Icon IQ


Today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss will test how well you can interpret Microsoft Office 2007 icons. A lot of people find them confusing. I got 58% (7 out of 12) just by guessing. Still, if I used Microsoft products, that wouldn't help me much! http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/16348

What's horrid is that I made the same score. And I've been using Office 07 since... before it was released. But I suppose I only use Word and PowerPoint frequently. What's even worse than just the icons for the programs, the entire programs and menus and whantnot have been switched around. I'd be totally lost most of the time if I didn't know so many keyboard commands.
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In Microsoft's defence, it's not just their icons which are indecipherable. If I had a program called Visio or Groove I'd struggle to know what the fuck it's supposed to do, let alone how to represent that with an icon.
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I got 100%, but to be fair, I actually have used/came in contact with nearly ever application on the list. Despite that. I couldn't remember exactly which was info path and which was groove.

I have no idea why Frontpage has an arrow for its icon. It looks far more like what excel should have. And Frontpage has been replaced by Expression anyway... and application suite with random colored ribbons as their icons. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to tell them apart if I'm color blind.

In OSX's version of office, we just have Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Messenger, and Entourage. Every app is represented by the first letter in its name. Well, except for Excel, it has an X. Oh, and messenger has a little man with no lower half. Oh, and the whole suite is represented by an O that looks nothing like an O.

Other than that, it makes perfect sense.
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I got 75%, and have used / came into contact with *most* of these, but the icons I'm used to seeing look much different than these (well, some of them). So I had to make educated guesses on some of them. The three I got wrong I can't recall seeing the icons for. (Groove, Project, and Front Page). Well, I saw front page before, but not this version, and it was like 8 years ago or something :P
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I got an 83%, but I have been using Office 2007 for about 5 months now. I really dislike that microsoft replaces a lot of the words with icons in their drop down menu, and the fact that they moved some stuff. Very annoying. But once you do find the function you're looking for it usually works.
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The only problem is that the quiz is based on the 2006 beta release of the icon graphics, and there is no FrontPage 2007. Search on "What Happened to FrontPage" to get the official MS details located at the bottom of the page.

So give yourself an extra credit if you didn't recognize the FrontPage icon from your installation...
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