The easiest way to add items to the Quick Access toolbar is to right-click on an item and select: Add to Quick Access Toolbar. You could also customize and move the Quick Access Toolbar or Minimize the Ribbon.
The old Help menu is now a button that is located in the upper right hand corner of the screen under the minimize, maximize/restore, close buttons.
PowerPoint 2007
The Main Screen
1. The Office Button: Similar to the old File menu. It contains all of your File Management functions such as Opening, Saving, Printing. Emailing, Publishing. You also find the Options dialog box here so you can customize PowerPoint
2. Quick Access Toolbar: You can add frequently used commands to this toolbar. By default it contains Save, Undo and Redo. You can customize this toolbar by right clicking on it or click the small black down pointing arrow to the right of it.
3. Tabs: Used to activate what is now known as Ribbons which have replaced the old menu bar and toolbars. Keep an eye out for Contextual Tabs. These will appear when you have something highlighted that calls for it. Ie, if you have a picture selected a Picture Tools tab will appear.
4. Ribbon: Holds all of the commands and features for that tab.
5. Slide and Outline tabs: switches this side panel between slide thumbnails or a text outline of your slide presentation.
6. Dialogue Box Launcher: If that section of the ribbon has more options they will be contained in the dialogue box that you can launch by clicking the symbol in the lower left hand section of that ribbon.
7. Lists and Galleries: Click the down arrow to access more choices.
8. Presentation Window: The active slide appears here.
9. Notes Pane: you can type notes about this slide here if you would like.
10. Status Bar: Similar to the old one it will display info about the active presentation.
11. View Buttons: Changes the views between Normal, what you see in the above screen shot, Slide Sorter and Slide Show.
12. Zoom Controls: Used to make the screen larger or smaller to the eye. This does not affect how the slides will print.
The Ribbons
Home Ribbon
Contains some of the most commonly used commands.
Note: To the right of the words ‘Clipboard’, ‘Font’, ‘Paragraph’ and ‘Drawing’ there is this symbol . This is the dialog box launcher and will open a dialog box to display more options than are showing in the group of the ribbon.
Clipboard: Contains the cut, copy, paste commands. Paste Special, Paste as Hyperlink and Duplicate are found in the drop down under the Paste Command. The Format Painter allows you to copy the format from a set of text to another set of text. The dialog box launcher opens a side bar that lists all of your past copy and cuts so you can choose what you want to paste.
Slides: All the commands for creating new slides. The drop down for New Slide allows you choose which layout you would like for your new slide. The drop down for the Layout command allows you to change the layout of a current slide. Reset allows you to reset the position, size, and formatting of the slide placeholders to their default settings.
Font: The most commonly used commands are placed out here in the group but if you click the dialog box launcher button then you will see the old font dialog box that we know and love.
Paragraph: Complete paragraph formats: vertical alignments, horizontal alignments, change the text direction, bullets, numbering, indenting, spacing before and after, create columns. The dialog box here is simple it contains the ability to create tabs and do some indenting and spacing. Double spacing text is located here.
Drawing: Allows you to add shapes to your slides. Then you can customize and make them pretty. The dialog box here is the Format Shape dialog box.
Editing: Clicking either Find or Replace opens the old Find and Replace dialog box. The select command here has an option to open a Selection Pane. This is for selecting objects but here you can also make objects invisible too.
The Insert Ribbon
Contains commands used to add content to your slides.
Tables: Allows you to design and insert tables into your slides.
Illustrations: Inserting pictures, Clip Art, creating a slide show Photo Album, insert “AutoShapes, SmartArt and Charts.
Links: With text or an object on your slide selected you can turn it into a Hyperlink or an Action Link. During your slide show you can then hyperlink to the web, another file, an email address, or a different slide. With Action Links you can choose between using a mouse click or carry out the action just my moving your mouse over the link. Here you can link to another slide, you can run a new program, you can run a macro, you can play sounds and the highlight click choice makes the object that you are clicking on move a bit.
Text: The text group adds different types of text objects to your slides. Header and footers are located here because in essence you are adding text to a slide when you insert a header or footer into your slide. The object command here allows you to insert an Excel Spreadsheet for example. You can insert a new blank worksheet or insert a worksheet that is already complete.
Media Clips: Insert a movie from a file or from the Microsoft Clip Organizer. Insert a Sound from a file, from the MS Clip Organizer, from a CD Audio Track or you can also record your own sounds if you have the hardware (a microphone).
