Moving to Word 2007

Many users have expressed their pain and frustration in making the transition from their previous version of Word to Word 2007. Users who were able to proficiently perform nearly all of their tasks unexpectedly found themselves barely knowing how to do a few simple tasks in a new unfamiliar user interface. If you are such a user, you would presumably prefer getting your work done than spending your time re-learning how to do things that you already know how to do quickly and easily from your experience with a previous version of Word.

There are some ways to make the transition to Word 2007 a little smoother. For one thing, you should know that any sequence of keys that you pressed to open something from a Word 2003 menu still works in Word 2007. You can still press Alt with the letter that opened one of the Word 2003 menus followed by the appropriate letter for one of the menu items to activate that menu item. For example, pressing Alt+T and then O will open the Options dialog box just like in Word 2003. If you remember such sequences, you can still use them.

Also, the keyboard shortcuts that performed tasks in Word 2003 still work in Word 2007. For example, Ctrl+S still saves your document, Ctrl+A still selects all, etc. Using keyboard shortcuts always had the advantage that they freed you from reaching for your mouse and from looking through menus and now the Ribbon.

Although the Ribbon also replaces the toolbars from previous versions, Word 2007 provides a customizable Quick Access Toolbar and contextual toolbars that appear, for example, when text is selected.

There is a lot of information on the web to help you with this transition. For example, Microsoft has provided the Interactive: Word 2003 to Word 2007 Command Reference Guide. Another useful guide is the Word 2007 Cheat Sheet provided by the USC Marshall School of Business, which shows the Word 2007 equivalents for everything in the previous menus in one PDF file. These are just two helpful examples. There are many more.

The Quick Access Toolbar

Word 2007 also provides a customizable toolbar, called the Quick Access Toolbar, which displays a fixed set of commands, which you can configure, regardless of which tab is currently displayed. By default, the Quick Access Toolbar is located at the top next to the Microsoft Office Button and contains the Save, Undo, and Redo commands.

You can move the Quick Access Toolbar to another location closer to your work area, and you can add buttons for commands on the Ribbon to it, as well as buttons for other commands, including macros. For more information about changing the location of the Quick Access Toolbar and adding commands from the Ribbon to it, see the Microsoft help topic Customize the Quick Access Toolbar.

In addition, you can also use the following procedure to add a command the Quick Access Toolbar.

To add a command to the Quick Access Toolbar

1. Right-click the Quick Access Toolbar and then click Customize Quick Access Toolbar.
2. In the Word Options dialog box, verify that Customize is selected.
3. In the Choose commands drop-down list, select type class of commands from which you want to add a command.
4. In the list that appears, select the command that you want to add to the Quick Access Toolbar.
5. Click the Add button.
6. If you want to select a different icon for the command, click Modify.
7. Click OK.

The file which stores the configuration of the Quick Access Toolbar for Word 2007 is called Word.qat. In Windows XP, the .qat toolbar files for all the Office 2007 programs are stored in the following location:

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Office

In Windows Vista, the .qat toolbar files for all the Office 2007 programs are stored in the following location:

C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office

AutoText

In Word 2007, the AutoText feature from previous versions has become part of the Building Blocks feature, which includes numerous galleries of building blocks, one of which is called Quick Parts. There is also an AutoText gallery, but this name may have been included only to help users familiar with this name from previous versions. There are many predefined building blocks, and you can add your own to any of the galleries, but only you define the Quick Parts and AutoText entries.

To create a new Quick Part or AutoText entry

1. Select the text that you want to be saved as a Quick Part or AutoText entry and press Alt+F3, just as you did in Word 2003 for AutoText entries.
2. In the dialog box that opens, change the name to something short and memorable, notice that the Gallery is set to Quick Parts by default, and click OK.

   Before you click OK, you can change Quick Parts to AutoText in the Gallery dropdown list. This change is not necessary, and if you do make this change, your entry will not be displayed in the list of Quick Parts that you can display by clicking Quick Parts in the Text group of the Insert tab on the Ribbon.

Now, to insert your Quick Part or any Building Block from any gallery into a document, just type its name, and press F3, as you did for AutoText entries in Word 2003.

You can manage your Quick Parts from the Ribbon. On the Insert tab, in the Text group, click Quick Parts. This opens a list that includes the names and content of the Quick Parts that you have defined (but not the building blocks that you assign to the AutoText gallery) and an option to open the Building Blocks Organizer.

In the Building Blocks Organizer, you can group your building blocks in the list according to gallery by clicking the Gallery column heading. This will sort your building blocks according to the name of their gallery. If you assign your AutoText entries to the AutoText gallery, they will now be grouped together. Your Quick Parts will also be grouped together.

Disabling Automatic Completion of Dates

If you want to disable the appearance of pop-ups for the automatic completion of dates, etc., there is no option in the user interface to turn that off. Instead, press Alt+F11. In the Visual Basic Editor, press   Ctrl+G, which opens the Immediate pane. Then, in the Immediate pane, type Application.DisplayAutoCompleteTips = False, and press Enter.

Managing the List of Recent Documents

Documents that have been deleted or moved to a different location are not removed automatically from the list of recent documents. However, you can manually remove all the files that no longer exist from the list. To do this, click the Microsoft Office Button, click Word Options, click Advanced, go about half-way down the list of options, set the number in Display this number of recent documents to 0, and click OK. At this point the list will be empty. Then go back and set the number to its previous value or to another number that you prefer, click OK, and click the Office Button again. The files that still exist will be restored to the list.

If you want to list empty the list completely, follow the same procedure, but close Word before you click the Office Button again to see the restored list. You can also empty the last n files in the list by setting the number to the current number minus n instead of to 0.