Mac Forum / Applications / Word / May 2008

Hmm. Not sure about this. I can't find any command at all (let alone a keystroke) to remove something from the Work Menu. Result: I have items that I managed to add to the Work Menu that are now still stuck there. What's more the item actually appears as a command in the command list, which seems rather odd. Would be grateful for a solution to this

I've found an answer, though it's a pretty dumb one.

Open Customize Toolbars and Menus
Choose Commands
Go to 'Tools Customize Remove Menu Shortcut'
Drag this to the Work Menu on the floating Menu toolbar
When added, double click it to change the name.
Exit Customize

When you now select that item it will delete the next Menu item you select. If you do all this in a blank document it will save the settings in the normal template (I think.)

Use with care - when trying to sort this I accidentally deleted the Customize Toolbars and Menus item. What a pain that was.

But there must be a better way surely. What kind of software is this??

I wasn't criticising anyone on this forum. But even on the last version of Word there was no simple way to remove items from the Work menu. It seems a bit crazy to have an 'Add' item but not to have the equivalent 'Remove' item. OK so last time there was a keyboard shortcut (now gone it seems). Is it that difficult simply to have a 'Remove'? If my memory serves me there used to be such an item a couple of versions back. Surely this can't just be oversight can it?

No I haven't done what the Word developers should have done. I've used the general command for removing any menu item from any menu, which is a pretty powerful thing to leave lying around on any menu, as I've already found out to my cost. As you say, it's quite possible to add the old keyboard shortcut (or a different one if you want to avoid the conflict with zoom), and therefore to make the latest version like the previous one. That's what I managed to do.

The 'oversight', if you like, (or anyway my complaint) is the absence from this version and the previous one of an item for the Work Menu which is the equivalent in reverse to the 'Add to Work Menu' i.e. 'Remove from Work Menu'. The current arrangement will take anything off any menu - not very sensible IMHO. (Or , as you say, 'just silly'.)

You will find another post just a few days ago from someone (like me) who has repeatedly forgotten how to take things of the Work Menu and in that post Cyber Taz (like me) has imagined that there actually is such a simple item. But not in Office 2004, nor in Office 2008. Looks like we'll have to wait till 2012. Mind you, as far as I can see this is just a Mac issue since I don't think the Windows version even has a Work Menu...

Because I can't believe that nobody has ever raised this with them before since the release of Office 2004. And what action did they take? On the other hand I could be the only person who's bothered, in which case they are hardly likely to take notice now.

In fact a quick Google will show that people have been complaining about this for years. From PC World in 2002:

'If you think the procedure for adding the Work menu is hidden, wait until you get a load of how to remove files from the Work menu: To remove a file from the Work menu, first you must wait until the third Thursday of the month, but only if it's rainy. Then you must position your monitor so that it's facing Italy, and press the Home key seven times while chanting... Sorry. It's not quite that bad. Here's really how you do it: Hold down the Ctrl and Alt keys and press the Hyphen key. Your mouse pointer will turn into a large green minus sign. Now, open the Work menu and carefully click the file you want to remove.'

In fact the whole arrangement is quite bizarre, but someone at MS obviously thinks it a feature worth hanging on to.

So what you're saying is that the Software Architect (just 1?) only takes notice of what's submitted via the Help menu? And only then when there's a large enough number saying the same thing? You mean MS does its software design by plebiscite? They never read reviews, look at forums, blogs and the rest? They don't even take any notice of the MVPs? (See: http://word.mvps.org/FAQS/General/WorkMenu.htm) I don't think so. C'mon John - you're an expert - you know it's not like that.

Wouldn't this mean that the reason the Work Menu has disappeared from Word 2007 is because more Windows users than Mac users pressed the feedback button? Of course that's not how it happened. The fact that it's gone is because the Word developers know it's a BAD feature on whatever platform and have actually made a half-decent attempt to address it in Word 2007 through pinning the Recent Items. (But there of course you can unpin them as well.) So why not fix it in Word 2008? Certainly not because they're saying 'Well if you'd only told us you didn't like it...'

Hi Bob,
You raise some interesting points. I take your point about the menus being absent in 2007, but my own point is that the very concept of the Work Menu has been abandoned, whereas it could easily have been retained, even as an item on the Quick Access toolbar for example. Although in fact menus have not really gone, since the Office Button opens up what is essentially a menu list. And yes, you are right that there is no way to remove Recent items (very odd) or re-order them (not so odd for a Recent Items menu.)

