Office 2007: A Look into SmartArt

One thing I've come to learn about my boss and the people he present things to is that graphics is very important. People react better and communication becomes more clearly when you can express your ideas and concepts through graphics. Office 2007 makes this easier for you with its new SmartArt feature.

SmartArt a way to take your text and data and spice it up with coordinating color, shapes and prominence to give your presentation a nice visual effect. Now business diagrams and graphics are easy to create and even easier to understand.

SmartArt is available in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook and is accessed through the Insert tab. From there you can use special cases, add graphics and photos, and formatting the shapes to fit your desires. To give an example on how easy that it is, I will give you a tutorial on using the feature.

Start by opening Word 2007. Click the Insert tab and then the SmartArt icon from the Illustrations group. A 'Choose a SmartArt Graphic' dialog box then appears. From there you will have to choose a category of graphics on the left-hand side and then an actual graphic. Now all you have to do is add text, photos if you want, and customize the diagram to fit your vision.

SmartArt is a great tool to have for any Office 2007 program. Although you can only create a SmartArt graphic in one of the four programs I listed above, you can still cut and paste the graphic in any of the other Office applications. Or, you can even create SmartArt graphics from PowerPoint slides that you already have on your system.

SmartArt makes it easy to change layouts so that you can get the perfect visual effect that you want. It is a good idea to have some sort of concept for your project before starting one, but if you don't actually know exactly what you want before starting, you can always play with different layouts without having to constantly start over.

As a rule of thumb, each of the SmartArt categories serve a specific purpose. For example, if you want to create an organizational chart or decision tree, the Hierarchy type is for you. Along with Hierarchy, your choices includes; List, Process, Cycle, Relationship, Matrix, and Pyramid. Out of the seven different categories, there is a guarantee that you will find one that fits your graphic needs.

The Text Pane is a tool that makes adding and editing text inside your SmartArt graphic extremely easy. It appears on the left of the SmartArt graphic. As you add and edit text in the text, it appears in the graphic. If the type of graphic you chose only offers a fixed number of shapes, any additional text or images will not appear in the SmartArt graphic. The good thing is that the Text Pane alerts you of the text and images that does not appear with an red 'x' next to them and still make them available if you choose to switch layouts.

For looks, the quick and easy way to add color and other visual effects to the graphic is to use a SmartArt Style or Change Colors. These options are available under the 'Design' tab of the SmartArt Tools. While the SmartStyle allows you to apply shape fills, edges, shadows, line styles, gradients, and three-dimensional (3-D) perspectives, the Change Colors provides different color themes to be added to your graphics.

It is a good idea to get to know the new tools inside of Office 2007. If haven't upgraded yet, it is about time that you do.