Today, May 31, 2001, marks the official launch date for Microsoft's latest suite: Office XP. Most of you will want to upgrade to Office XP. No, I don't own any Microsoft stock, honest! The real value in Office XP is its overall usability, which is well represented by its impressive new feature set. To tell you *exactly* what I mean, I'm embarking on a series of articles to evaluate every new feature in Office XP. And I'll grade each one so you can make your own upgrade decision.
In this article I cover Word 2002's new features, describe each one briefly, and grade each one on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 = useless and 10 = top-notch.
Some of these features also apply to Word's sibling applications but due to space constraints I'll cover that overlap in future articles. Whenever describing any Office feature, regardless of the version, 90% of the time there are at least two different ways to get there through the UI. Due to space constraints, in this article I focus on the UI techniques that I think are the most "discoverable."
Note: We didn't do it, honest! We didn't have anything to do with the dizzying array of names Microsoft uses for Office XP, also known as Office 2002, and in some circles Office 10 (this name is rarely used). If you run any Office XP application--for example, Word--and click Help, About, the resulting dialog box will display the text "Microsoft Word 2002 (10.xxxx.yyyy)". So... XP = 2002 = 10. That's the formula.
1. Digitally sign a document -- Digitally sign a document to
prove it was you--or your company--who created it. You need a
digital certificate to actually sign a document yourself,
although you can always see who, if anyone, signed a document.
UI: Tools, Options, Security, click Digital Signatures, and add
your digital certificate.
Grade: 7 (nice feature, but a tad hard to discover)
2. Customize the Places Bar -- Put your own drives or folders
here, rearrange them, and rename them.
UI: File, Open (or Save or Save As), right-click on the Places
Bar, pick commands from the list. Also (and this is the awkward
part), select the *parent* of a drive or folder object in "Look
in" then select the desired object, click Tools, Add to "My
Places".
Grade: 7 (nice feature, but the add operation is hard to
discover)
3. New from existing document -- Create a new document using an
existing document as a template. Before Word XP you could only do
this with a macro or by right-clicking on a document in Windows
Explorer and clicking New.
UI: View, Task Pane, pick New Document from the Task Panes drop-
down list, click the "Choose document..." hyperlink under "New
from existing document".
Grade: 6 (works fine, but limited usefulness)
4. Task Pane -- a/k/a "side pane" in some circles, this pane
appears on the right margin at startup. It offers a raft of
often-used features: New Document, Clipboard, Search, Insert Clip
Art, Styles and Formatting, Reveal Formatting, Mail Merge, and
Translate.
UI: View, Task Pane.
Grade: 10 (cool, but I prefer keeping the pane turned off until I
need it: scroll to the very bottom of the pane and clear the
"Show at startup" check box)
5. Speech recognition -- I am fortunate to not have RSI and to be a fast, accurate typist. So I'm personally not very motivated by this aspect of Word XP (read: I haven't tested it). No doubt it will be a compelling feature for some people, but as of right now I can't vouch for its implementation. I'll review it in a subsequent article. If you're going to use it, Microsoft recommends a high quality headset mike with gain adjustment, and Word won't let you install it unless you've got a 400MHz or faster processor and at least 128MB of RAM.
6. Handwriting recognition -- Write by hand inside Word with your
mouse or via other standard handwriting input devices. This
feature doesn't have the stringent system requirements of speech
recognition. There's a writing pad, a drawing pad, a "write
anywhere" feature, and on-screen keyboard and symbol tools. You
must do a custom setup to install it: you'll find it hiding under
Office Shared Features then Alternative User Input.
UI: The Language bar isn't an Office toolbar, its part of the
operating system.
Grade: 6 (limited usefulness except perhaps for some handheld-
stored handwriting, but maybe I'm missing something; let me know
if you have a good use for this feature)
7. Reveal formatting -- A detailed display of font, paragraph,
and section formatting attributes of the selected text. (In Word
2000 and prior you could get a terse approximation of this by
selecting Help, What's This, and pointing to some text.) Plus you
can make format changes from right inside the task pane!
UI: View, Task Pane, Reveal Formatting.
Grade: 10
8. Format consistency checker -- Word can now make judgments
about how consistent a document's formatting is. If it sees an
inconsistency while you are typing it adds a blue wavy underscore
to the suspect text. When you right-click you get a variety of
options to choose from. Fastest way to see it work is to create a
list of at least two paragraphs, then set one's font size to be
twice that of the other.
UI: Tools, Options, Edit, check "Keep track of formatting" and
"Mark formatting inconsistencies" check boxes.
