[dr_zoidberg]

I think the biggest problem was that it broke a stablished UI for no apparent reason, but that was 10 years ago. And people still hold a grudge to it, maybe?

Still, I've seen more than a few workplaces that still use pre-ribbon era Office [0], and haven't upgraded because the employees hate the ribbon...

[0] ...on Windows XP, with 12+ year old hardware... the horror!

[zyxley]

> I think the biggest problem was that it broke a stablished UI for no apparent reason

The reason was that the existing interface was so overloaded that the Office team was regularly getting feature requests for things that that already existed in the apps for years.

[dr_zoidberg]

That problem wasn't apparent to the users, and that's probably why people disliked it.

In a personal note, with the ribbon interface more than once I've had to google where a certain functionality ended up, which I could easily find in the old UI.

[kermire]

There's a search bar for that in Office 2016.

[dr_zoidberg]

I hadn't noticed it, and (fortunately) it's been a while since I've needed to search for things!