Introduction to office 2007
Microsoft
has introduced an entire new user interface for programs in office 2007. The
new office 2007 user interface is used by most of the office programs including
word, excel, power point and access. The user interface in office 2003 was
based on menus and toolbars, where users had to click through menus, submenus
and dialog boxes to find the features and commands that they wanted to use. The
drawbacks of office 2003 user interface have been addressed in office 2007 by
the introduction of a user interface that is more intuitive, easier to navigate
and better suited to the task to be performed. In this new user interface the
menus and toolbars are replaced with a ribbon and an office button. You can
notice that at the top left corner of the window is the office button, clicking
on which displays a menu of file commands, such as new, open, and save. The
title bar is at the top of the window. At the left corner of the title bar is
the quick access toolbar that contains a set of the most commonly used
commands. The middle of the title bar contains the name of the opened file and
the office program being used. At the right corner of the title bar is a set of
program window controls, which are used to minimize, restore or maximize and
close the program window.
Just below the title
bar is the ribbon, which groups almost all the commands that are used in an
office program under different tabs. At the top left corner of the ribbon is
the help button. Below the ribbon is the work area, which is the area where you
add and work with data in an office program. Depending on the office program
you are working with the work area may be a document, a worksheet or a slide.
In the right and bottom of the work area are vertical and horizontal scroll
bars respectively which you can use to scroll through the contents of the
opened file.
At the bottom of the
window is the status bar. The right side of the status bar consists of buttons
called as program views. You can switch between these buttons to see different
views of your office file. At the right most corner of the status bar, there
are zoom controls, which you can use to zoom in or zoom out the view of your
office file.
Office button
The
office button is displayed at the top left corner of the program window.
Clicking the office button displays a drop down menu showing option for
different file management tasks, such as creating, opening, saving, printing
and closing an office file. Hence the office button is also known as new file
menu. The options in the drop down menu of the office button are grouped into
three categories and each category of options is separated with its adjacent
category of options by a horizontal bar.
Quick access toolbar
The
quick access toolbar is present to the right of the office button on the
program window. It contains a set of commands that we most often use while
working with an office program. By default the quick access toolbar contains
save, undo, redo button. You can customize the quick access toolbar by adding
more commands to it or removing a command from it. To customize the quick
access toolbar, you can click the customize quick access toolbar button, which
is present to the immediate right of the quick access toolbar in the program
window. Clicking the customize quick access toolbar button displays a drop down
menu as you can see below
Ribbon
Command tabs
A
command tab or simply tab is a collection of commands of a specific category.
Commands in a command tab are kept into different groups, also called command
sets, you can click on a command tab on the ribbon to view the commands grouped
under that command tab. Commands that display when you click the home tab on
the ribbon in word 2007 are shown as insert, home, page layout etc.
Command sets
A
command set is a collection of commands that are used for similar purposes. The
name of the command set is displayed just below the commands in the command
set. You can see in ribbon figure given above. The font command set present
under home tab on the ribbon is displaying the command such as font, font size,
bold, italic and underline etc. some command sets also contain galleries
besides commands. A gallery displays visual option that can be applied to some
text or an object added to an office file.
Dialog box launcher
Commands
that exist in command set can also be accessed using the dialog boxes. These
dialog boxes can be opened by clicking on button known as dialog box launcher.
A dialog box launcher is present at the bottom right corner of a command set.
You can see a dialog box launcher at the bottom right corner of the font
command set. Clicking on this dialog box launcher will open a dialog box named
as font as you can see here.
Contextual tabs
Contextual
tabs or context sensitive tabs are the tabs that are not always visible on the
ribbon. They only appear when they are needed. The idea behind the presence of
these tabs is to prevent the ribbon from being overcrowded and also to keep the
commands away, which are used only occasionally. Contextual tabs appear on the
ribbon when you add or select some object such as an image, a table or a chart
on the file. These tabs appear to the right of the already existing tabs on the
ribbon.
Key tips
Key
tips are the small indicators that display keyboard shortcuts, to the commands
available on the office 2007 user interface on them. The keyboard shortcut
displayed by a key tip may be a single letter, a number or a combination of
letters and numbers. Pressing the Alt key
from the keyboard displays key tip on the office button. You can press any key
tip, displaying on a tab name from the keyboard to make the key tips appear on
the commands present on that tab. You can go back to the previous state by pressing
Esc key from the keyboard.
Mini toolbar
A
mini toolbar containing the most commonly used text formatting commands, which
appear on the screen when you select some text in an office file and move the
mouse pointer over the selected text. It helps us to quickly access the
commands that you most often need while working with an office program. A mini
toolbar also appears just above or just below the context menu when you right
click somewhere inside an office file.
Live preview
Live
preview is a new and exciting feature introduced in office 2007 that enables us
to see the outcome of selecting an option from a drop down menu or a gallery
prior to actually selecting the option. It makes us free from repeatedly trying
options from a drop down menu or a gallery until you gets the option that you
actually want to use.
