient. and clearly different form the document on something close to correct brightness and contrast setting

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

You mean something like this border line around the document ?

The border line doesn't suffice imho. I'd rather have a darker background - the way it's handled in Publisher 2013.

[Active.]

You mean something like this border line around the document ?

Now scroll down a bit.

[Dan~]

It's not white, it's a grey gradient. and clearly different form the document on something close to correct brightness and contrast setting

Well maybe not white, but it's very close, it should get darker to lighter, not ligther to darker.

In all honestly the actual document part should of never changed from 2010, ice background, 'border' around the document which had a bit of shadow.

For me that ruins it and makes it look ugly imo. I love the white for the menus etc, but the background shouldn't be a naff gradiant colour, unless it's MUCH different.

If you like it, lucky you, but not ideal for me

[neufuse Veteran]

the blatent animation in excel is bugging me, why do we need to animate the selection region so much? even some of the hardcore excel users at work are bitching about it...

latest complaint from the excel users here "why do they have to animate summations when we change a number, we already know it is going to change by the fact we changed the number"

[BetaAddict]

the blatent animation in excel is bugging me, why do we need to animate the selection region so much? even some of the hardcore excel users at work are bitching about it...

latest complaint from the excel users here "why do they have to animate summations when we change a number, we already know it is going to change by the fact we changed the number"

Let's just say they wasted way too much time adding UI eye candy to the point that it needs to be disabled, or least have a on/off switch.

I've always been the type of person who keeps animations to a minimum, whether it is on Windows, OSX, or Android, I have disabled animations for most common task transitions simply because they annoy and/or delay the intended action.

[Denis W. Veteran]

Let's just say they wasted way too much time adding UI eye candy to the point that it needs to be disabled, or least have a on/off switch.

The easiest way to turn off animations is to disable graphics acceleration under the Advanced tab. I think there's another option somewhere else to disable "respond to actions with animation" (which is doubled by "respond to actions with sound").

[neufuse Veteran]

The easiest way to turn off animations is to disable graphics acceleration under the Advanced tab. I think there's another option somewhere else to disable "respond to actions with animation" (which is doubled by "respond to actions with sound").

I just don't get why an Office suite "needs" animations on by default... most people using it will be busines people that don't give a crap about it... home users might be all wowed by it but the people crunching numbers on massive spread sheets will just get turned off by it..

[TpM419]

Anyone have a solution to the 2013 Word crashing while opening ??

[Colin McGregor]

What annoys me most about office is no start button :)

I actually don't mind the whiteness but a light / dark version option (like the new Visual Studio has) would be nice.

[Charisma Veteran]

80's style came back in fashion 10 years ago, did you miss that? the faded t-shirts and the atari esc logos... care bears, smurfs, cabbage patch kids, etc.... we are just now leaving that phase going back to the early 90's styles again....

Not that this is the least bit on topic, but... depends on where you are, I suppose. At least in the UK for women's fashion it is very 80's right now. Big hair, neon colours and/or animal print, chunky jewelry, leggings and miniskirts, big shoes. Fun!

[drakenabarion]

I see many people seemingly desperately defending the whiteness of Office 2013.

I, like many people, have a photo sensitive eye condition. I need to be incredibly careful about the contrast level of my PC, so when I say that the white is too blinding, I am saying that with a great deal more reason than many people who say "its ok if you get used to it".

Currently, at this level of development, I cannot use Office 2013 without blinding headaches. I am certain that is not the intention of MS, so I am hoping that there will be improvements in the next versions.

[Chris123NT]

It would be perfect if they offered "themes" like they had for office 2007 and 2010. Give users the option to tone down the brightness a bit, especially for those of us with light sensitivity.

[chrisj1968]

We don't need a lot of things. However to progress new versions must be released. You can easily stay with 2010 if you want.

Progress in some terms to mean make a new version to make more money

[+Gary7 Subscriber²]

We don't need a lot of things. However to progress new versions must be released. You can easily stay with 2010 if you want.

I do not have the funds to purchase a new office suite every other year. I have better things to spend my money on like food and such. Take a look around the economy kind of sucks.

[patseguin Global Moderator]

I hate the inability to change the UI color scheme too. It's way too bland to even see new messages sometimes.

[+Kyle Subscriber¹]

It won't let me run Outlook 2010 with this installed.

Furthermore, Outlook 2013 isn't compatible with my Exchange Server.

[Denis W. Veteran]

I do not have the funds to purchase a new office suite every other year. I have better things to spend my money on like food and such. Take a look around the economy kind of sucks.

But pushing out new products at a (reasonably) fast-paced cycle does drive forward the economy moreso than sitting on three+ year old products and twiddling their thumbs at anything other than security patches.

Plus you'd only really need an upgrade when the majority of people are sending around documents in the Office 2013 file formats and Microsoft refuses to update their converters for older versions of Office. Considering people are still mailing around .doc/.ppt files, I can't see that time in the immediate future.

Though I'm interested at how documents look like if you sent a Word 2013 .docx file to someone running Word 2007. Would it look 90% in place, other than the odd misplaced element here and there?

[Dot Matrix]

They should add more colour to them, white is too bland. They should have the option of themes like in previous versions, or colourise it by the app colour.

That actually looks quite good.

[Dot Matrix]

1987 called; they want their interface back.

Heh. I'd rather have that than them go overboard with gradients. :laugh: