Laptops All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies- P32 pptx

Advancing Your Microsoft Office 2007 Functions As part of the Microsoft Office 2007 enhancements, several important new features extend across most of the programs in the suite, includin

Advancing Your Microsoft Office 2007 Functions 284

Believe it or not, some even more complex wildcard commands are in the word processor’s help system You can also use parentheses to group searches to narrow down the possibilities even more precisely

Advancing Your Microsoft Office 2007 Functions

As part of the Microsoft Office 2007 enhancements, several important new features extend across most of the programs in the suite, including Microsoft Word 2007, Microsoft Excel 2007, and Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 I describe them here because most users begin with a word processor, but keep them

in mind for all your work if you’re lucky enough to run the latest version of Office on your laptop

✦ Microsoft Office Diagnostics This utility includes diagnostic tests that

may help determine why one or more components of Microsoft Office (or other programs running under Windows) are crashing your system

or otherwise becoming annoying For more details, see Book X

✦ Program Recovery The Office 2007 components are better able to

prevent the loss of work when a program closes abnormally (Microsoft happy-talk for “crashes”) The latest version of Office is set up to attempt to recover as many elements of the program’s state at the moment of a crash As an example, if you had several files open when your laptop took an electronic dive, after a reboot Office tries

to come back with those same files open

The first thing you should do when you create any type of file is give it a name and store a copy of it; this allows your software program to store temporary backups of the file as you work on it and makes it much easier to recover from a crash

✦ Merging spelling checker Several of the spelling checker options for

Microsoft Office programs have been made global That means settings or

options that you chose in one of the programs applies to all other soft-ware in the suite Examples of this include assignment of a non-standard

or foreign-language dictionary for use in all programs You can also apply

an exclusion dictionary across more than one program; exclusion

diction-aries allow the spelling checker to find words you want to avoid using in

your dictionary Excluded words might be ones you feel are improper or are disallowed in your personal or institutional style guide The spelling checker has been enhanced to find some (but not all) contextual spelling

errors If you type Put this book their, all of those words are spelled cor-rectly but the word you want to use is there, not their The latest version

of contextual spell checking works with documents written in English, German, and Spanish

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Formatting Files in Word 2007

Consider new ways the computer can structure the file that contains the

document itself Unfortunately, this is confusingly called a file format Here,

format refers to the file itself and not its contents.

Open XML file formats

Microsoft Office 2007 presents a new set of file formats for storing work In a few words: The new file formats are more compact (Compared to previous formats, they require less space on a disk — with a potential reduction of as much as 75 percent — to hold the same amount of information.) They also offer some advanced features for power users

The new file format is called Microsoft Office Open XML, and it was released along with Microsoft Office Word 2007, Microsoft Office Excel 2007, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 According to Microsoft, the advantages of XML include the following:

✦ Compactness Files are automatically compressed or zipped, made as

much as 75 percent smaller in some cases This saves disk space for stor-age and reduces the amount of time required to send files by e-mail, over networks, or over the Internet When you open a file, it automatically unzips; when you re-save a file, it automatically zips again

✦ Improved recovery from damage Files are structured in a modular

design to keep different data components separate from each other in the file In theory, this means that if one component — a graphic, chart,

or table, for example — becomes corrupt, you can open and use the rest of the file

✦ Enhanced privacy Personal information and business-sensitive

information, such as author names, comments, tracked changes, and file paths can be easily identified and removed with a utility called Document Inspector

✦ Improved security against macro viruses Files saved using the

default x suffix (such as docx for Word, xlsx for Excel, and pptx for

PowerPoint) can’t contain Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros

and XLM macros Only files whose filename extension ends with an m

(such as docm, xlsm, and pptm) can contain macros

That’s the good news, and if you’re working by yourself or exchanging files

with others who use the same new file formats, you’ve no good reason not to

use the new technology The not-quite-so-good news is that if you’re sending your files to someone who’s using yesterday’s formats, you have to convert the files

Controlling Microsoft Word from the Keyboard 286

Converting Word 2007 files

It’s no big deal to get and use the compatibility pack to change over newer files to make them useable on an older machine Or you can save your files

in the older file format before you send them to an old-school user The only disadvantage is that some advanced features embedded in a file created in the Office 2007 versions of Microsoft programs may not be available to users

of earlier software Office 2007 includes a compatibility checker that exam-ines files saved in an older file format to see if any features are unsupported; you are advised of any potential problems and allowed to remove the advanced features before continuing with a retro-save

Microsoft offers the free Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats You can install this conversion tool on systems running older versions of Word; it allows them to open and use files saved with the DOCX filename extension Go to www.microsoft.com and search for Office Compatibility Pack

By default, files created in components of Microsoft Office 2007 are saved

in XML format with new filename extensions that add an x or m to the extensions The x signifies an XML file that has no macros, and the m

signifies an XML file that does contain macros

The 2007 version of Office happily accepts documents created with any current version of Word, including Microsoft Office Word 2003, Word

2002, or Word 2000 The program automatically turns on something called Compatibility Mode; you’ll see that indicated in the document window’s title bar (at the top of the screen)

Compatibility Mode ensures that — until and unless you convert the old format file to a new XML file — no new or enhanced features in Office Word

2007 are available This ensures that you don’t introduce a feature that the original author (or others using older versions of Word) can’t use

