If you’ve heard anything about the 2007 Microsoft Office system in advance, chances are that what you’ve heard about is the Microsoft Office system’s new user interface. The changes in the 2007 Office release will surprise many personal computer users who are familiar with the look and feel of the menus, toolbars, dialog boxes, and other controls that have defined the Microsoft Office user interface in previous releases. In the 2007 Office release, you’ll work with the Ribbon and tabs instead of menus. Instead of having to select multiple options in a dialog box to combine formatting for text, a background color, and line styles, you can work with new features, such as galleries and Live Preview, to select a set of formats all at once and see how your choice will appear in your document.
Why did Microsoft change the organization and appearance of the user interface that literally millions of people use to work with its software? Research and interviews that Microsoft conducted revealed that many people, including frequent users of Microsoft Office, often had to pause in their work because a menu command or a set of options weren’t easy to find or follow. The changes to the user interface are designed in part so that users can find commands they need more quickly. Commands are more visible, more of them are labeled, and their function is often represented more graphically. The second purpose behind the changes was to let users view more easily the results of their actions. You no longer have to open and close a dialog box several times to apply and modify a series of formatting changes. You can now browse through the items displayed in a gallery of styles and see more or less instantly how a particular item will affect your document’s appearance.
Note
Lovers of dialog boxes—and the level of detail and control they provide—should not lose heart. You can still get to the dialog boxes you need. For more information about how dialog boxes are used in the 2007 Microsoft Office system, see "Are You Missing Your Favorite Old Dialog Box?".
In this chapter, you’ll take a look at the 2007 Office release user interface. You’ll see examples of the new elements, including the Ribbon, galleries, and the Quick Access Toolbar. And you’ll learn more about the 2007 Office online Help, which is integrated into the user interface more thoroughly than in previous releases. We’ll start with a quick tour, some descriptions, and a comparison of the new elements with those that may be more familiar. Keep in mind that this chapter is a general orientation to the new user interface. You’ll learn more about how to perform specific tasks in the sections of this book that cover individual applications. Later parts of this book also often include more information about how the new user interface is represented in a specific application. For example, the user interface for Microsoft Office Access 2007 will be covered in detail in Chapter 26.
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In the 2007 Office release, the user interface changes affect Microsoft Office Access, Microsoft Office Excel, Microsoft Office Outlook, Microsoft Office PowerPoint, and Microsoft Office Word (the "big five"). (In Office Outlook, only item windows—the windows used for items such as an e-mail message or an appointment—include the user interface that is based on the Ribbon; the Outlook application window displays menus and toolbars.) Programs such as Microsoft Office InfoPath, Microsoft Office OneNote, Microsoft Office Publisher, Microsoft Office Visio, and Microsoft Office Project do not include the new user interface.
Before you learn in more detail about the main elements of the 2007 Microsoft Office system user interface, in this section you’re provided with an orientation to the elements’ names, appearance, and general functions. Figure 2-1 shows the application window for Word 2007, with several of the major elements labeled:
For the most part, menus and toolbars have been replaced by the Ribbon, the strip across the top of the user interface that displays commands. In Figure 2-1, notice that more of the commands are labeled, which helps avoid having to move from control to control scanning ScreenTips to find the command you’re looking for.
The Ribbon is made up of a series of tabs that contain commands, buttons, and galleries. (You’ll learn more about galleries shortly.) When you click a tab, the commands shown on the Ribbon change, with each tab representing a functional area of an application. Figure 2-1, for example, shows the Insert tab in Word 2007. You can use this tab to insert pictures, charts, headers and footers, and the like. Figure 2-2 shows the Slide Show tab in PowerPoint 2007.
The Quick Access Toolbar sits in the upper-left corner of the window (you can opt to show it below the Ribbon as well) and displays a set of frequently used commands, such as Save, Undo, and Redo. The commands vary from program to program. Later in the chapter, you’ll learn how to customize the Quick Access Toolbar to include the set of commands of your choice.
The Microsoft Office Button reveals a menu that contains the commands you use to work with a document as a whole. It’s essentially the old File menu. In many cases, the menu displays a brief description about menu items when you point to a command. Figure 2-3 shows the Microsoft Office Button menu in Excel 2007.
Figure 2-1. Command tabs, the Ribbon, the Quick Access Toolbar, and the Microsoft Office Button are among the new and updated elements of the 2007 Office release user interface.
Figure 2-3. The Microsoft Office Button opens a menu of commands that you use to work with a document and its properties.
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If you find yourself temporarily at sea using the tabs on the Ribbon, the Office online Help includes tables that cross-reference the commands on each tab to the menus on which the commands appeared in previous versions of Microsoft Office. For example, the Options command appeared on the Tools menu in Microsoft Office 2003, but it is now a command on the Office menu.
