Compatibility Checker

Excel2007

Alarming news at first sight.

I don't like seeing a preface "Significant loss of functionality".

It turns out that Excel2007 is better than earlier versions, (what a surprise), and this message is trying to tell me that if I save this Excel2000 workbook as an Excel2007 workbook, It won't look as good if I reopen it in Excel2000. Assuming that I change the colours on the graph.

I'm puzzled. I can see no reason for displaying this message.

I am opening an Excel2000 workbook in Excel2007. Unless I change the colours to take advantage of the extra colours in Excel2007, how can I lose any functionality, no matter how I save the workbook?

Crawl And Click

None the less I decide to take them up on their offer of help. Non-context sensitive help, by clicking the blue hyperlink on the pop-up message.

I am taken to a general information desk, where I must crawl and click to locate relevant help.

Given that office2007 is a revamped user interface, wouldn't it have made more sense to take me to the most appropriate article related to "functionality" instead of trusting me to know what I must locate? If I'm new to office2007 and need help, I'm not likely to know the best article, but office2007 is.

Take me to your leader (Editor's joke)

Non-retentive help

In preparing this article I went back and tried it again, to make sure I wasn't imagining things. Loaded the workbook, saw the pop-up, chose Help, got General Information, and then discovered that I had to retype my search term.

I know it is Friday and I'm complaining again, but would it have been too difficult to remember my most recent search term and place it in the search text box. Highlighted, of course, so that typing a new term clears it automatically.