Stuck with Word 2007?: 3 Steps to Help You Get Something Done Now

OK, the first thing that drove me nuts in Word 2007 was this: where the heck are my Preferences or Options or whatever you want to call them? Some applications have them here, some there, but I usually spot them pretty easily in some Tools sort of menu. In Office, I installed it and didn't read any manual (who does that?) or anything else and just tried to go to work on a document. Right away I knew I needed to change some options, but where are they? After playing a bit I was frustrated and wanted to close windows and couldn't even find the way to that except the X in the upper right which still did some odd things on dual monitors. Well, here you go: In Word 2007 click that weird colorful circle thing at the top left (see screen shot one) and look way down in the bottom right and you'll see an Options choice and and Exit choice. Hurray! Now you can at least get into Options and do some things you might want to do.

2. Creating Keyboard Shortcuts to the Things you Do Often and Figure the Rest of this Crazy Thing Later:

Next for me was wanting some shortcuts to things that I knew how to do so I could get to work and figure out the rest of this nutty interface later. After some fumbling and finding that Microsoft Option choice I mentioned above (by clicking the weird color circle)To do that, click the Microsoft Office button and choose Word Options. Click Customize and then Keyboard Shortcuts at the bottom of that window. This is great because if you don't feel like puttering but you need some quick keyboard combos that will get you to the things you used to do easily in Office XP or other, you can choose those from the Categories and Commands sections and make your own keyboard selections to make it happen! If you follow my third screenshot, you'll see that you'll choose Customize (from the Word Options screen) and then second you'll look at the bottom where Keyboard shortcuts: Customize is kind of hidden away. (Was it supposed to be a secret?) The, third, you'll make your choices from the many varieties in the custom-keyboard menu. After you assign your commands to your shortcut keys, click OK to close the Word Options dialog box. Test your shortcut keys to make sure they work.

3. The Quick Access Bar is Kind of Cool - But What is it and How Do I Use it Right NOW?

The Quick Access Toolbar that appears to the right of the funny little colorful circle thing we've mentioned in the upper-left corner of MS Office 2007. For people who used Word XP a lot (like I did) this looks funny and is confusing to use. I have begun to find that those little buttons in that Quick Access Toolbar would be useful if they were the ones I wanted. Well, you can customize them. It usually displays Save (the familiar disk icon though by now you are unlikely to be saving to a floppy disk) and the Undo and Redo options. I don't mind that too much personally, especially Save and Undo, both of which I use quite a bit. I just have to get used to them. I don't use Redo very often, though, and I do use some other stuff more. To customize this, click the arrow to the right of the Quick Access Toolbar. Now add a command by choosing from the drop down list of options that will appear. Click the item you want to add and it is added.For my purposes, I took out Redo and kept Save and Undo. Then I added New, Open, Insert Hyperlink, Word Count and Print Preview. I then used the up and down arrows to put them in the order I wanted them.

These three tips may not get you using all of the many features and add-ons and um, improvements. ahem.... Hopefully, these three tips WILL help you if your IT guy at work just stuck this program on your computer and you have a deadline, or if you just installed it yourself and then went "AHHH!" when you saw it. Either way, try these tips and get to know it a little, because I bet those of us that are stuck with Office for now will also be stuck with 2007 for awhile to come. Good luck!