Roaming Around The Word 2007 Ribbon

Welcome to the first video post of my Office 2007 video series. To skip this post and go directly to the video click here.

Word 2007 offers many new features and changes. It is a desktop application that allows you to create different types of documents. In fact, Microsoft has introduced a new type of document that we’ll talk about in another video.The biggest change Microsoft has made in their Office suite of applications is what’s known as the Ribbon. The menus and toolbars in previous versions of Word have been replaced by the Ribbon. So lets take a look.Tabs, Groups, Commands – Oh My!!

There are seven basic tabs (click image for larger view):

Home

Insert

Page Layout

References

Mailings

Review

View

As you can see, each tab has several groups. Within each group are commands. Commands include buttons, boxes and menus to enter and select different actions.

The Dialog Launcher

For each group, you can click on the dialog launcher. The dialog launcher will display more good stuff that pertains to each group.

There are additional tabs that appear when you work with specific functions of Word. For instance, when you insert a picture into your document, you will see the picture tab that contains different groups of actions pertaining to pictures.

The Mini Toolbar and Quick Access Toolbar – “Hey, I thought there weren’t anymore toolbars?”

When you highlight text, you will see a faded mini toolbar. Once you move your mouse to the mini toolbar it will become active.

The quick access toolbar allows you to add and remove commands.

You can hide and unhide the ribbon by double-clicking any tab on the ribbon.

Keyboard Shortcuts

For all the folks out there that love to use the keyboard as much as possible instead of the mouse, there are keyboard shortcuts that are revealed when you press the Alt key. You will see what are called “Badges” that display the keyboard shortcuts for different actions.

So there you go. Now go play!! Enter some text in Word 2007 and play with all the above topics.

Topics covered in this video:

• Tabs, Groups and Controls
• The Dialog Launcher
• Additional Tabs like the Picture Tab
• The Mini Toolbar
• The Quick Access Toolbar
• Hide and Unhide the Ribbon
• Keyboard Shortcuts

Click here to view an image of Word 2007.

Click here for the video that corresponds to this post.