The Design Ribbon
Used to enhance the look of your slides and make them pleasant to look at.
Page Setup: Allows you to set slide sizes and change orientation. Clicking the Page Setup command here will display this dialog box. You can also change the orientation by using the command displayed on the ribbon.
Themes: In PowerPoint 2003 these were called Designs. Now they call them Themes. Each sample slide shows the font that will be used and the color pallete that will be displayed on the slides. You can also manually change the colors, fonts and effects using this group. A nice new feature of Office 2007 is “live preview”. You can now see how your slide will look just by letting your mouse rest on these different themes. You don’t have to click it to apply it to see if you like it anymore and then have to go and change it back.
Background: You can apply different gradiant background styles or you can click the check box to Hide Background Graphics.
The Animation Ribbon
Add slide transitions and text animations here.
Preview: Allows you to preview the animations and transitions that you’ve applied a particular slide without having to run the entire slide show.
Animations: Applies animations to the text and objects on a particular slide. The animate command allows you to choose which type of text to animate and the Custom Animation tab allows you to apply different animations to different text. For example, if you wanted to animate a bulleted list you would do this through the Custom Animation command.
Transitions: Customizes how you move from slide to slide within your presentation.
The Slide Show Ribbon
Used to rehearse and set up your slide show for a presentation.
Start Slide Show: Allows you to start the slide show from the beginning or from a currently active slide. The custom slide show button enables you to pick and choose slides for a presentation if you do not want to use all of your slides.
Set Up: This command opens a dialog box that allows you to customize the way that your presentation will be carried out. The Hide Slide is a toggle button that will hide whichever slide is currently active in the window. To unhide the slide click this button again. Rehearse Timings will open a timer and start your slide show. You can rehearse what you want to say and then advance through the slide show. The timer will keep track of the amount of time you spent on each slide. Then underneath the Rehearse Timings command is a check box so you can choose to use those rehearsed times or not when giving your presentation.
Monitors: Here you can chose different resolutions for your presentations depending on what hardware you are using. The check box for Use Presenter View allows you to use two different monitors. By using two monitors, you can view your notes, or run other programs that your audience will not see, and you can do this by using Presenter view. Presenter view offers the following tools to make it easier for you to present information:
- You can use thumbnails to select slides out of sequence and create a customized presentation for your audience.
- Preview text shows you what your next click will add to the screen, such as a new slide or the next bullet in a list.
- Speaker's notes are shown in large, clear type so that you can use them as a script for your presentation.
- You can darken or lighten the screen during your presentation and then resume where you left off. For example, you might not want to display the slide content during a break or a question and answer (Q and A)
The Review Ribbon
Review the syntax of your presentation before you present!
Proofing: The good ol’ spell check, Thesaurus and grammar tools that you know and love are located here. Also you can now research your text if you like. If you select text and choose the Research button a side bar will open and you can choose to research that text by using the reference books listed in this screen shot. Notice that the choice of Translation is found here also.
Comments: Place comments where ever you click on the screen. A small icon will appear to let you know that a comment is placed on the slide. Comments do not show during the presentation they are just for your personal use.
Protect Presentation: Allows you to sign up to use a free trial of Microsoft’s Information Rights Management Service.
The View Ribbon
Allows for different ways to view the PowerPoint 2007 window
Presentation Views: The first four buttons in this group allow you to change the PowerPoint screen to different views. Normal View is the view you use to customize and build each slide, Slide Sorter View allows you to change the order of your slides, Notes Page view shows the notes that you’ve created for each slide and Slide Show will run your presentation.
Note: Normal, Slide Sorter and Slide Show views can also be changed by using buttons which are found down on the status bar.
Slide Master, Handout Master and Notes Master allow you to create your own personalized master slides, handouts and notes pages. Clicking each of these will take you into that view and also display a ribbon used to create each of these.
Show/Hide: Allows you to turn the ruler, gridlines, and Message Bar on and off.
Color/Grayscale: You can view your slides in Grayscale or Black and White if you would like. Clicking on the grayscale or pure black and white option also opens a new ribbon so you can adjust the grayscale if you would like to
Window: The New Window button will actually open the current document in a new window. You will then have the same presentation open twice. If you make changes to one and save them they will automatically be applied to the other open presentation. With this Window Group you can also Arrange all of the windows (files) that you have open so that you can fully see each of them. Cascading the windows will make each files’ title bar visible so that you can click on it to activate it. Move Split allows you to change the size of the panes in Normal view by using the keyboard rather than dragging with your mouse. Switch Windows supplies a list of open windows/files so that you can activate a different one. Then the last button on this ribbon is Macro which opens a dialog box that allows you to see the different macros that are in this file.
