Excel 2007 Ribbon v. Excel 2003 shortcuts (general shortcuts)

Hello all!

I tried a search and couldn't find an answer, most likely because it's probably a stupid question, but I'll ask anyway.

Background:

I've been using Excel (2003 and 2007 combined) for six or so years now (Excel 2007 for only have that time; this is the version I use exclusively now) and consider myself somewhat advanced compared to your average workplace user (probably a novice compared to the majority of members on this site), but I have never really bothered to attempt to abandon the mouse and rely solely on keyboard shortcuts.


Question:

The Excel 2003 Keyboard Accelerator shortcuts seem more logical to me than the Ribbon found in 2007 (ex. Alt+D v. Alt+A to get into the "Data" menu in 2003 and 2007 respectively).

Am I assuming correctly that once you get into menu drop-down of your choice, that the rest of the keystrokes are the same between 2003 and 2007 (ex. Alt+D+E and Alt+A+E will select "Text to Columns" in 2003 and 2007 respectively, the only difference is the input after Alt)? Or are enough of them different that learning the Ribbon would be more beneficial? Or, are enough of the old shortcuts no longer supported in 2007, that learning the 2003 shortcuts would be a lost cause?

If I went the route of learning the 2003 keyboard accelerator shortcuts, I realize that there are programs out there that would replace the Ribbon with the Excel 2003 File Menu, so I could use this while learning (or cheat sheets), or are these programs not all that great?


I'm probably making too much of this, and after typing all of this I'm almost positive that learning the Ribbon would be the easiest since it's still fully supported, but I just wanted to get some input before I took the time to learn all of the shortcuts, and possibly realize that I took the more frustrating or slow route.

Thank you in advance.

-Mark