When you are composing a letter in Word or preparing a presentation in PowerPoint, you’ll most often work with the standard tabs and commands on the Ribbon. You’ll also use contextual tabs in addition to galleries and Live Preview. Examples of these elements are shown in Figure 2-4.
Figure 2-4. Tabs like the Table Tools tab in Word appear in context when you select an object. Many tabs provide galleries of formatting options that you can preview in your document.
Contextual tabs appear on the Ribbon when you select an object such as a chart, an image, or a table. These tabs contain commands that relate specifically to the type of object.
Galleries are sets of thumbnail graphics that represent a set of formatting options. You’ll see galleries of table styles, backgrounds, and slide layouts, for example.
Live Preview (which isn’t easy to show in a static illustration) is a feature that works together with the styles in a gallery to let you preview the results of formatting choices. To acquaint yourself with Live Preview (and see an example of a gallery as well), create a simple worksheet in Excel. Click the Page Layout tab on the Ribbon, and then click Themes. Move your mouse over the items in the gallery, and watch how the formatting is dynamically updated in the worksheet.
The Ribbon, galleries, and Live Preview introduce fairly dramatic changes, not only with respect to the appearance of the Microsoft Office system user interface, but also in the ways people work with the programs. You’ll see a few examples of this later in this chapter and many more examples throughout the rest of this book.
Two elements of the Microsoft Office user interface that many users are familiar with—the status bar and ScreenTips—have been updated as well, with the goals of providing better access to information and assistance with, and more control over, how you view the file you’re working with.
The status bar includes more controls and information, including a Zoom slider that you can use to adjust the magnification of a document. The change in magnification occurs as you move the slider, so you can pick the level you need to view the entire document or just an important section. The status bar also includes buttons for changing how you view your document—from Print Layout to Draft in Word, for example, or from Normal to Slide Show in PowerPoint. These controls appear at the right end of the status bar.
You can right-click the status bar to reveal the Customize Status Bar menu that lists all the items of information that you can check on the status bar. In Excel 2007, for example, you can select options to show the sum, average, and count of the cells you’ve selected on a worksheet. You can remove the Zoom slider and the view shortcuts, and you can also see information such as whether a document’s permissions have been restricted or whether the Caps Lock key is on.
ScreenTips still appear when you move the pointer over a command; however, they now provide not only the name of the command, but also a brief description of the command’s function. Many also contain a link to topics about the command in the Office online Help. Figure 2-5 shows an example of a new and improved ScreenTip.
Figure 2-5. ScreenTips provide more details about what a command can do. You can press F1 when you’re viewing a ScreenTip to open a Help topic about the command.
To reinforce what’s new in the 2007 Office system user interface, Table 2-1 summarizes the elements introduced in this section (as well as a few more) and compares them to the corresponding features in Microsoft Office 2003.
Table 2-1. Comparison of the 2007 Office Release to Microsoft Office 2003
User Interface Elements in the 2007 Office Release | Corresponding Office 2003 User Interface Element |
|---|---|
The Ribbon replaces menus and toolbars. The Ribbon is organized into tabs that represent the main functional areas of a program. When you select an object, such as a table or chart, contextual tabs appear on the Ribbon and provide commands relevant for the object. | Menus and toolbars |
Most of the task panes you worked with in Office 2003 are replaced by groups of controls in the Ribbon. The few task panes that remain provide additional content to users. In the 2007 Office release, each task pane is its own separate pane. You can display multiple task panes, and you can arrange the position of each independently. | Task panes |
Dialog boxes occur in the 2007 Office release, but they are not the main way of working with a program. The settings that users selected in dialog boxes, in many cases, are now assembled in gallery items so that users can see these options and choose the results they want. Dialog boxes can be opened from galleries or from the Ribbon for users who want to use them or when more advanced options are required. | Dialog boxes |
Context (or shortcut) menus are still available in the 2007 Office release. Shortcut menus can, like the Ribbon, display galleries to make formatting more efficient. | Context menus |
There is no change to keyboard shortcuts that use the Ctrl key in combination with another key, such as Ctrl+S for Save and Ctrl+B for Bold, or a single function key, such as F12 for Save As. The same shortcuts exist and continue to work as they did in Office 2003. | Office 2003 keyboard shortcuts |
The 2007 Office release also includes a keyboard shortcut system for the Ribbon using the Alt key. Shortcut keys are displayed on Ribbon controls and tabs. You can also use the Alt key sequences from Office 2003. These work only for features that were in Office 2003; features of the 2007 Office release use only the new keyboard shortcuts. | Office 2003 keyboard shortcuts |
In addition to displaying the task status, the status bar in the 2007 Office release displays information such as security warnings. Users can customize the status bar to show additional information about their document. | Status bar |
Let’s start looking in more detail at the underlying concepts and how you can use and customize the 2007 Office release user interface. We’ll start with the Ribbon and command tabs.