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Maybe I'm alone in this, but ever since Microsoft went to the ribbon-style UI I've not much liked the MSO user interface, it hides too much stuff. I find LibreOffice's menus far simpler to follow and find things in. Possibly just from having grown up on WordPerfect and Lotus 123.

Just a taste thing though I suppose.

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I hated the ribbon style of a lot at first because only about 20% of my time was in ribbon. Once my home and all school computers switched to ribbon, I picked it up quickly. I also like knowing the hot keys to get stuff done (Alt+h+b for bold, alt+h+m+c for merging cells, etc.).

> it hides too much stuff

The Ribbon was created to improve discoverability, in part because users were constantly requesting features that the Office products already had. User testing was performed to verify that the Ribbon improved discovery. I believe there is/was a series of blog posts on the Office blog that go into great detail about the design.

> Just a taste thing though I suppose.

Could be. Or perhaps the UI/UX folks in the Office organization did the testing incorrectly.

Yeah, it's just a taste thing. I personally don't like the ribbon either, but back when I worked tech support, we transitioned our workstations from Office to LibreOffice. The biggest struggles were due to a difference in UI. I think having an optional ribbon UI would make a big difference to those familiar to Microsoft's products that are trying to switch.

I could never figure out the ribbon-style UI. Always went round and round looking for my frequently used menu options.

I'm presently half way between MSO and LO - I use MSO in a VM for legacy work, mainly in Excel. And I use LO for all my other work.

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