Presented By:

Lynn Ann Wiscount

Office 2007

A new look to familiar programs

When you open a 2007 Microsoft Office system program, you’ll see a lot that’s familiar. But you’ll also notice a new look at the top of the window.

Menus and toolbars have been replaced by the Ribbon, which contains tabs that you click to get to commands.

The new Office Layout

With the Ribbon, commands and other tools you need are now exposed and more readily available.

Instead of having 30 or so toolbars, and commends buried on menus or in dialog boxes, you now have one control center that brings the essentials together and makes them very visual.

What’s on the Ribbon?

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Tabs sit across the top of the Ribbon. Each one represents core tasks you do in a given program.

Groups are sets of related commands. They remain on display and readily available, giving you rich visual aids.

Commands are arranged in groups. A command can be a button, a menu, or a box where you enter information.

How commands are organized

Commands are now organized by how they are used. Frequently used core commands no longer have to share space with a range of remotely related commands on a menu or toolbar.

Take the PASTE command above. It’s one of the most frequently used commands so it is given maximum space in the group. Most people use the PASTE SPECIAL less often so to access this command, first click on the arrow under PASTE.

Additional tabs appear when you need them

Commands you use most are available on the Ribbon all the time. Others appear only when you need them, in response to an action you take.

The PICTURE TOOLS appear on the Ribbon when you insert a picture and go away when you’re done.

More options if you need them (Dialog Box Launcher)

Sometimes an arrow, called the Dialog Box Launcher, appears in the lower-right corner of a group.

This means more options are available for the group.

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On the Home tab, click the arrow in the Font group.

For example, to get to a less commonly used font option in PowerPoint® 2007:

The Font dialog box opens, with the full selection of font commands.

Live Preview

Are you familiar with the try-undo-try cycle?

You make a change, it’s not what you want, and so you undo and keep trying until you get what you had in mind.

With Office 2997 you can see a live preview of your choice before you make a selection, which saves you time and gives you better results.

Quick Access Toolbar

For example, if you use TRACK CHANGES, located on the Review Tab, you can add it to the Quick Access Toolbar by right-clicking it and selecting ADD TO QUICK ACCESS TOOLBAR.

To delete a button, right-click the button on the Quick Access Toolbar and then click REMOVE FROM QUICK ACCESS TOOLBAR.

Do you often use commands that aren’t as quickly available as you’d like? You can easily add them to the Quick Access Toolbar. Located above the Ribbon, the Quick Access Toolbar puts commands where they’re always visible and near at hand.

The Mini Toolbar

Some formatting commands are so useful that you want them available no matter what you’re doing.

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Select your text by dragging with your mouse, and then point at the selection.

The Mini toolbar will appear in a faded fashion. If you point to the Mini toolbar, it will become solid, and you can click a formatting option on it.

Temporarily hide the Ribbon

The Ribbon makes everything nicely centralized and easy to find. But sometimes you don’t need to find things. You just want to work on your documents and you would like more room to do that.

By double-clicking the active tab the groups disappear. To see the commands again, double-click the active tab.

Working with different screen resolutions

If your screen is set to a low resolution, a few groups on the Ribbon will display the group name only, not the commands in the group. You must click the arrow on the group to display the commands.

Screens not maximized will also display only the group names for some of the options.

What happened to the File menu?

The Microsoft Office Button appears in the upper-left corner of the window in several Microsoft Office programs, such as Word and Excel. This button offers more commands than the File menu did.

The MICROSOFT OFFICE BUTTON also leads you to the program settings that control things like your preferences for AutoCorrect. (This was the old TOOLS MENU).

What about favorite keyboard shortcuts?

If you rely on the keyboard more than the mouse, you’ll want to know that the Ribbon design comes with new shortcuts. These shortcuts are called

KEY TIPS.Press ALT to make the Key Tips appear.

Press H to select the Home tab.

Press E to select the Clear Formatting button in the Font group to remove the heading style.

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What about the old shortcut?

Keyboard shortcuts of old that begin with CTRL are still intact, and you can use them as you always have.

For example, the shortcut CTRL+C still copies something to the clipboard, and the shortcut CTRL+V still pastes something from the clipboard.

New file formats?

The new file formats are based on XML (Extensible Markup Language) and embrace the Office Open XML Formats.

There are lots of great reasons for the change: Increased security for your files and reduced chance of file corruption, reduced file size and new features.

What about the new file formats?

For documents, workbooks, and presentations, the default file format now has an “x” on the end, representing the XML format. For example, in Word, a document is now saved by default with the extension .docx, rather than .doc.

If you save a file as a template, the same applies: You get the template extension of old, with an “x” on the end; for example, .dotx in Word.

If your file contains code or macros, you have to save it using the new macro-enabled file format. For a Word document, that translates into .docm; for a Word template, it’s .dotm.

New file format in Access?

When you create a new database in Access 2007, the database automatically uses the new .accdb format.

Earlier versions of Access use the .mdb file format. You can open and work with .mdb files in Access 2007, if those files were saved in Access 2003, Access 2002, or Access 2000.

However, the new features in Access 2007 will not work for .mdb files. If you want to use the new features, use Save As to convert the database to the .accdb format.

Old files stay old unless you choose otherwise. 

Excel / Word / PowerPoint will save an older file in its original format unless you specify otherwise. For example, if it started in Excel 2003, Excel 2007 saves it in 2003 format by default.

Newer features warn you if you save a file as older.

When you save a file in a previous version’s format, and the 2007 features you used are not compatible with the previous version, a Compatibility Checker tells you so.

Working with files from earlier versions

The Convert command

A way to save an older file in the new format is to apply the Convert command.

The effect is that 2007 programs do an “in place” replacement of

the old presentation file, converting it to the new format. The file then no longer exists in the old format.

Share documents by saving with an older format

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Click the Microsoft Office Button, and on the menu, point to the arrow at the end of the Save As command.

Click Word 97-2003 format in the list of options.

You may get a warning that saving in the older file format will cause features to be lost or modified.

Issues with diagrams If your document

contains a new diagram, Word will notify you

that the diagram will be combined into a single, uneditable object. That way you can at least see the diagram in previous versions of Office but you won’t be able to edit it.

Working with files from earlier versions (A Review)You can open a file created in previous versions of Office programs, from 95

through 2003. Just open the file as usual.

After working with it in the 2007 version, you may want to save the file. By default, the Save As dialog box saves a file created in a previous version as that same version.

As you save, a Compatibility Checker will let you know of any new features added to the file that may be disabled, or matched as closely as possible.

• Colleagues who have Word, Excel, or PowerPoint versions 2000 through 2003 (and the latest patches and service packs) can open 2007 files.

– When they open your document, they will be asked if they want to download a converter that will let them open your document.

Automatic upgrades in presentations

PowerPoint 2007 automatically upgrades certain types of formatting and elements so they’ll look as good as PowerPoint can make them.

If the file has been upgraded like this and saved in a previous version, it won’t be editable as a WordArt object anymore. It is converted to a picture. The same applies to 3D effects and shadows.