Smooth the move to Office 2007
Access favourite features quickly; ban an irritating toolbar; make Outlook check your spelling.
Rick Broida | Wednesday, July 29 2009If you are a recent convert to Microsoft Office 2007, you’ve probably discovered that learning your way around the interface can take a while. Obviously the biggest change involves the Ribbon, which can be daunting at first but has some genuine benefits. It’s really just a smarter way of organising various features. This month I have several tips for customising Office 2007 – namely, making additions to the Quick Access Toolbar, getting rid of the annoying Mini Toolbar, and setting up Outlook’s spelling checker.
Add features to the Quick Access Toolbar
I miss certain icons from the old Office 2003 toolbar, such as Print and Open – icons that I used constantly. Office 2007 instead forces me to click the big Office button to access such basic functions. That’s one whole extra click!
But it’s easy to add just about any Office feature to the Quick Access Toolbar, at the top of the screen next to the Office button. By default, the toolbar sports Save, Undo, and Redo icons, but you can customise it as you see fit. (I’m thinking specifically of Word 2007; the process, however, is the same for Excel and PowerPoint.)
For starters, click the little down arrow on the right edge of the toolbar. You’ll see a list of popular commands such as Open, Quick Print, and Spelling & Grammar. Click any of them to add the corresponding icon to the Quick Access Toolbar. (Likewise, click any already-checked item to remove it from the toolbar.)
What if you want to add a feature that doesn’t appear on this list? Simple: you can right-click almost any icon on the Ribbon (or in the Office menu) and choose Add to Quick Access Toolbar. Also, to remove one of these custom jobs, just right-click its icon and choose Remove from Quick Access Toolbar.
Kick Word 2007’s Mini Toolbar to the kerb
As much as I like Office 2007 (for the most part), a few of its features seem hell-bent on annoying me. One of them is Word 2007’s little on-the-spot editing toolbar, which is officially known as the Mini Toolbar. Perhaps you’ve encountered it: the jolly thing appears when you highlight some text and then move your mouse up.
Admittedly, this new feature is a handy addition, but as someone who has literally spent 20 years mousing his way to the top of the screen for font selection, highlighting tools, and the like, the Mini Toolbar strikes me as a Maxi Annoyance.
If you agree with me, it’s easy, fortunately, to turn off:
1. Click the Office button and then choose Word Options.
2. Clear the check box for Show Mini Toolbar on selection.
3. Click OK, and you’re done.
To restore the toolbar, you just recheck that check box. (But you didn’t need me to tell you that, did you?)
Make Outlook automatically check the spelling in your email before you send it
I’m kind of a spelling snob. I take pains to make sure that I spell everything correctly in my messages, so it bugs me a little bit when I see that others haven’t done the same (their email contains spelling mistakes – sometimes egregious ones).
Well, okay, I cheat a little: I use Outlook 2007’s spelling checker to give my outbound mail the once-over before sending. You can do the same – without having to remember to click the Spelling button every time – by tweaking Outlook’s checker. Here’s how:
1. Select Tools•Options.
2. Choose the Spelling tab.
3. Tick the box marked Always check spelling before sending.
4. Click OK.
Now, when you click Send, Outlook’s spelling checker will immediately appear, giving you an opportunity to fix those “Hey, Rick, you are so stoopid” kinds of mistakes. Of course, by default, Outlook uses squiggly red lines to indicate misspellings as you type – giving you the chance to pause and make corrections – but I know many folks who prefer to just bang away at the keys and only afterward fix the errors.
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