Microsoft Office 2007 delivers the original product suite – Word, PowerPoint, Excel,
Access and Outlook – with a new user interface. It is very different from previous
versions, but once you get used to it, you will find it easier to find the tools you need to
create and manage documents.
What’s new?
The most obvious change to the user interface is that there is no menu bar across the
top of the screen. Instead, the traditional drop-down menus and toolbars have been
replaced with the Office Button, a Quick Access Toolbar and the Ribbon.
There have been improvements in the way you can view and edit documents through
the introduction of Live Preview, the Mini Toolbar and additional Status Bar options.
Another new feature is the introduction of Themes that you can use to format your
documents quickly.
The Office Button
The Office Button appears at the top left of the screen and replaces the File
menu in earlier versions. Here you’ll find familiar commands for opening,
closing, saving and printing files.
There are also some new options:
Prepare
Use this to prepare your document for distribution. You can set
document properties, such as Title, Author and Keywords, and
control access by adding encryption or setting permissions for editing,
copying and printing.
Getting started with Microsoft Office 2007
Getting started with
Microsoft Office 2007
Prepare also includes the Compatibility Checker. Use this option if
you want to save a file for use in a previous version. It will check the
file for compatibility issues that could cause a loss of functionality. To
save the file, use Save As from the Office button and select the 972003 file format option.
Publish
Use this option to publish your document as a blog or on a document
management server.
You will also see a list of recent documents. Clicking on the Pin icon
the list permanently. The icon changes to
keeps a file on
.
The Office Button is where you will find the Options button. This replaces the Tools >
Options command in previous versions. Use this to change the default settings and add
your own preferences.
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The Quick Access Toolbar
Next to the Office Button is the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) for the tools you use regularly.
By default, you’ll find buttons for Save, Undo and Redo. You can add your
favourite commands to the QAT by clicking the Customize button on the
toolbar . Choose from the short list, or click on More Commands for the full
list.
Useful commands to add are Quick Print, Print Preview and Switch Windows.
The Ribbon
In Office 2007, the menus and toolbars of previous versions have been brought together in a band across
the top of the screen called the Ribbon. The Ribbon is the control centre. Commands are grouped into sets,
and each set is on a separate tab.
The Home tab holds the most commonly used commands and functions. For example, in Word, the Home
tab includes the Clipboard and groups for Font, Paragraph and Styles; in Excel, Number, Cells and
Editing.
Most groups have an icon for the Dialog box launcher . This opens a related dialog box or task pane. In
many cases, these are the same as in previous versions of Office.
In some groups you will see a More button . This appears most often on galleries, such as the Styles
Gallery in Word and the Themes Gallery in PowerPoint, and brings up further options.
As well as the standard tabs, Office 2007 includes contextual tabs. These display only when objects of a
particular type are being edited. For example, clicking on a chart will bring up a Chart Tools tab with the
subsidiary tabs Design, Layout and Format containing all the commands you need. When you click away
from the chart, the tabs will disappear.
Live Preview
Now you can see the effects of a formatting change immediately through Live Preview, without having to
make a choice first. For example, just select text in Word, click on a drop arrow and move the cursor over
the font size or colour to see how it will look. You can also view Quick Styles and picture formatting before
making your final selection.
If you find Live Preview distracting, you can disable it. Click on the Office button and on Options. Click on
Popular and deselect Enable Live Preview.
The Mini Toolbar
The Mini Toolbar provides access to some of the most frequently used formatting commands such as font
types, sizes and colours, indents and bullet points. It displays automatically when you select text. It is semitransparent when it first appears, but becomes solid when you move your cursor onto it.
The toolbar means that you don’t always have to
switch to the Home tab to perform simple text editing
tasks.
If you want to disable the toolbar, click on the Office button and on Options. Click on Popular and deselect
Show Mini Toolbar on selection.
The Mini Toolbar disappears if you move away from the selected text. To re-display it, rightclick on the selection. Note that you will see the context menu as well as the Mini Toolbar.
The Status Bar
In Office 2007, the status bar at the bottom of the screen can be customised to give you lots of useful
information. The left side displays options for the current document, and the right displays viewing and zoom
options.
To customise the status bar, right-click anywhere on it to display the menu.
Click in the left margin to turn an option on or off. Click
anywhere away from the Customize Status Bar menu to
close it.
A useful option in Word is the Spelling and Grammar
Check. If Word has found an error, the icon on the toolbar
changes to
. Click on the icon to display a menu of
proofing tools.
In previous versions of Excel, the status bar could only
display Sum or Average. In Excel 2007, you can choose
from a whole range of calculations, including Count, Min
and Max.
View Options
The View Options for your document appear on the right of the status bar. They also appear on the View tab
on the Ribbon. The options will vary depending on the application; these are for Word:
The Full Screen Reading view
makes it easier to read documents on screen by making them look more
like a book, i.e. by displaying two pages at a time. Draft view is equivalent to Normal view in Word 2003.
In Office 2007, the Zoom feature has been updated to include a Zoom Slider. Now you can quickly adjust
the percentage simply by dragging the button.
Themes
A Theme in Office 2007 is a set of colour, fonts and other formatting details, including tables, charts and
shapes. Themes are shared across applications, so all your Office documents can have the same look.
To apply a theme, click on the Page Layout tab and on Themes.
As you move the cursor over the thumbnails, Live Preview lets
you see how the document will look.
Note that in Word, the font and font colour will not change unless
you have applied a style to the text.
Once you have applied a theme, you can customise it. The
Themes group includes options to change the colours and the
fonts used. There is also an Effects option that allows you to
change the fill effects for shapes and lines.
You can save a theme you have customised to use again.
Themes you save in one Office 2007 application will appear in the
Custom section of the Themes group in all the others as well.