Microsoft Vista and Office 2007 will begin to be installed on campus desktop computers in January 2008. The new Word 2007 offers powerful new functionality but the interface is a marked departure from the past. The comforting File-Edit menu has given way to a Quick Access toolbar and a set of “ribbons” that contain thematically related sets of Task Groups and Commands.
The good news is that the new application will permit you much more quickly to create more professional-looking documents. The bad news is that if you take advantage of Word 2007’s new features, you won’t be able to share your files with Word 2003 users unless they download a free compatibility pack.
Tip #1: How do I get started?
The office button in the upper left-hand corner contains many of the most important features that you will need. There, you will be able to open a NEW document. In fact, Word 2007 contains many interesting templates as well as an easier way to create your own customized templates.
You can store up to 50 recent documents and you can pin the documents you want to keep there.
Perhaps the most important new feature in the office button is SAVE to PDF. It’s quick and easy now to create, share, and view .pdf documents from within Word 2007.
If you’re looking for the help button, click on the “?” in the upper right-hand corner or just try press the F1 key.
Tip #2: Don’t like the default font?
The default font within Word 2007 is Cambria 11. If you want to change the default, perhaps to Times Roman, press Ctrl-D and then default…
Tip #3: Customize the Quick Access Toolbar 
It’s easy to populate the Quick Access Toolbar at the top of the screen with your favorite, most used commands. Simply click on the down-arrow at the right of the toolbar to open a dialogue box that will permit you to add any command within Word.
Tip #4: Word Options
Click on the Office Menu button (at the top-left of the screen) and then select Word Options. Within the Proofing Tab, check out AUTOCORRECT OPTIONS. You can use AUTOCORRECT to enter abbreviations such as “gvt” and have Word expand that entry to government. You can develop a shorthand that will vastly increase your typing speed and enhance your typing accuracy. Word 2007 introduces a MATH AUTOCORRECT that will permit math users to easily enter mathematical symbols. In Word Option’s Advanced Tab, you can increase the number of documents that can be contained in the Recent Document list.
Tip #5: Styles are easy to apply.
Within the home ribbon, change styles gives you access to a number of style sets that can refine the look and feel of your document. Note that by moving your mouse over each style name, you can see how your document will look before you apply the style. Given the new power of styles, make sure that you consistently apply style headings throughout your document. For example, each chapter title might be in Heading 1. By so doing, you will easily be able to create a Table of Contents (see the Reference Ribbon) and take advantage of the Document Map (see the View Ribbon).
Tip #6: Create a beautifully formatted cover sheet.
Within the Insert Ribbon, you can choose from among numerous templates for cover sheets and even some spectacular pre-formatted headers and footers. You can also insert tables and charts very quickly. Once you are happy with your chart, table, or picture, click on it. Word 2007 will give you access to additional commands within a Format Ribbon.
Tip #7: Don’t use Word 2007’s Citation Manager!
Endnote or RefWorks are compatible with Word 2007 and are far better solutions for managing your citations and bibliographies. Word 2007’s facility is limited to ten citation styles and there’s no way to edit or create a new style. More important, perhaps, the Citation Manager requires you to enter each citation manually. Endnote or RefWorks, of course, can automate the data entry process.
Tip #8: Translate!
Check out the new translation feature in the Review Tab. It’s certainly no substitute to knowing a language, but it can provide a quick stab at the foreign text you are confronting.
Tip #9: When in doubt, highlight text and right-click.
The most frequently used features are also available by using the right-mouse button.
Tip #10: Don’t Despair… there’s help out there!
Microsoft offers free online training courses, a Microsoft Word 2007 Blog, and an interactive Word 2003 to Word 2007 command reference guide that will help you to locate needed commands. You can even test drive Word 2007 on the web.
Be sure to check OIT’s training page to see the current schedule for training at Princeton. All training is open to students, faculty and staff, and it is free.
On Tuesday, December 4, you can take Office 2007 for a Test Drive in the Convocation Room at Friend Center, 10 am to 2 pm. For those who would like a preview of the many new Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook features, OIT will offer an opportunity to try the updated versions while OIT staff are on hand to lend assistance and answer questions.
A podcast of the November 29 Productive Scholar session on Word 2007 is available.
Posted by Lorene Lavora
Thanks for the great tips.
As pissed when I was upgraded to office 2007! I could not get the hang of it.
I work as an internet marketing consultant and I use excel and word all the time. This really slowed down my progress.
Tip #7
Word 2007's facility is limited to ten citation styles and there's no way to edit or create a new style.
That's totally untrue, it's not all that easy and there certainly are shortcomings, but you can create your own style if you want to.
More important, perhaps, the Citation Manager requires you to enter each citation manually.
You can put all the data in a master list. There are free converters available which do just that. Then in your document, you just pick the data you want from the master list you want.
I really wish people would do some searching before making all kinds of claims of lacking functionality.
Well, let's clarify. There's no apparent way to edit or create a style within the actual application. There really are just ten styles available within Word when it comes out of the box.
They key for faculty within higher education is that they need to be able to move quickly from one style to another, perhaps because an article got rejected and they are now resubmitting, or simply because a publisher has particular wants or needs.
If faculty want to be able easily to move from style to style, and to have a comprehensive list from which to choose, then EndNote, RefWorks, or Zotero are the way to go.
Word is still perfectly fine to composition etc... I use it myself for many varied academic activities.
All Microsoft products are extensible, but it's hard to imagine that the average user will want to create or add-on XSL customizations.
I wasn't claiming Word is superior. It is just that your statement was completely incorrect.
It's not the job of the average user to create or customize an XSL file, just like it is not his/her job to create or customize a CSL (Zotero) or bst (LaTeX) file. The publisher should provide a template for at least one (and preferably all) of these formats.
Zotero's data model supports 36 types of sources, the average CSL file supports 5 or 6 of them. All the others are formatted as some kind of 'misc' type. As soon as you get to do some decent work, you have to do as much style editing in Zotero as in Word. And neither of them are easy. Similar things can be said about BibTex which uses some stack based language.
From an end-user point of view, EndNote is the easiest one to use at the moment. But EndNote has rather limited formatting options compared to Word, Zotero, and BibTeX.
A couple of quick points (from the author of CSL):
Certainly, but it's much, MUCH more difficult to create an XSLT-based style for Word's bibliography support than it is to create a CSL style. For this reason, there are now over a 1000 CSL styles. How many are there for Word?This shouldn't be an either/or proposition, though. It should be possible to plug-in a CSL-based alternative (though AFAIK, it's currently not).
OTOH, it's not possible to use the Word XSLTs outside that specific context.
This is a seriously misleading statement. It is a feature of CSL that it does not require specific definitions for every type, and a good style does not need it. I formatted a complete book manuscript with a (XSLT-based) prototype prototype that included probably 20 different types of references, from archival documents to press releases, etc., etc. The CSL I used to do that only had specific definitions for a small handful of types.