What’s New - Office 2007
Welcome to Microsoft Office 2007
The most noticeable change in the Microsoft Office 2007 is the new user interface. This new
interface is called “Microsoft Office Fluent” and appears in the core applications of Word, Excel,
PowerPoint and Access. The other applications will be upgraded in future versions.
The familiar menus and toolbars are gone. Now
we have a Office Button, a Quick Access Toolbar,
and a Ribbon of Tabs. Each Tab contains several
Groups of options.
Office Button
The Office Button appears in the upper left corner
of the window. This has taken the place of our
File Menu.
This “menu” has our File options such as Open,
Save, and Print. This is also where we now find
the Options to modify our application settings.
The push pins next to the list of Recent Documents allows you to pin that file name into place, so
it will not be pushed off the list as other files are opened.
New file Extensions
Office 2007 files will be saved with new extensions. This is because Microsoft has changed the
method of saving to XML based files. These can be up to 75% smaller than earlier versions.
Office File Extensions
Office 97-2003
Office 2007
Word Documents
*.doc
*.docx
Excel Spreadsheets
*.xls
*.xlsx
PowerPoint Presentations
*.ppt
*.pptx
Access Databases
*.mdb
*.accdb
If you are working in Office 2007 and would like to send a file to someone still using Office
2003, try to save the file as a previous version, Office Button  Save As  Word 97-2003
Document.
Quick Access Toolbar
The upper left hand corner of the application window has a Quick Access Toolbar. This is a
very convenient location to place commonly used buttons, because no matter which Tab in the
Ribbon you are viewing these buttons will always be displayed. By default this toolbar has Save,
Undo, and Redo/Repeat buttons.
Quick Access Toolbar
Office
Button
Customize Quick
Access Toolbar
Custominzing Quick Access Toolbar
There is a drop down button ( ) at the end of the Quick Access Toolbar that will help you to
change which buttons will be displayed. This drop down list displays several common choices,
including our Print Preview button. When you choose the option it will place the button on the
toolbar.
Any button available on the Ribbon can be
placed on the Quick Access Toolbar by rightclicking on the option and choosing “Add to
Quick Access Toolbar”.
By the same manner any button can be
removed from the Quick Access toolbar.
Right-click on the option in the Quick Access
Toolbar and choose “Remove from Quick
Access Toolbar”.
From the drop down or
right-click menus there
is an option to
Customize Quick
Access Toolbar…
This option will open
the Customize Options
Window. From here
you can add and
remove multiple
buttons at once,
arrange the order of
your custom toolbar
and include
<separators>, dividing
lines, between your
chosen commands.
Moving the Quick Access Toolbar
The Quick Access Toolbar has two location possibilities.
The default is next to the Office Button at the top of the
window, but it can also be moved below the Ribbon.
Open the Customize Quick Access Toolbar button ( ),
and choose Show Below the Ribbon. You can also rightclick on any existing button and choose Show Quick
Access Toolbar Below the Ribbon. This will allow more
room for your selected tools.
Office Button
Ribbon
Quick Access
Toolbar
Ribbon
The Ribbon is a panel of Tabs that contain organized Groups of tools. Each application has its
own set of standard Tabs.
The toolbars will change depending on the
width of your screen. Wider screens will show
more details. If the application window is not
maximized, the Ribbon will appear
abbreviated, and sometimes taller.
Minimizing the Ribbon
The Ribbon takes up a fair amount of the application window. If you would like the space back
you can “hide” the tools by minimizing the Ribbon Pane. The “Minimize the Ribbon” option
can be found on the Customize Quick Access Toolbar menu, or through right-clicking on any
option in the Ribbon. The Ribbon will automatically minimize if you double-click on any of the
Tab names.
To expand the Ribbon Pane again, choose the “Minimize the Ribbon” option on the Customize
Quick Access Toolbar menu, or through right-clicking on any option in the Ribbon, or by
double-clicking on a Tab name.
Moving Through the Ribbon
The scroll wheel on the mouse will move through the
Tabs if the mouse is hovering in the Ribbon Pane.
The Alt key on the keyboard will open a list of shortcut
letters to help you move through the Ribbon with the
keyboard. Microsoft assigns numbers to the Quick
Access Toolbar options.
Contextual Tabs
Each application has a set of standard Tabs. There are also Contextual Tabs that only appear
when certain objects are selected.
Example Word Table
Example Excel Chart
Example PowerPoint Picture
Example Access Form Design
These Contextual Tabs disappear when the object is no longer selected.
Working with Groups
The tools of each Group are set, they cannot be customized, but there are often more options than
are shown.
Scroll through options
Show all options
Open drop down menu
“MORE” for this group
The MORE button opens a dialog box such as the Format Font and Format Paragraph windows,
or a panel such as Styles and the Clipboard.