I also agree absolutely with what you say about the 'dangerous' tools. Of course they have a reason for being there and I can see why the one one we're talking about can have a function on a menu, for the reason that you say. But you guys are the Word surgeons - I'm not. In fact when I was struggling with getting the thing working for removing things from the Work Menu I made the mistake of activating it and then selecting the Customize Menu item. Try getting that one back when you're fumbling around. It was not quick, I can tell you. (I think that little problem is almost worth a thread of its own.)

Most of us using Word just want the most popular commands and functions to be readily available and to be able to make adjustments to suit our own way of working when they're not. What we don't really want is what is almost a developer tool (and therefore rarely used by the non-surgeons) to be necessary as an everyday device for doing something quite simple. I repeat: given that there is an 'Add to Work Menu' command, isn't it reasonable to expect that there should be a 'Remove from Work Menu' command as opposed to a 'Remove Anything from Any Menu Command'? I don't actually hear anybody disagreeing with me on this. Or do I?

My point was not against the Remove Menu Item command as such but against using it as a substitute for a command which intuitively everybody really knows ought to be there. OK so you deny imagining anything (it wasn't an accusation) but what you actually wrote was:

'Add the Remove Work Menu Item command - I think that's the right wording - to a toolbar or menu (I've added it to the Work menu itself).'

Well it was not the right wording, but your wrong wording actually captured the right idea - but it just doesn't exist in reality. And that is really my beef.

So while the command remains absent there will regularly be people who forget how to remove a menu item and you heavy-duty Word guys will be regularly and repeatedly writing articles and giving handy hints to help us out. Somehow I think MS could quite easily have helped us all out. Mind you I think it's now very unlikely that I will ever forget how to remove a menu item ever again. In fact my brain now holds more information about removing menu items than I would ever really consider sensible for an ordinary person.

Just one final thing. Suppose all those people using Word 2007 who don't like the loss of the Work Menu all press their feedback buttons, and in response to popular demand MS bring it back in Word 2011. Do you think they'd be likely to leave out the 'Remove from Work Menu' item again? I doubt it.

Sure - in Word 2008 it's the 3rd menu in from the right (next to the help menu). You'll see it at the very top of the screen on the menu bar. It's supposed to be where you lodge links to documents that you might want to return to. If you just rely on the Recent Items list, items will disappear if not recently used. Those on the Menu bar won't. Ever. They are stuck there for good. Permanently. Even when the document is deleted. Hence the question at the start of this thread.

Hi John,

Thanks for your very interesting and informative post and I must obviously defer to your better knowledge. But does this mean that nobody at MS with any influence on the software design ever reads or takes notice of software reviews, forums etc? You seem to be saying that the ONLY form of feedback that is taken into account is users’ direct responses. This strikes me as very strange. But if you say so, I’m sure that must be right.

But I'm also aware that this has gone a bit off-topic, so let me relate it back to the Work Menu item. If what you’re saying is correct, then not enough people complained about this after 2004, so they kept it in 2008. (This was not the case with PC users who did complain about it in sufficient numbers, in fact enough to get the whole Menu removed.) This must also mean that the very principles of good software design are decided solely by users’ feedback channeled through Marketing. OK, but wow!

But Word is a very complex piece of software and most of its features are not used by most people. So if there’s a really duff feature that’s tucked away deep in the entrails but relied on by just a few people, it’s hardly going to turn up much in the responses is it? Even if the weighting takes this into account. The Work Menu could just be one of these. It’s not exactly buried away, but maybe it’s not used by a sufficient number of people to generate the responses that will cause someone at MS to say, ‘oops, we have an issue here.’ It’s hardly anything other than a minor feature and hence a minor irritant. So my one vote isn’t ever going to get my president elected. Not after all this time anyway.
On the other hand just look at the public comment that there is on the Work Menu. There are very few people who comment with any authority on this who don’t think that it’s a bit rough when it comes to removing items. But nobody at MS knows that, and if they did know they wouldn’t care? When it came to the detail of the 2008 design, it must have gone like this: ‘OK guys, what do we think about the Work Menu. Did we do alright? Do we need to change it? Never mind the reviews and the know-it-all MVPs. Does it turn up in the users’ feedback? Not much. Right then it must be OK. We did good so it stays. OK, so what about the Help Menu?...’