Grade: 4 (the success rate I've seen is spotty, and the internal
rules aren't easily discovered; see my supplemental link at the
end of this article)
9. Outlining toolbar tweaks -- Some new and convenient changes
here. An "Outline Level" drop-down, a "Show Level" drop-down, a
handy "Promote to Heading 1" button, and some table of contents
buttons.
UI: View, Outline.
Grade: 7
10. Word Count toolbar -- Authors and editors around the world
rejoice. You no longer have to click Tools, Word Count, and wait
for the dialog. It's now as simple as leaving the toolbar on and,
when you want a count, click its Recount button.
UI: View, Word Count.
Grade: 10 (I *never* turn this toolbar off)
11. Enhanced searching features -- Basic and Advanced search
modes can now rummage around Web Folders and Outlook folders in
addition to traditional file folders.
UI: View, Task Pane, Search (or File, Open, Tools, Search).
Grade: 8
12. Office Clipboard and Paste Options -- The Office Clipboard
now resides in the Task Pane, and holds more stuff (24 items).
When you paste, a Paste Options action button automatically
appears at that location and sagely offers you these options:
Keep Source Formatting, Match Destination Formatting, Keep Text
Only, and apply Style or Formatting.
UI: View, Task Pane, Clipboard (or Edit, Office Clipboard).
Grade: 10
13. Clear formats -- Sets the selected text back to Normal.
UI: Edit, Clear, Formats.
Grade: 8
14. Multiple unconnected selections -- Excel has long supported
the selection of multiple but unconnected ranges (sometimes
called discontinuous or noncontiguous ranges). Now Word does too.
UI: Make your first selection, then press and hold Ctrl, make
your second (unconnected) selection, ad infinitum. See also Edit,
Find, note the new "Highlight all items found in" check box/drop-
down. Cool.
Grade: 10
15. In-place language translation -- The UI looks cool, the idea
is promising, it works for single words, but it doesn't work for
multiple-word phrases. You must do a custom setup to install each
translation dictionary: Office Shared Features, Proofing Tools,
French, English-French Translation, repeat as needed for other
languages.
UI: View, Task Pane, Translate (or Tools, Language, Translate).
Grade: 5 (this would be an 8 if it worked with multiple-word
phrases)
16. Smart tags -- A smart tag is an intelligent hyperlink that
recognizes a data structure (like human names, addresses, phone
numbers, stock ticker symbols, airport codes, and so on) and
supports actions based on the data type. For example, type in
Fred Smith and a smart tag action button appears; when clicked
you get these choices: Send Mail, Schedule a Meeting, Open
Contact, Add to Contacts, Insert Address, etc.
UI: to activate select Tools, AutoCorrect Options, Smart Tags,
and check "Label text with smart tags" and "Show Smart Tag
Actions buttons".
Grade: 10 (my #1 favorite Office XP feature)
17. AutoCorrect smarts -- Two new features. First is "don't fire
on retype"... when AutoCorrect fires you now have the option to
tell it to stop making that correction in the future, right from
the AutoCorrect Options button. Second, multi-word corrections,
e.g., type "wh ydid" and Word corrects it to "why did".
UI: hover over the corrected word with the mouse (or click in
it), then touch the purple bar beneath the head of the word,
click the AutoCorrect Options button's down-arrow and choose Stop
Automatically Correcting "<word>".
Grade: 8 (great features, but "don't fire on retype" is a bit
hard to discover)
18. Reviewing -- Plenty of good changes. View, Markup to quickly
toggle the display of markups. New Reviewing toolbar controls:
Display for Review drop-down, Show drop-down, Reviewing pane that
categories all changes; plus balloons in margins to highlight
markup elements.
UI: See the centralized Reviewing toolbar and Tools, Options,
Track Changes.
Grade: 10
To be continued in the next issue. Meantime, to take a peek at my
list of the remaining new features, and get additional
supplemental information about Word 2002, see:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/411/tr.cgi?lee1
My overall grade of Word XP's new features: 7.7 out of 10.
My personal top five new features:
1. Smart tags
2. Word Count toolbar
3. Task Pane
4. Office Clipboard and Paste Options
5. Reveal Formatting
Microsoft Office XP Standard Upgrade, $229 & free shipping:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/411/tr.cgi?lee2
Microsoft Office XP Professional Upgrade, $299 & free shipping:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/411/tr.cgi?lee3
Microsoft Office XP Developer Edition Upgrade, $549 & free
shipping:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/411/tr.cgi?lee4
Microsoft Office XP Professional, $549 & free shipping:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/411/tr.cgi?lee5
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