And if you weren't privy to the Undo functionality, it could be scary applying styles without knowing what was going to happen. It was sort of a hunt-and-peck approach to formatting. If the resulting change wasn't what you expected, you would have to re-do these steps over and over again until you were satisfied. In Word 2003, you would select the text, navigate to the Style drop-down in the Formatting toolbar (or, if you were me, enable the Styles and Formatting task pane) and select a heading that looks right. Let's say you wanted to change a line of text to a heading style of some sort, but you weren't sure which one to use. But it's nice to see such a useful feature added to the word processor that basically everyone uses: Dubbed Quick Styles, this feature lets you preview how formatting changes will affect a document before you actually apply them. Lest anyone call me on this, I will give WordPerfect credit where it's due: They had this feature at least seven or eight years, and several product revisions, ago. I'm excited to see how people react to the new UI when Office 2007 finally ships publicly in early 2007. Better still, it's much, much easier to discover functionality you likely didn't know was in Office to begin with. My feeling is that this new user interface is going to make Office experts out of a lot of people, since it's so easy to find what you need know. So if I want to bring up the Word Countĭialog, ALT + T + W still works. You type (see below), but it also supports all the classic Word Word 2007-finally!-displays a live word count in the status bar as But the reality is that I moved very naturally into the new way of doing things, while relying on certain legacy keyboard commands-love that, by the way-to get work done the way I'm accustomed to. One thing I was concerned about early on was that the new user interface would require a lot of training. Suffice to say that it works, and it works well. In part one of this review, I discussed the new user interface in depth, so there's no reason to beat it death here again. Here are my favorite new features in Word 2007. It's an alien landscape, vaguely familiar and yet disturbingly different. In their place are useful but oh-so-unusual ribbons, ribbon groups, galleries, and the Mini Toolbar. Gone are the familiar toolbars and my beloved Styles and Formatting task pane. The trauma is all the more jarring when the application has been as thoroughly overhauled as has Word 2007. It's hard to understate how traumatic it is to migrate to a new version of an application with which you are intimately familiar. New features in Microsoft Word 2007 Beta 2 It's the one that gets all the demo face-time. Two, it's the poster child for the new Office 2007 results-oriented user interface. There are two reasons for this: One, as a writer, I live in Microsoft Word, and I've been putting this one through its paces like no other Office 2007 applications. The first application I'll cover is Microsoft Word. Rather than present a review of all of the Beta 2 applications in a single document, I'll cover them one at a time at first, and then round up the stragglers at the end. And when people come to the site to read the "Office 2007 review"-you know, the only one they'll care about by that point-there won't be much too it.Īll this is a roundabout way of saying that it's time to get back on track. If I write too much about Office 2007's new features during the beta, I won't have much to do when the products are finalized, and my final review of Office 2007 will be the size of a pamphlet.
How to update office word 2007 software#
It's been a busy time.Īnother issue: One of the tough things about covering beta software is that you can walk a fine line between too little and too much information.
How to update office word 2007 windows#
And of course other things-like Windows Vista, primarily-get in the way too. It's just that, sometimes, these things take on a life of their own. The problem, of course, is that you haven't read them, at least not yet. And indeed, since that time, I've written a lot about the various client applications that make up Office 2007 Beta 2. My review of Office 2007 Beta 2, I thought I would be able to rattle off the subsequent several parts to that review pretty quickly.