Office ribbon Portal Page: *GET* it

For customers new to the Office ribbon, we know there's a learning curve. While this learning curve is part of what we address with “Getting Started” content, for some customers 'ribbon angst' can persist far beyond "Getting Started." This is particularly true for folks who have a long history with Office and a deep familiarity with the menu versions of our products.

To help, I'm pleased to announce the release of the refreshed Transition to the Office ribbon page. This is the place that will open doors for you and get you really going with the Office ribbon.

The reasons we created this portal of sorts are pretty simple and obvious:

• We want to address the learning curve by showcasing our (vast) content inventory aimed at helping customers find things in the new interface (the ribbon).
• We want to provide better organization of all that content we have (training, keyboard commands, reference guides, how to customize the ribbon, etc.) so that you can learn the way you want to learn.
• We want to provide resources for beginners, for intermediate users (people just starting to "get it"), for experts, and for trainers.

I do know that it's been a hard road to get up to speed with the ribbon, whether you started working with it in Office 2007 or Office 2010. But I have to tell you that the ribbon is here to stay because we know it works. And we we know it works not by observing ourselves (the ones who got to try out every little piece of it as soon as it was created) -- no. We did (and continue to do) usability studies with regular folks just like yourselves, and the results were pretty phenomenal. Once people "got" it, the ribbon became a way of life for them -- and pretty darn quickly, too.

In 2006, Jensen Harris, a program manager here in Office, wrote a blog post about what usability studies are and how we use them. While this article doesn't give you the specifics on the testing we did (I'm pretty sure that's top secret) this blog post has some very interesting information in it. Read Jensen's post Usability Stockholm Syndrome.

Now head over to that ribbon portal page and get crackin'. I know you can do it. (Seriously, if my 79-year-old Aunt Clementine can do it, you can do it. No offense, Auntie Clem.)

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