Your good neighbor
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Sunday 07 September 2008
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Your good neighbor |
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Sunday 07 September 2008
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From TNPC issue #4.11... 
Office XP: What's New in Wordby Lee HudspethMay 31, 2001 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. 2. Customize the Places Bar -- Put your own drives or folders
here, rearrange them, and rename them. 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. 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. 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. 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! 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. 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. 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. 11. Enhanced searching features -- Basic and Advanced search
modes can now rummage around Web Folders and Outlook folders in
addition to traditional file folders. 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. 13. Clear formats -- Sets the selected text back to Normal. 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. 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. 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. 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". 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. 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: My overall grade of Word XP's new features: 7.7 out of 10. My personal top five new features: 1. Smart tags Microsoft Office XP Standard Upgrade, $229 & free shipping: Microsoft Office XP Professional Upgrade, $299 & free shipping: Microsoft Office XP Developer Edition Upgrade, $549 & free
shipping: Microsoft Office XP Professional, $549 & free shipping: Note: If you have a Microsoft Office consulting project,
development idea, macro quandary, or are just plain stuck trying
to get something--easy or hard--done with Microsoft Office, WE
CAN HELP YOU! This is what we do for a living: handle Office
projects of all shapes and sizes. You can reach our software
consultants by email 24x7 at:
TNPC Hot Tips:
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© 2000-2005 by Dan Butler.
All Rights Reserved.
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