J-Walk & Associates, Inc.

I Don’t Like This

I've always hated that "Format" dialog box that's used to format shapes, pictures, and other inserted objects. It always seemed very poorly designed, and more difficult to use than it should be.

Microsoft made some major changes to it in Excel 2013. Unfortunately, it's even worse than it was. It now features an amazingly confusing mixture of text and icons. The old version was vastly superior.

- Reader Comments -

Following are comments in response to this item.
The most recent comment is at the bottom.

1. By gary k. Comment posted 16 July, 2012 7:11pm

   I agree. I think you have to be a moron to understand these things. anyone with half a brain can't figure out what the icons mean. same thing happens in cars.
2. By John Walkenbach. Comment posted 16 July, 2012 8:52pm

   Maybe it's just the preview version, but that dialog box does not work with the keyboard (despite the underlined letters). It seems to be designed for touching or clicking only.
3. By Steve. Comment posted 18 July, 2012 6:27am

   Hi John,
   Have you found out anything about the Custom UI Editor for 2013, as I have found out that Cutom Ribbons for Office 2010 are not recognised in Office 2013, and there appears to be no means of creating something for 2013.
4. By John Walkenbach. Comment posted 18 July, 2012 7:17am

   Steve, I haven't gotten to that part yet. But my PUP v7 add-in uses a custom Ribbon and it seems to work perfectly.
5. By Steve. Comment posted 23 July, 2012 1:56am

   Hi John,
   Thanks for taking the time to respond, after reading your comments, I have found that launching the spreasheets via an VB Exe file the ribbons do not work but opening the spreadsheets directly they do. A bit of reasearch needed from here....
   
   Thanks again
   
   Steve
6. By John Walkenbach. Comment posted 26 July, 2012 6:40pm

   I'm actually getting used to this, and it's not nearly as bad as I thought.