Use Office 2007 More Effectively

These nine Office 2007 tricks will help you become more adept at using the powerful productivity suite.

When Microsoft released Office 2007 a year ago, many users welcomed the multitude of changes and upgrades that the company had introduced. The most significant change in Office 2007 was the impossible-to-miss ribbon--the super-toolbar that sits at the top of the window in Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint. Mastering the ribbon became many users' biggest challenge.

However, Office 2007 also has a slew of lesser-known capabilities that are easy to overlook. The following nine tips for using the suite more effectively range across the core Office 2007 applications and work in all editions of Office 2007. Although these features don't enjoy the same buzz as the ribbon and the revamped user interface do, they can definitely help you increase productivity.

Works in: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

Though Office 2007 has been out for almost a year, many businesses have yet to start using it. And if you're collaborating with people who rely on an older version of Office, you won't be able to share documents, since older versions of Office can't open Office 2007 files. Fortunately, you can tell your Office 2007 applications to save in the time-honored Office 2003 formats.

The process is similar in every Office application. First, click the Office button (the circle with the Office logo that appears in the top-left corner of the window). At the bottom of the menu, choose the application's Options (for example, choose Word Options if you're configuring Word). A window will appear with the options that you can configure. In the list on the left, choose the Save group. Look for the drop-down named 'Save files in this format'; here's where you can choose the old-school Office 2003 format for your application. Click OK to make your change official.

You also have a solution if you're stuck on the other side--in other words, if you have Office XP or Office 2003 and you want to open a document created in an Office 2007 application. You can download Microsoft's free Office Compatibility Pack to give your older Office applications the ability to open the newer file formats.

Works in: Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, and Visio

Many business users often need to save a copy of their work in Portable Document Format, and Office 2007 adds a Save As PDF feature that performs the task. But this hidden gem isn't available unless you take extra steps to activate it. You can add the Save As PDF feature to all of your Office 2007 applications with one simple download from Microsoft.

Once you've installed the Save As PDF feature, you'll find it in the Office menu. To try it, click the circular Office button (in the top-left corner of the window) in whichever application you're using. Then choose the Save As, PDF or XPS command.

Works in: Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint

The Office 2007 ribbon, which groups functions into different tabs, is full of useful features. It's rather large, though, and it often hogs up a lot of space. Fortunately, you can temporarily clear it out of the way when you need the room (for example, when you have to work on a long Word document, or a data-packed Access database). Just double-click one of the tab titles that appear at the top of the ribbon to collapse it down to a single line that shows only the tab names. Double-click a tab title again to make the ribbon reappear.

You can still work with the ribbon while it's collapsed. If you single-click a tab title, the ribbon will appear just long enough for you to click a button, after which it will slide obligingly out of the way. If you prefer to rely on keyboard commands, you can press the Alt key to pop the ribbon into sight temporarily, and then press the letter for the tab and command you want to activate. (For example, in Word you can press Alt, then R for the Review tab, and then S to reach the spelling checker.) Once you've chosen a command, the ribbon will disappear again.

Works in: Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, and Outlook

Formatting text is one of the most common tasks in any Office application. The ribbon can manage the task with ease, but you have a quicker alternative: the floating Office mini-bar.

To see the mini-bar in action, select some text. (This could be text in a Word document, in an Excel spreadsheet cell, or in a rich text field in an Access database.) When you mouse over the selected text, you'll see a toolbar with buttons for changing the font, the text size, the text color, and a few other options. Making a selection here saves you the effort of digging through the ribbon to find the same options.

Works in: Word

In Office 2003, you had to visit the menu to count the words in your current document. In the Office 2007 version of Word, the word count appears in the status bar and updates as you type. If you select a portion of your document, the word count will show two pieces of information: the number of words in the selection, and the word count of the entire document.

Works in: Word

Here's a tip that will impress many seasoned Office users. In a Word document, type Sticky Quote and then press F3. Your text will disappear, replaced by a floating pink box that looks like a sticky note.

This odd trick works because Sticky Quotes are one of Word's many Quick Parts, or commonly used building blocks. (For the full list of Quick Part names, choose the Insert tab, find the Text section, click Quick Parts, and then click Building Blocks Organizer.)

You might find several other useful ingredients in the list of prebuilt Quick Parts; for instance, in addition to the Sticky Quotes, you can find CONFIDENTIAL 1, which adds a watermark to the background of the current page that reads "CONFIDENTIAL" in large block letters. An even better trick, however, is to create your own.

To do so, select some content (anything from a single word to multiple paragraphs of formatted text and graphics) and press Alt-F3. The Create New Quick Part dialog box will appear. Here you can give your Quick Part a name and choose whether it should always occupy its own paragraph or page (or whether it should appear in the middle of the content you're currently typing). Once you've finished creating the Quick Part, you can insert it in any Word document by typing the name of your Quick Part and pressing F3.

Works in: Access

Access 2007 has plenty of features that make it an even more robust database than previous versions, but one of its most popular new features is one of its most minor: a new all-purpose search box that sits at the bottom of the window when you're looking at records in a table or form.

As you type in the search box, Access jumps to the next matching value. If you don't find what you're searching for on the first try, press Enter to skip to the next match. Yes, Access has a ton of more-powerful searching tools, but this one beats them all in speed and sheer convenience.

Works in: Outlook

Every e-mailer knows that a huge amount of important information gets lost amidst the vast expanses of Outlook folders. Fortunately, now you can dig it out quickly with Outlook's Instant Search feature.

To use it, simply pick any folder that holds sent or saved e-mail. At the top is an easy-to-miss search box. As you type a search term into the box, Outlook will begin scanning for matches. Outlook searches every part of the message for a match, including the sender and recipient e-mail addresses, the title, and the full message body.

You can narrow the search's focus by clicking the down arrow just to the right of the search box; doing so produces several boxes where you can fill in specific search criteria, such as the sender's e-mail address.

Outlook's Instant Search works with only one folder at a time, but you can conduct wider-ranging searches with categorized folders. To see some examples, browse to the Personal Folders\Search Folders group in the Outlook mail tree. Inside you'll see a folder named Large Mail (for searching messages with huge attachments) and another named Unread Mail (for searching messages marked as unread). These searches work no matter where the mail is stored.

Works in: Outlook

Outlook 2007 has gone category crazy. If you're working on different projects, dealing with different people, or just in need of a way to sort through a mass of e-mail, you can use Outlook categories to divide and conquer.

The easiest approach is to use one of Outlook's color categories. Just right-click an e-mail message and choose Categorize, then the color category. For example, if you choose Red Category, a large red square will appear next to the selected message.

You can use the colors to represent whatever you want. But if you want to file your e-mail in a logical manner, why not create your own categories? To do so, right-click a message and choose Categorize, All Categories. In the resulting Color Categories window, click New. Pick a name and color for your category. You can also select a shortcut key for quickly placing e-mail messages into your new category.

Matthew MacDonald is the author of Excel 2007: The Missing Manual and Access 2007: The Missing Manual, published by O'Reilly Media.

Matthew MacDonald