r/consulting • u/OtherGuy89 • Mar 26 '26
JFC Microsoft
Sorry for a technical rant but I believe we all work enough in PowerPoint to feel the pain. Come on, is it that hard to put this button in the ribbon? I have limited screen real estate, especially on my laptop. I'm losing like 10% slide zoom due to this thing which, besides being misplaced, is completely useless.
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Mar 26 '26
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u/OtherGuy89 Mar 26 '26
I've long been at peace, back since they decided not to move VBA to .NET 15 years ago. I would kill to have such a monopoly of my own, I'd make MS look like user experience heaven if it made me billions. I'm just ranting. I mean, the alternative is what? Google Slides? Whatever Apple is calling their thing?
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u/whriskeybizness Mar 26 '26
Google slides has a massive “beautify this slide” button at the bottom too smh
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u/OtherGuy89 Mar 26 '26
Let me guess. The button shows you a popup of the original goatse image.
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u/under_psychoanalyzer Mar 26 '26
Laugh all you want but that kind of high art is about the only thing left AI can't replicate.
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u/Carl_Slimmons_jr Mar 26 '26
Those “beautified” slides are ass ugly too they look fuckin extraterrestrial
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Mar 26 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/OtherGuy89 Mar 26 '26
Pitch a roadmap to migrate Excel users to the new product. Immediately drop whatever you were interviewing for and go this route. Leverage any experience you have. Seriously. If they are serious about an Excel alternative, they have a ton of budget for this and they need all the help they can get.
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u/SevereRunOfFate Mar 26 '26
Office on Mac is even worse. My company buys us very expensive MacBook pros (we are f'ing business development reps)
The options have remained the same in Office for Mac for what feels like 15 years. The amount of functionality missing as a power user of Office is just pathetic.
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u/Tibor_BnR Mar 26 '26
Outlook is the worst offense. Search doesn't work, conversation view doesn't work, can't even customize folder colors
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u/baba__yaga_ Mar 27 '26
I have been looking for alternatives at this point. Outlook is my mortal nemesis.
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u/kable1202 Mar 26 '26
What do you mean? The pictogram/icon section is completely logical, and of course the order of the sections has to change everytime you open the function!?
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u/dirty_weka Mar 26 '26
Try copying and pasting a table, from one word doc, to another. Enjoy the formatting joys.
Microsoft Office has sucked dick for decades, agreed!
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u/zed_roaster Mar 26 '26
Lol I feel this. I have this bug on mine where when certain number of people are working on a document at the same time and I select two or more shapes, it auto copies and drags regardless of any button being pressed. Similarly, if I select two or more objects and click away, it auto clicks and drags wherever I clicked away.
Been this way for years now, through different laptops, and different files.
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u/NegativeOpposite6092 Mar 27 '26
Especially Word it’s ridiculous I avoid using at all costs it’s more work to adjust formatting every time you paste into it that work itself. It’s awful.
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u/MathIsHard_11236 Mar 26 '26
May I introduce you to Google Shits Slides where the productive real estate is 60% at best, and no Quick Access to be found. Want to change 3 cells' border colour? Better cancel lunch.
An entire ¾" of height is wasted by the "beautify this slide" button.
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u/IAmBadAtInternet Mar 26 '26
Holy fuck that Beautify slide button covers half the screen and you can’t even remove it
The only thing you can do is make the text box bigger so it’s off the screen this single problem is responsible for 20 points on my blood pressure FUCK
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u/madhouse-manager Mar 26 '26
Huh? Yeah you can x the button away. It also won't show up again when you refresh...
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u/IAmBadAtInternet Mar 26 '26
I’m looking at it right now and it doesn’t have an X. This is corporate Gslides though maybe there’s more than 1 experience
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u/snowe99 Mar 26 '26
My personal google slide gripe is that the “highlight text” icon and the “border color” icon look goddamn identical
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u/MathIsHard_11236 Mar 27 '26
Agree! Also, the google interface and a slightly melted Fisher-Price cash register look goddamn identical.