The Developer Ribbon
Perform some of the more technical tasks in PowerPoint
Code: This group enables you to create Macros. The Macro recorder is no longer in PowerPoint 2007. If you want to create a Macro you have to use Visual Basic for Applications. The first button in this group will open the VBA editor. The second button will display a list of macros that are contained in the file and allow you to run, edit, step into, create, delete and cancel macros. You can set your preferred level of macro security with the third button. Here you can disable or enable Macros.
Controls: The Control group contains all the tools from the old toolbox to add drop down lists, radio buttons, check boxes, etc.. to your slides. The Properties button will open a side window with the VBA object’s properties displayed and the View Code button will open the VBA Editor for that object.
Modify: The Document Panel button displays a Document Information Panel dialog box.
The Add-Ins Ribbon
Add-Ins are managed through the PowerPoint Options dialog box that can be found in the Office Button. The SnagIt add-in that you see here was automatically put there when I installed SnagIt. You can, however, add add-ins using the PowerPoint options dialog box.
Contextual Ribbons
Some ribbons are not always displayed. These ribbons appear depending on what you are doing.
The Format Drawing Ribbon
This ribbon appears when you click on a drawing or a text box contained on a slide. It contains most of the tools that used to be found on the old Drawing Toolbar
The Format Picture Ribbon
This ribbon appears when you click on a picture that is contained on one of your slides
The Chart Tools Ribbons
When clicking on a chart in your presentation three ribbons become available to you. The Chart Tools Design Ribbon, The Chart Tools Layout Ribbon and The Chart Tools Format Ribbon.
What's New in Word 2007
The New User Interface
The Ribbons
The biggest and most obvious change in most of the Office 2007 products is the new toolbars which are now call Ribbons. This is definitely what will make transitioning from Word 2003 to Word 2007 the most difficult. Word 2007 still has all of the capabilities as the older versions of Word but now you just have to relearn where they are all located.
There are tab names for each of the ribbons. The tabs look somewhat like the old menu bar. They are called: Home, Insert, Page Layout, References, Mailings, Review, View and Developer. You can actually turn the Developer tab off in the Options dialog box if you would like to. By clicking these tabs you then display the ribbon associated with that tab.
Each ribbon contains tasks that are grouped together. Some groupings contain a small symbol in the lower right-hand corner of the group that when clicked opens up a familiar dialog box.
- Here my mouse pointer is pointing to the symbol that will open up the paragraph dialog box.
The Home Ribbon
This ribbon contains your most commonly used editing commands in Word.
The Insert Ribbon
Insert page and sections breaks, tables, illustrations, links, headers & footers, text and symbols into your documents.
The Page Layout Ribbon
Use this ribbon to change the look of your pages by adding themes, using Page Setup, changing the background, setting paragraph spacing, and arranging the elements of your document.
The References Ribbon
When creating research papers it is necessary to use the correct referencing. This ribbon allows you to to create a table of contents, insert footnotes, create citations & bibliographies, insert captions, create indexes and add a table of authorities.
The Mailings Ribbon
Mail Merge is alive and well in Office 2007 and now it has its own ribbon. You can also create envelopes and labels using this ribbon as well.
The Review Ribbon
Used to proof read your documents, check spelling and grammar, add comments, track changes, compare versions and protect your document.
The View Ribbon
Change the way you see your document on the screen by switching between different document views. This group is also located on the status bar next to the zoom slide. You can show/hide parts of your screen, like your rulers, change the zoom of your document window, arrange your windows if you have more than one document open, and view a list of macros associated with this document.
The Developers Ribbon
This ribbon can be turned on and off by using the Word Options dialog box. If you do not use macros or program using VBA then you really do not need this ribbon to display.
Contextual Ribbons
Some Ribbons only appear when you have an object selected. These are called Contextual Ribbons. For example if you want to crop a picture you need to select it first so that n the Picture Tools Ribbons will appear
The Picture Tools Format Ribbon
This is similar to the old Picture toolbar that would appear when a picture was selected if you did not have it turned on permanently. You use this ribbon to adjust the picture’s settings, add shadow effects, add borders, arrange the picture with other elements on the page and change its size.
