One of the touted advantages when Microsoft introduced the Office product suite was the integration and consistency of the apps. Whether you opened Word, Excel or Powerpoint, when the user wanted to quit the app, they'd use the same command - they didn't need to realize that the Quit command at a certain location in one menu had the same functionality as the Exit menu that was positioned in another location in another menu in another app.
Same name, same menu location, same shortcut key.
Much easier to train yourself or your employees - learn one app and you'd be familiar with the other apps in the Microsoft Office product line.
Other companies that tried to create Office-like suites didn't/couldn't create the consistency amongst the apps since they had to acquire the missing apps from other software makers to complete their own Office-like suite.
But this consistency was tempered by common sense.
The goal of shortcut keys was to make common actions quickly accessible to users. But for consistency, the same shortcut key should be used across apps.
When Mail/Outlook was introduced, users found that CTRL-F was bound to the Find command. Makes sense on first thought. But what's the most common command in an email app - is it "Find" or is it "Forward email". Especially when the prevailing standard for CTRL-F in email apps was CTRL-F.
When Bill Gates angrily complains that he's always invoking the Find command by mistake, Program Managers are willing to make exceptions to dogma.
It'd be interesting to compare the menus in Apple's iWork suite (Pages / Numbers / Keynote) to see if their menu items /shortcut keys are consistent or unique.
Note that this Microsoft Office suite consistency didn't necessarily extend to other Microsoft apps. There's no one managing menu item consistency company-wide at Microsoft, just within Office.
Look at where it came from. Excel was a Macintosh app. By 1989, Microsoft had designed one or two Mac applications to blend seamlessly with MacPaint, MacWrite, and MacDraw. (MacProject became MS Project IIRC.) Word on Mac was a native GUI while Word remained DOS based and Word for Windows was still launched from DOS by typing WINWORD.EXE.
Apple Human Interface Guidelines were foundational to Win 3.1. At the same time, doing UI on Unix I was always asked to solve problems by “doing it the Apple Way.” My secret was the MITRE Corp UI book which surveyed best practices from all platforms and underlined the reasoning.
Same name, same menu location, same shortcut key.
Much easier to train yourself or your employees - learn one app and you'd be familiar with the other apps in the Microsoft Office product line.
Other companies that tried to create Office-like suites didn't/couldn't create the consistency amongst the apps since they had to acquire the missing apps from other software makers to complete their own Office-like suite.
But this consistency was tempered by common sense.
The goal of shortcut keys was to make common actions quickly accessible to users. But for consistency, the same shortcut key should be used across apps.
When Mail/Outlook was introduced, users found that CTRL-F was bound to the Find command. Makes sense on first thought. But what's the most common command in an email app - is it "Find" or is it "Forward email". Especially when the prevailing standard for CTRL-F in email apps was CTRL-F.
When Bill Gates angrily complains that he's always invoking the Find command by mistake, Program Managers are willing to make exceptions to dogma.
It'd be interesting to compare the menus in Apple's iWork suite (Pages / Numbers / Keynote) to see if their menu items /shortcut keys are consistent or unique.
Note that this Microsoft Office suite consistency didn't necessarily extend to other Microsoft apps. There's no one managing menu item consistency company-wide at Microsoft, just within Office.