Controlling Microsoft Word from the Keyboard

It’s not just that some people learned to use computers in the days before the coming of the mouse (although it’s sometimes hard to teach an old cog new tricks) The fact is that the fastest way to accomplish a command is

to keep your hands on the keyboard rather than lifting them off and moving

a mouse, spinning a trackball, or piddling with a pointing stick

All the keyboard commands in Tables 1-5 through 1-16 are things you can accomplish by going to one or more menus or windows within Microsoft Word or the Windows operating system For many users, the best decision

is to combine the two routes to success: Memorize a few of the most com-monly used keyboard commands and use the mouse for the remainder

Book IV Chapter 4

Table 1-5 Major Commands Using Function Keys

Get Help or go to Microsoft Office online web site F1 Start context-sensitive Help or Reveal formatting Shift + F1

Insert an AutoText entry after program displays suggestion F3

Go to the next pane or frame; Switch between F6 Help pane and Word

Find the next misspelling or grammatical error; Check Alt + F7 Spelling as You Type check box must be selected on

the Spelling & Grammar tab

Extend a selection or block; follow with arrow key Ctrl + Shift + F8

Switch between a field code and its result Shift + F9

Switch between all field codes and their results Alt + F9 Activate the menu bar; move through pull-down menus with Tab F10 Display a context-sensitive shortcut menu Shift + F10

(continued)

Controlling Microsoft Word from the Keyboard 288

Table 1-5 (continued)

Note that these shortcuts work with Microsoft Word 2003 and later versions; some earlier versions of the word processor won’t support all the shortcuts

Table 1-6 Additional Function Key Commands

Display Microsoft System Information Ctrl + Alt + F1

Update linked information in a source document Ctrl + Shift + F7

Table 1-7 Managing Documents and Web Pages

Create new document of the same type as the Ctrl + N current or most recent document

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Display shortcut menu for a selected item such as a folder Shift + F10

or file Use Tab to move between options or areas in the dialog box

Table 1-8 Editing and Moving Text and Graphics

Cut selected text to the Office Clipboard Ctrl + X

Cut to the Spike to collect a group of items for Ctrl + F3 pasting in one place

Table 1-9 Moving the Insertion Point

(continued)

Controlling Microsoft Word from the Keyboard 290

Table 1-9 (continued)

Jump to the location of the insertion point when the Shift + F5 document was last closed

Table 1-10 Formatting Characters

Change the formatting of characters (Font command, Format menu) Ctrl + D

Book IV Chapter 4

Format characters as small capitals Ctrl + Shift + K Apply subscript formatting (automatic spacing) Ctrl + = Apply superscript formatting (automatic spacing) Ctrl + Shift + + Change the selection to the Symbol font Ctrl + Shift + Q

Table 1-11 Formatting Paragraphs

Add or remove one line space preceding a paragraph Ctrl + 0

Remove a paragraph indent from left Ctrl + Shift + M

Table 1-12 Finding, Browsing, and Replacing Text

Find text, formatting, and special items Ctrl + F Repeat find (with Find and Replace window closed) Alt + Ctrl + Y Replace text, specific formatting, and special items Ctrl + H

Go to a page, bookmark, footnote, table, comment, graphic, Ctrl + G

or other location Switch between documents or sections of a document Alt + Ctrl + Z Open a list of browse options; use the arrow keys to select Alt + Ctrl + Home

an option, and then press Enter to use the selected option

Controlling Microsoft Word from the Keyboard 292

Table 1-13 Performing Actions on Text or Objects

Remove paragraph or character formatting Ctrl + spacebar

-Table 1-14 Changing the View

Expand or collapse subdocuments in a master document Ctrl + \

Table 1-15 Reviewing Documents

Close the Reviewing Pane if it is open Alt + Shift + C

Table 1-16 Previewing and Printing Documents

Switch in or out of print preview Alt + Ctrl + I Move around the preview page when zoomed in arrow keys

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Move by one preview page when zoomed out Page Up or Page Down Move to the first preview page when zoomed out Ctrl + Home

Move to the last preview page when zoomed out Ctrl + End

Finding key combos

You can find the key combinations by going back to that Symbol chart (You can even get to it without using the mouse; try pressing the Alt key, then the

I key, then the S key.) You’ll find two pages of information One presents the full range of available characters for the current font; behind it is a tab for Special Characters If you see the symbol you want on the special page, look for a simple shortcut key combination like Alt + Ctrl + R for ® Otherwise, look for the symbol on the full listing; when you find it highlight it and then look the preassigned Shortcut key at the bottom of the table For example, the keyboard shortcut for the 1⁄4symbol is Alt + 0188

The trick here is to use the numeric keypad of your laptop to enter the character Turn on Num Lock, hold down the Alt key, type the number com-bination using the numeric keypad, and then release Alt Voila! You have earned a 1⁄4

Some characters are more complex to invoke than others For example, some non-English characters require you to enter a number first and then (without an intervening space) type a key combination like Alt + X For example, to get this interesting character, ¶, I entered 0119 and followed it immediately with Alt + X

Where’s the Num Lock on a laptop? Well, you’re going to have to find it for yourself, since the manufacturer could have placed it almost anywhere On

my newest machine, you turn on or off Num Lock by pressing the Fn key and then the F11 key (An older machine uses F9.) Then use the numeric keypad which is embedded in the keyboard amongst the characters on the right side (My new machine even has a shortcut to the shortcut; I don’t have to turn on and off the Num Lock All I have to do is press and hold Fn + Alt and then type the numbers on the numeric keypad.)

Tables 1-17 through 1-20 shows some of the more valuable special charac-ters and their standard keyboard shortcuts (which assumes that you have not changed the shortcuts by assigning them to a macro, something else you can do to speed the process) I’ve ordered them by function