The Drawing Tools Format Ribbon
This ribbon is used to format any drawings that you have inserted into your documents. You can insert more shapes, change their colors and styles, add shadows and 3D effects, arrange the shapes on the page and change their size.
The Office Button
The Office Button now contains all of the commands, plus some, that the old File menu used to have.
NOTE: Notice the underline letter in the commands, New, Open, Save, etc… If you press the Alt key and this underlined letter you will get the dialog box for this command. This remains the same as the older versions of Word.
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Help
Finding the Help command isn’t as obvious as it used to be. Help is now located under the close button in the upper right hand corner of your screen. It is a small blue button with a question mark in it.
The Quick Access Toolbar
The only customizable toolbar left in the 2007 suite of products which contains shortcuts for commonly used tools. You have the ability to add and remove the toolbar buttons based on your personal preferences. It is located in the upper left hand corner of your screen next to the Office Button.
It contains three buttons by default: Save, Undo and Redo. You can customize this bar by clicking the small down pointing arrow on the right of it or by simply right clicking on it. You can remove buttons or add buttons.
Saving Word 2007 Documents
Word 2007 documents are now saved with a new file extension of “.docx” which is a file format that can be used with OpenXML – The Microsoft Office suite applications now use a new file format as the default file format. Documents created in Word 2007 will use a file extension of .docx (compared to .doc in previous versions). Based on XML, this format uses the ZIP file container, which is compressed and up to 75% smaller than previous Office file formats.
This can be problematic if you create a document using Word 2007 and send it to a user who is using an older version of Word. They will not be able to open it; their older version of Word will not recognize this new file extension.
One way to remedy this is to save the document as a “Word 97-2003 Document”. This is shown here; it is the third choice in the Save As command.
Or if you are using the Save As dialog box you have to change the “Save as type” option to “Word 97-2003 Document”. This can be seen in the illustration on the next page.
Downloading the Office Compatibility Pack for Office 2007
Another option is for users that still have the Office 2003 version or older to download the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats.
You can download this by visiting
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads. Currently, this is the most popular download so you will see it listed right at the top of the list. However, if it is not there then perform a search using “Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats”.
If the user with the Office version of 2003 or older has this installed then you don’t have to worry about saving your file in the 97-2003 format, their system will be able to read it because they have this compatibility pack installed.
NOTE: As a 2007 user you do not have any problems reading any documents created using older versions. You do not have to worry about any compatibility issues. 2007 takes care of all of that for you.
The Old Tools à Options dialog box
In Word 2003 and earlier this dialog box allowed you to customize Word. Now this dialog box is found in the Office Button
Here you can customize the way your copy of Word 2007 works.
Click through the options of Popular, Display, Proofing, Save and Advanced to set up Word 2007 for the machine that you are working at.
Setting up Word’s AutoCorrect is located in the Proofing section of this dialog box.
Live Preview
Word 2007 now has a feature that lets you “try it before you buy it”. If you type up some text and select it then you can go to any font formatting features like sizes or styles and it will show you what your selected text will look like when you are simply letting your mouse point rest on the option. No more clicking it to make it change fonts and then trying to remember what font you had three fonts ago that you liked.
Here I have the words “try it before you buy it” (from the paragraph above) selected. Then I dropped down the font list and am simply letting my mouse rest on the Castellar font. I didn’t click the font but Live Preview let me see what it would potentially look like.
The Mini Toolbar
The Mini Toolbar pops up whenever text is selected. This new feature provides easy access to the most commonly used formatting commands in Word. The toolbar will also appear when you right-click on a selection of text.
Initially, the toolbar is semitransparent to allow you a nearly unobstructed view of the text beneath, and becomes opaque when the mouse pointer moves over it.
The Alt Key
If you press and hold down the Alt key for a couple of seconds these numbers and letters will appear. Then simply press the corresponding number or letter to carry out your command. If you do not want any of these commands and you want the numbers and letters to go away simply press Alt again.
Quick Parts
If you routinely enter the same text into Word, like an address, put it into Quick parts so you can enter it in a flash. Simply select the text that you would like in Quick Parts. Go to the Insert Tab. Click the Quick Parts button that is located in the Text group, and choose Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery. Enter a name and a description and any other option here that you may want. Then click OK.
To insert your Quick Part into your document simply go back to the Quick Part button, and click on the text that you want to insert.