Formatting Text
The new default font Microsoft Office 2007 is Calibri.
Live Preview
Office 2007 has a new feature called Live Preview. When an object or text is selected, and you
hover over a formatting option, Office will change the selection to match, giving you a
“preview” of the new format. You will see this while formatting fonts, styles, and drawing
objects.
Mini Toolbar
When text is selected a semi-transparent context menu appears to the upper right of the selection.
When the mouse is moved over this Mini Toolbar it will become solid such that you can choose
some of the most-used formatting commands. This Mini Toolbar also appears on the right-click
menu. The Mini Toolbar is not customizable.
Zooming
The bottom right hand side of the window in Word, Excel and
PowerPoint shows a Zoom scroll bar.
-
The plus will zoom in and make the file appear larger; the minus will zoom out and make
the file appear smaller.
You can use the scroll box, shown above in the middle of the zoom bar, to make
adjustments.
If you click on the actual percentage shown, it will open the Zoom window.
Status Bar
The Status Bar in the bottom left corner of the application window is customizable. Right click
on the status bar and choose the options you would like to display/hide. The list will be different
for each application.
Office Help
The Office Assistants have been removed from the Microsoft
Applications. The tooltips have become more elaborate, sometimes
showing a full paragraph and images to assist the user.
The function key, F1, will still launch the Help options. The help
button ( ) can always be found in the upper right hand corner of
the application window (under the exit button).
The Help content also includes searching and viewing Office Online
articles. This does mean you will need an internet connection to
access many of the help files.
New Features
There are many new features in each application. Listed below are a few selected new features,
from the Office Help file.
Microsoft Word 2007
• Blog entries can be authored in Word itself and uploaded directly to a blog. Supported
blogging sites include Windows Live Spaces, WordPress, SharePoint, Blogger,
Community Server etc.
•
New contextual spell checker, signified by a wavy blue underline analogous to the
traditional wavy red underline for misspellings and wavy green underline for grammar
errors, sometimes catches incorrect usage of correctly spelled words, such as in "I think
we will loose this battle".
•
Translation tool tip option available for English (U.S.), French (France), and Spanish
(International Sort). When selected, hovering the mouse cursor over a word will display
its translation in the particular language. Non-English versions have different sets of
languages. Other languages can be added by using a separate multilingual pack.
•
Automated generation of citations and bibliographies according to defined style rules,
including APA, Chicago, and MLA. Changing style updates all references automatically.
Connect to web services to access online reference databases.
•
Preset gallery of cover pages with fields for Author, Title, Date, Abstract, etc. Cover
pages follow the theme of the document (found under the Page Layout tab).
•
Full screen reading layout that shows two pages at a time with maximal screen usage,
plus a few critical tools for reviewing.
Microsoft PowerPoint 2007
• Improvements to text rendering to support text based graphics.
•
Rendering of 3D graphics.
•
Support for many more sound file formats such as .mp3 and .wma.
•
Support for tables and enhanced support for table pasting from Excel.
•
Any custom-designed slide library can be saved.
•
Presentations can be digitally signed.
•
Improved Presenter View.
•
Added support for widescreen slides.
•
Allows addition of custom placeholders.
Microsoft Excel 2007
• Support up to 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns in a single worksheet, with 32,767
characters in a single cell (17,179,869,184 cells in a worksheet, 562,932,773,552,128
characters in a worksheet) (Office 2003 and earlier had 65,536 rows and 256 columns)
•
Page Layout view, to author spreadsheets in a way that mirrors the formatting that will be
applied when printed.
•
Importing data from external sources, such as a database, has been upgraded. Data can
also be imported from formatted tables and reports, which do not have a regular grid
structure.
•
Formula Autocomplete, automatically suggests function names, arguments and named
ranges, and automatically completing them if desired, based on the characters entered.
Formulae can refer to a table as well.
•
PivotTables, which are used to create analysis reports out of sets of data, can now support
hierarchical data by displaying a row in the table with a "+" icon, which, when clicked,
shows more rows regarding it, which can also be hierarchical.
•
Filters, now includes a Quick filter option allowing the selection of multiple items from a
drop down list of items in the column. The option to filter based on color has been added
to the choices available.
•
Excel features a new charting engine, which supports advanced formatting, including 3D
rendering, transparencies and shadows. Chart layouts can also be customized to highlight
various trends in the data.
Microsoft Access 2007
• Access now includes support for a broader range of data types, including documents and
images.
•
Whenever any table is updated, all reports referencing the table are also updated.
•
Dropdown lists for a table can be modified in place.
•
Lookup Fields, which get their values by "looking up" some value in a table, have been
updated to support multi valued lookups.
•
Many new preset schemata are included.