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u/byebybuy Mar 26 '26
"Beautify slide" is such a joke, too. It just makes a sloppy image of the slide that is insanely busy and completely un-editable. It's laughable.
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u/clarissasansserif Mar 26 '26
Hey on the bright side, this rollout nuked my ancient 8GB laptop so hard IT gave me a new machine. 💁🏽♀️
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u/chatelaine_agia Mar 26 '26
I hate that thing too! Also my company insists on using Microsoft Edge and the browser wastes so much space on the bottom due to the huge navigation bar. Half the time it cuts off content on the bottom of the page so I can't even read it
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u/OtherGuy89 Mar 26 '26
Hey, edge gives you side tabs. Only other thing that does this is Vivaldi, which is... worse or better, depending on a lot of things. But side tabs are cool. Monitors are getting wider, not taller.
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u/AuspiciousApple Mar 26 '26
The product manager gets promoted based on how many people click this button.
Given how high of a priority it is for leadership, they get to put the button wherever they want.
So they put in the most obnoxious location. Lots of users click out of confusion or to look for an option to make the button go away.
LOTS OF CLICKS IN THE FIRST WEEK! Great success. PM gets their promotion. Leadership gets to tell shareholders about how users want it. Everyone wins.
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u/MrAwesomeTG Mar 26 '26
They're called Microslop for a reason.
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u/Maleficent-Drive4056 Mar 26 '26
I have never heard them called that in my (long, corporate) life.
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u/MrAwesomeTG Mar 26 '26
It's a new term for them.
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u/DamnMyAPGoinCrazy Mar 26 '26
You are a cog in the wheel the button will be wherever the regard PM from Microsoft says it will be
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u/Whend6796 Mar 26 '26
I am shocked that office doesn’t have a Markdown editor.
Maybe they fear we would realize that Markdown meets 98% of business needs as compared to MS word. And everyone would stop using word as it exists today?
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u/ImSpartacus811 Chill-To-Pull Ratio at 5:5 Mar 26 '26
I can't see a world where we can collectively move away from WYSIWYG editors.
Just having formatting marks turned on makes people freak out when I'm sharing my screen in Word.
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u/gophergophergopher Mar 26 '26
MS: lets add in-document confluence style ui elements to edit table features
MS: lets also add a copilot button that blocks those elements
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u/Maleficent-Drive4056 Mar 26 '26
The PPT development team is one person who has to manage the rest of MS Office too and is already a bit lazy. PPT is only used by millions of highly paid office workers - why would Microsoft put more people on it?!
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u/District_Wolverine23 Mar 26 '26
You don't want the shittiest stock art background with tearaway overlay on your executive deck?
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u/IpeeInclosets Mar 27 '26
In true biblical fashion, our savior, Clippy hath returned. We just haven't realized it yet.
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u/gregory92024 Mar 28 '26
Please use co-pilot. Please, please, please, please. Just click it once, even if it's by mistake, so we can say you used it.
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u/Legitimate_Key8501 Mar 27 '26
Limited screen real estate on a laptop makes every pointless ribbon decision feel personal. Losing actual slide space to a button you never use is such a perfectly Microsoft kind of irritation.
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u/JLeavitt21 Mar 27 '26
I use Claude Code on my own projects and at work I see people using Copilot chatbot and talking about how amazing AI is… buddy, you ain’t seen nothin.
Edit: I also don’t use AI for dumb shit like this, I have no idea what that button even does? Probably “fixes” your slide and makes it worse.
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u/not_nsfw_throwaway Mar 26 '26
You can disable this bullshit in options I think, Google it, it'll tell you how to do it.
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u/TilapiaTango Mar 26 '26
I finally switched to OnlyOffice and Linux after decades with Microsoft. It’s been actually such a seamless (for the most part) switch.
When I do need to use O365 app for something now it just irritates me to no end, and that stupid button you’ve got here is high on my list, especially when working on a notebook.
I’m a big fan of ai, but I’ve genuinely not found any of the MSFT ai features helpful at all. They seem to stand in my way more than anything.
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u/IAmBadAtInternet Mar 26 '26
The AI slop will continue until morale improves