On the other hand it is possible to construct an argument in support of the current position. Since nobody is going to argue with me on the substance of the issue I may as well do it myself:

‘Listen up aliquis. You really haven’t got a clue about menus. The whole point about menus is that they are the setting within which you do your day-to-day work. Documents come and go; the menus stay fixed. The whole point about the menu is that you don’t change it. But hey, MS are not software fascists like those guys at Apple who don’t let you change a thing. If you want to alter your menu then sure they’ll let you do it, but you’re not going to want to be doing this every day. You’ve got to know what you’re doing. So if you’re dumb enough to put a letter to your Aunty Betty on your Work Menu then don’t cry if you can’t get it off. Menus are menus – they’re not scratchpads.’

Now this is an argument I can kind of respect. I don’t agree with it in terms of the end-user experience (which is, after all, the reason for this thread), but at least it’s an argument (and there could be other, better ones) from certain design principles, not the lowest common denominator of mass feedback. I’m not decrying the use of user feedback as such, just the idea that it can or should be the sole source of software improvement.

So it really seems to me that in all this there are 3 separate issues:

1 Is the Work Menu operation a poor piece of software design and does it need changing? (I think so, but I could be persuaded otherwise.)

2 Is the answer to this question entirely one to be decided by popular acclaim? (Is Madonna better music than Mozart? - I guess Mozart might lose on the popular vote.)

3 How does MS decide what’s going to feature in its next release? Principles of good design or vox pops? Or maybe they’re the same thing to MS. I don’t know.

Hey John, perhaps you could mention the Work Menu to the Architect next time you meet him. I know he’ll probably tell you to use your feedback button, but it might be worth a shot.

BTW – I did send my feedback after all as you suggested. I may be obstinate but I’m not totally stubborn.

I can assure you that many Microsoft employees do read these forums. It's one of the ways that we try to listen to customers.

John is, of course, (more or less) correct that some of the folks leading the development of the product are quite busy, and they usually don't have a lot of time to read the forums. That doesn't mean that feedback in the forums doesn't get to them - it usually does, one way or another (although it's subject to filtration and interpretation by those of us who *do* lurk here).

John's also correct that sending in feedback is a good way to ensure your "vote" is counted. One of the challenges in a large organization that's trying to do many things at once is how to keep track of and prioritize all the user feedback, especially when there's lots of that, in a variety of different formats. Things that are sent directly to us on a specific subject are somewhat easier to manage and act on than newsgroup postings (which, as I'm sure you've noticed, can be unfocused, rambling, and often drift from their original subject). This is something we're working on.

Anyway, rest assured, there are Microsoft MacBU folks who read these posts (but by all means, PLEASE "vote" as John suggested above).

Cheers.

Well thanks for your intervention Mr (or Ms) Microsoft employee person.

Don't forget to look out for my vote - it's the one headed Work Menu in big red caps. You can't miss it.

Please understand that as a lay person I was using ‘design’ in too loose a sense and I understand your distinction between ‘design’ and ‘features’. Let me put it this way then – allowing for the proposition that Marketing dictates that there should be a set of features for adding project ‘bookmarks’ as semi-permanent but user-modifiable items somewhere in the software, then there could be several different ways of doing it. If you’ve got menu-driven software, then a Work Menu seems as good as way as any of delivering this feature. But then there are still ‘design’ decisions to be made. And by ‘design’ I don’t just mean whether it looks pretty. What I mean is: how do you design (i.e. engineer) the Work Menu to deliver the features that are supposed to be on offer? Again, within a Menu environment this will basically mean having a menu item to add something to a menu and a menu item to remove something from a menu. But the way that has been delivered seems to me to be flawed.

The design (in my sense) is flawed in several respects. First the user default menu presents an ‘Add’ item, but no ‘Remove’ item, so you have a basic visual and practical asymmetry. Secondly, when the user adds the menu item to remove things from the Work Menu the asymmetry remains because the Add item adds document links to the Work Menu, while the Remove item removes anything from any menu. Thirdly, the default set up in 2004 (I think I’m right about this) was a menu item for adding, but a keystroke for removal (another asymmetry), but still underpinned already by the underlying asymmetry of function. Overall the thing is a mess and I was very surprised that this hadn’t been sorted in 2008. In fact it was compounded because the default keystroke was taken out. Even at the level of a quick fix it should not be too much of a struggle to add a command that removes document links (and only document links) from the Work Menu.

