Small Business Tech Tips

Microsoft Office 2007 Speeds Up
by Christopher Elliott | www.everonit.com

Whether you’re crunching numbers in Microsoft Excel or writing a business proposal in Microsoft Word, the 2007 Microsoft Office release will help you do it faster. Best of all, you and your employees can learn at your own speed, taking advantage of control-key shortcuts from a previous version of Microsoft Office, using KeyTips, or using your tried-and-true mouse.

Old shortcuts, new tricks

First, there’s some good news for 2007 Office release users: the old shortcut keys from previous versions of Microsoft Office will continue to work. For example, in Microsoft Word 2007, you can still use CTRL+S to save or CTRL+B to make text bold.

But the 2007 release has also added a new shortcut function called “KeyTips” that allows you to get to your menu choice without using a mouse. For instance, if you wanted to open a new document in Microsoft Word 2007, you could use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+O – or you could press ALT and the corresponding letter for the ribbon-bar (F) followed by N. This allows employees who aren’t heavy Office users to still realize some time-savings, making them more productive.

Usability experts say the new Office is designed for speed. Whether you’re writing a proposal in Microsoft Word or creating a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel, odds are there’s a shortcut for it. Among the most impressive, according John Kleb, a partner with Sikich ICS Technology in Aurora, Ill., is the ability to format text and graphics quickly. “In Word, you can show the font and style changes live, before you even select the changes,” he says.

Create cool cover pages in three keystrokes

Unless your employees are professional graphic designers, producing professional-looking cover pages used to be a task that took a while. No longer. In Microsoft Word 2007, go to the “Insert” tab and select “Cover Page” (it’s in the second column) or type ALT+N+V. You can select the right look for your company’s cover page and implement it within seconds. These prefab pages allow you to skip the tedious process of constructing a cover page from scratch using tables, text boxes and borders.

Draw graphics in a snap with SmartArt

One new feature that is available on Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook is called SmartArt and it will make your employees look like professional graphic designers. If you need to display information in a graphic, this handy tool allows you to quickly position text within a number of layout templates. You can automatically size and position shapes and text, and switch seamlessly between layouts. To access SmartArt in Microsoft Word 2007, go to the “Insert” tab and click on the SmartArt icon (right under “Mailings”). Or you can type ALT+N+M.

Make an appointment from an e-mail

Here’s a common task: you have an email in your “in” box and want to make an appointment based on it. In Microsoft Outlook 2003 and earlier, you could do that by dragging the message to the Calendar icon and then to the Date Navigator in the Calendar. No need to do that anymore. Now, you can drag the mail to the Date Navigator in the To-Do bar directly to the day you choose, and you’re good to go.

Count words and check spelling in zero clicks

How long is my Microsoft Word document? Are there any spelling errors in it? Getting the answer to these seemingly simple questions used to require some clicking around, if for no other reason than to make sure the spellchecker was working. But that’s not a problem in Microsoft Word 2007. The task bar at the bottom of your document now displays the number of words. Plus, there’s a small book icon next to it that tells you if there are any spelling or grammatical errors (a pencil means the checker is working, a red ‘X’ means there are errors, and a blue checkmark means it is error free). If there are errors, click on the ‘X’ to navigate between them.

Find any message quickly

In Microsoft Outlook 2007, you’ll notice a new search bar at the top of the Inbox. This isn’t the Find function of previous Outlook versions. It’s fast and flexible (you can choose to search just the Inbox or all of your folders). Results are displayed immediately and highlighted in yellow – no need to even press the Return key, thanks to “word wheeling” which searches as you type. Now that’s fast

Run an instant calculation without a calculator

Ever had a row of numbers in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that you needed to run a calculation on? Maybe you needed to figure out the average or the sum? In Microsoft Excel 2007, getting those results is as easy as selecting the numbers. Just make your selection – you can even CTRL+CLICK to select different cells from various parts of the grid – and the look to the bottom of the screen. The status bar displays Average, Count, Numerical Count, Minimum, Maximum, and Sum. No calculator required.

Special Note: Everon Technology Services advocates a wait and see approach before adopting new software technologies to allow ample time for bugs to be worked out and patches released .

Christopher Elliott
Christopher Elliott writes about business travel and mobile computing, and publishes a weekly travel newsletter. You can e-mail him or visit his Web site.

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Tags: business, everon, everon it, everonit, microsoft, microsoft excel, microsoft office, microsoft office 2007, microsoft word, productivity, small business, strategies, technology

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 8th, 2007 at 10:49 am and is filed under Small Business Management Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.