Introduction of Microsoft Word 2007
In
today’s technology driven world, activities such as creating, managing and
maintaining document have become integral part of our day to day business. The
documents serve as a resource of information for an organization and help in
business activities such as decision making, planning, and knowledge sharing
and information analysis. Today even a small organization needs to create and
manage documents. You can use a word processor to cater to your needs of
creating and managing documents required for your day to day business. A word
processor is a software application that helps create, modify and save a
document electronically. When you create a document, you type some text into a
word processor or any similar software application and save it on the hard disk
of your computer. You can manage your documents by modifying or editing the
text in a word processor and printing it, if required.
The
main advantage of using a word processor over a conventional typewriter is that
in a word processor you can correct a typing mistake in the document without
making a complete new document. Similarly you can make any other changes such
as structuring the paragraphs and sentences in the documents. With a word
processor you can send the document electronically across the world within few
second. Finally when all the changes to the documents are made, you can get the
print out of the document by sending it to a printer. Microsoft word is an
example of word processor application. MS Word is very popular word processor
in use today. You can create PDF (Portable Document File) and save into it.
Applying basic
formatting
Working with style
One
of the aims of introducing Microsoft word 2007 was to help the user spend less
time on formatting and more time on writing. You can now format your text
quickly and easily giving a consistent look and feel throughout the document
with style. A style is a very powerful means of defining how the text in your
document should look like. Once styles are defined, you just need to apply them
on your text. The default styles in world include heading 1, heading 2, heading
3 and normal. With the help of style you need not have to choose options from
any dialog box but just choose a style from the quick style gallery or through
style window.
Using Find, Replace
and Go to
You
can use the Find option to search
the word in the whole document and Replace
option to replace one by one all the occurrences of the text in the document
with some other suitable word. The Go to
option helps in locating the page you want to view in the whole document
provided you know the page number. Let us follow the steps to perform these
operations as given below.
Printing word document
You
cannot say that after the introduction of computers the paper work has been
eliminated. We still depend on hard copies of documents. More over printing
makes reading easier.
Working with graphics
and tables
Introduction
The general notion that we people have
about word processors is that they are used mostly for adding, manipulating and
formatting of textual data. Apart from this word processors can be used for
adding tables and graphical objects in textual documents. Word 2007 offers
numerous extensive new features and tools to add tables and graphical objects
such as Quick Tables and Smart Arts. Quick Tables are some preformatted tables
styles that are available in Quick Tables gallery and Smart Arts are easily editable
and formatted diagrams divided into different categories such as list, process,
cycle and hierarchy.
Working with basic
graphical objects
You
can use broadly two types of graphical objects to enhance your document-
drawing objects and pictures. Drawing objects include diagrams, curves, lines
and shapes such as rectangles and circles. Pictures refer to graphics created
from another file such as bitmap image, photographs and clip arts. You can use
the Illustrations group under the Insert tab to add graphical objects to your
document. Let’s now learn to insert graphical object in a document.
Inserting a Smart Art
The
newly introduced smart Art graphics feature of Microsoft office 2007 combines’
text, predefined shapes and in some cases arrows and images into a diagram. The
output that you get is a professional looking graphic object that can add value
to your document. You can use a Smart Art to illustrate concepts under seven
main categories: list, process, cycle, Hierarchy, relationship, matrix and pyramid.
This feature helps you in creating a wide range of presentation graphics.
Working with Table
Tables
organize and present related information in an organized manner. With the help
of tables you can format the text, structure the document, and add a little bit
of professional look to your document. You can create a table using different
methods which are discussed in the following section.
Designing and
reviewing a word document
Introduction
For
a professional looking document, it is very important that the writer should
concentrate on the designing aspects of the document by setting page margin,
inserting page breaks and page orientation etc.
Inserting Header and
Footers
Headers and footers
are identifiers that appear at the top and bottom of a document respectively
Changing
page setup
As
you can change the presentation aspect of a document by making the text bold,
italics and underlines in the same way you can change the page setup option as
well
Applying Themes
You
can very easily format your document giving it a professional and modern look
by applying theme on it.
Spelling and Grammar
check
Proof
reading your document refers to examining the text against errors and
grammatical mistake. Always make it a practice to proof read your document before
handing it over to others. Microsoft Word comes with a number of tools to
ensure that your document is nearly letter perfect. The tool available for
checking spelling mistakes is called spelling and grammar checker.
Tracking changes
within your document
When
many people revise a document, it becomes really difficult to figure out
exactly who made revisions to what. And most importantly it becomes impossible
to know how the first draft looked like. In order to know the changes done to
document’s text, Microsoft word offers the Track Changes command. When you turn
on this command, any changes to the document are recorded in a different color
for each reviewer.
Book mark
Footnote and Endnote
Footnotes and endnotes
are used in printed documents to explain, comment on, or provide references for
text in a document
