Microsoft Office 2007 -- it’s completely revamped. There are no drop-down menus; instead, you select a tab on the Ribbon when you want to access a feature or tool. Once a tab is selected, the choices underneath the tab change, depending on what you’ve selected. [See Image 1] [See Image 2] Look at the first two images here to see how extreme the changes are. The first is Word 2007, the second PowerPoint 2007.
As you can see in the first image, Word’s Home tab offers access to the formatting icons for Bold, Italic, and Underline, as well as icons to create bulleted and numbered
lists. Beyond the new interface are new features; With text selected, you can hover the mouse over any style to see a preview of what the style will look like once applied. You no longer have to apply the style to see it. Live Preview is available in all of the Office applications.
Since you’ll likely spend most of your time under the Home tab, take another look at the first image. From the Home tab you can:
· Cut, copy, and paste
· Add bullets or numbered lists
· Apply bold, italic, and underline styles
· Add text highlighting and color
· Change alignment
· Work with Clipboard
· Indent
· Sort
· Apply styles
· Perform simple editing
· View changes before applying them by hovering the mouse over the desired style
Office Diagnostics is another new feature of Office 2007. It’s located in any Office application’s Options page. If something is off the mark in an Office application but nothing seems to be wrong with the computer, you can use this diagnostic to repair Office. [See Image 3]
All of the new Office applications also offer an easy way to locate files you’ve worked on recently. Just click the button in the top-left corner; your most recent files will appear in a list. And speaking of files, the default format for saving files in Office 2007 has changed too. Unfortunately, the new default file format is not backwards-compatible. That means if you save a file in Word 2007 using the default document format (.docx), people who use earlier versions of Office won’t be able to open it. It’s the same with other Office applications. In Excel, the new default file format has an .xlsx suffix. Again, this format is not compatible with earlier versions. If you know you’re going to be sharing files with users of earlier Office versions, make sure to change the default save option to a compatible option.
If you’re interested in learning more about Microsoft Office, stick around this site. I’ll be adding articles almost daily.
Also see: Installing Microsoft Office 2007 – Options, Minimum Requirements, and Installation