My point all along has been that it shouldn’t take endless direct user feedback to trigger a realisation that this feature is a real dog’s breakfast in the way it’s delivered. The SNAFU is multi-layered and built in. The question is: why? Well surely the difficulty comes from the fact that the feature is wrongly conceived at the outset. What goes on menus are basically commands. What goes on the Work Menu are not (as far as the user is concerned) commands but documents. That’s why you have to add a dedicated Add command for this. You can’t use the generic ‘Add to Menu’ mechanism because the currency for this mechanism is solely generic commands. You have to have an Add command that specify a document to make into a menu item, but once you’ve got a menu item the generic command for removing menu items will do. (In fact even here there is an asymmetry because you can’t use one of the generic mechanisms, which is dragging it off the menu toolbar.)

Now let’s come back to your user-driven development model. Having been persuaded to press the feedback button I’ve been working overtime on this sending back a couple of hundred votes each night. By the end of the week I should have got the Work Menu issue above the notice-me threshold. So when it comes to Word 2012, the Acting Associate Deputy Chief Assistant Word Programmer (Work Menu) should be given his (or her) brief as follows: ‘Right, Marketing says we’ve had over 1400 feedbacks saying that they want a Remove from Work Menu item putting up. Funny nobody’s ever wanted this before, but all these feedbacks are in red block caps so I guess they think it’s important. So that’s your job for the week.’

But what should really happen is this: ‘OK Marketing says we’ve had 1400 feedbacks wanting the Work Menu adjusted. But I’ve got this one feedback from this guy who says that the whole Work Menu idea is fundamentally flawed and should be scrapped. He says we could either pin the Recent items like in Word 2007 or not have anything like it at all, because when you’re using a Mac there are half a dozen other places you can lodge a document icon. They don’t have it in Pages; why should we need it in Word? So I say: screw the 1400. We’re not going to give them what they want. We’re going with the one guy.’

What I’m saying is that user feedback is only ever going to be a rough indicator of the direction software should develop. This is for the simple reason that most users might identify what they think is problem, but the solution to that problem may not at all be what they think it is. You can get thousands of people all demanding a new menu item and half the time (as you say) it will already be there and the rest of the time it won’t be practical to add it. Particularly if a major decision as already been taken to do away with menu–driven software - and you can bet your life that that decision didn’t come from direct user feedback. My bet is that there is very little direct feedback that raises issues that the developers don’t know about or haven’t thought about. I'd be surprised if there's less than 99% dross.

Now I’m pretty sure that that’s not just the way that user-feedback should be limited, I’m also pretty sure that in any half-decent software company that’s the way that it IS limited. Software developers (in the aggregate) do read reviews, they do listen to MVPs, they do develop their own ideas and try to lead the market, not just follow the feedback. And sometimes this means taking decisions that will initially upset a lot of their regular client base, but in the interests of broadening that client base even further. And sometimes they get it right and sometimes they don’t. (And sometimes they might be constrained and hampered by their short-sighted Marketing Department.)

I realise of course that the one thing that threatens my whole position here is the crappy Work Menu design. I’m sure everybody in the Word Department knows it’s screwy, just as everybody whose ever written anything to help people use it knows its screwy. Probably people who use Word just live with it and the half dozen menu items they can’t get rid of, like they live with a crack in the wall. It’s hardly going to be a deal-breaker for buying the next version. But the question remains, which puzzles me no end. How did this crappy Menu survive from 2004 to 2008?

But I’d better stop there. I’ve got another 100 feedbacks to do before tonight.

Thanks for you nice comment Beth. I suppose it's about time I branched out to explore another menu.

As for the multiple feedbacks, don't worry - I thought of that. I'm using different wordings so they'll never spot it. Though I did discover by the time I'd done 120 that the number of different ways you can say 'Give us a command to remove items from the Work Menu' is quite possibly finite.

But just 20 more today and that's me done till tomorrow.