I can't honestly think of a feature missing from 97 that most people would notice - except xml based files. Ie docx.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-12-16, 01:12:

Was never a fan of the ribbon bar, even now but admit Office has too many options for it to work in a traditional menu, but then Office has too many options overall IMHO.

Ribbon bar makes common options easier at the expense of making some rare features harder to find.
There was a third-party addon for Office 2007 called UbitMenu, that added back the menu, allowing you to get the benefit of both worlds.
I don't know if it still works with latest versions of Office.

myne wrote on 2024-12-16, 02:03:

I can't honestly think of a feature missing from 97 that most people would notice - except xml based files. Ie docx.

I think Excel got some ease of use features in Office 2007 (or maybe 2010?) like being able to filter rows by text contents.

You could accomplish the same thing manually in older Office versions, it was just quicker and more convenient in the later ones.

myne wrote on 2024-12-16, 02:03:

I can't honestly think of a feature missing from 97 that most people would notice - except xml based files. Ie docx.

that's probably the biggest one. there are others i've seen in work contexts - office 365 and shared 'files' using SharePoint and other connectivity related stuff, some of the analytics features and visuals etc that weren't there before.

some things seem to be on their way out though - vba doesnt seem to be used as much as it was. Other things are as they ever were, like spreadsheets that vlookup into multi-layered dependencies.

there is something clean about installing the old office on a vintage machine though, a good combo i like is XP and office 2003