And that is precisely why I still use Office 2003. And also why I turned off Windows Update. And why I back up everything on three separate external hard drives. Lovin’ it on 1511 runnin’ Office 2003.

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Charlie,

wdburt1,

EyeJove

Sheeeesh… they really don’t have anything better/useful to do? (Or, rather do nothing at all, that’d be an acceptable alternative from users’ POV – and that includes the supersloppy patching.)

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Charlie,

woody

I stopped using Word when that horrible ribbon was forced on us.  I got Open Office and have never looked back. I loved Word/Office before Microsoft ruined it with the ribbon.  I’ve been happy with Open Office so Microsoft actually did me a favor as Open Office is free.

Have we really reached a time where the thing – UI colors – you used to be able to configure yourself is now an important item being delivered by the patch process?

Is this social engineering to try to get everyone used to everything changing unexpectedly? Long term de-sensitization and weaning from the expectation that you should be able to do something today that you could do yesterday without paying extra?

-Noel

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Charlie,

BobbyB,

wdburt1,

HiFlyer,

EyeJove,

Elly,

Karlston,

johnf,

RamRod

Susan Bradley wrote:

If you want to go back to the more classic view, you can flip your click to run patching schedule from monthly to semi-annual channel.

Re the link; How To Change Office365 From Deferred to Current Channel

Office 365 hasn’t had a Current Channel or Deferred Channel for more than a year:
New names for Office for Windows desktop update channels

And the steps described could only apply to a work or school account, not Home or Personal Office 365.

Good to see they’ve concerned themselves with the frighteningly important stuff like the way the ribbon looks. I’m so sick of them devoting 100% of their time to testing patches, updates and that eternal waste of time called “functionality”.

Time to jump off the 365 bandwagon. Lately the updates get bigger and bigger plus more frequent. I was under the impression that Office was meant to be productive. I might have been wrong here, this also became a pushy snow off we-know-what-is-good-for-you-product. Microsoft has lost not only its mojo but also the way. Just another tell tale sign: under macOS Office 365 is the software that gets the most frequent and by far the biggest updates of all installed software. Besides that it is also the slowest starting and closing junk. Sad, it was once  slick and fast.

Hi! Is that a Microsoft-employee there on your right you’re chatting with…? It would explain a lot…

I refuse to use their ribbon menu and when I have to use Ms office I use UbitMenu found here — http://www.ubit.ch/software/ubitmenu-languages/

On mu own computers I use OpenOffice and its cousin LibreOffice.

Can recommend both — and they are free!!!!!!

MrJimPhelps wrote:

Where did you learn about Softmaker? And how compatible is it with MS Office? Libre Office is very compatible, but not 100% compatible.

It’s been several years, I can’t remember when or where I first heard of Softmaker. It could have been a tech site, but I couldn’t be sure about that.

In my experience, Textmaker (the word-processing element of the Softmaker suite) is almost completely compatible with MS Word. Just about every aspect of complex files transfers back and forth without issues. The only limitation I’ve come across in my work was with one document that contained mathematical formulas created with the Equation Editor in Word and Textmaker didn’t interpret them well.

But by way of contrast, I’ve worked with documents created by others in LibreOffice, and when going back and forth between it and Word, we’ve had problems with soft carriage returns turning into hard returns, and with edits made in Word not carrying over.

MrJimPhelps wrote:

On the blog, they speak of “tablet computers”. I’m guessing that these tablets are not Android, but rather Windows or perhaps iOS, because they don’t say anywhere on their website that their software is compatible with Android. (They say MAC, not iOS, so probably iOS won’t work either.)

It must be their Android-specific version: https://www.softmaker.com/en/softmaker-office-hd-android

1 user thanked author for this post.

Morty

What is the current status of this “new” ribbon for Outlook?

I update my Retail CTR Office 2016 manually now and then.  Currently on Ver 1808.

Is my only choice, dont update anymore or get hit with the new ribbon?

Finally got around to updating my Retail Office 2016 CTR up to January 8, 2019 version 1812 and guess what?  No new ribbon icons!  Then I remembered Retail CTR gets performance and security updates but not Feature updates.