Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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Whenever the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference comes to Los Angeles (or to a particularly nice place nearby, like Palm Springs), I wangle a press invitation. One reason is that they give you a nifty bag, filled with plenty of goodies. Among the goodies are copies of the latest software that Microsoft wants you to try, as well as PowerPoint files for the various sessions.

The sessions, to be honest, generally go way over my head. As I've shared with you in the past, I am barely a programmer; my skills stop short at macros and VBA.

Nonetheless, the programming sessions are very interesting. The sample code can be copied and pasted and revised into your own applications, so that even a novice developer like me can make it work.

But I digress. This year I had only one day at the show, and the highlight was being taken to dinner by my InformIT editor at a fine downtown L.A. restaurant.

But in the few hours I had at the show, I wanted to take advantage of every minute, and particularly to learn what I could about the upcoming Microsoft Vista operating system (formerly known as Longhorn), and the latest version of Office 12.

Because I have just signed to write a book about presentations, I was particularly interested in PowerPoint 12. I hoped that it wouldn't be all that different, at least in its appearance, from the present version.

This dream was shattered when I saw my first screenshot of the product – and it was further emphasized when I tried my first exercise in the Development Lab at the show.

Instead of following the manual, I opened PowerPoint. And I gasped. I can now jump ahead and tell you that you need to remember three key words when and if you get Office 12: "Don't freak out."

The reason I say this is because everything you expect to find is still in there – and a lot more, in the case of PowerPoint and the other main programs, Excel, Word and Access.

But you will no longer find the familiar Standard and Formatting toolbars. And, perhaps more alarming, you will no longer see the old Menu choices of File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, etc. (There is a little ? for Help)

Don't freak out. You don't have a mess of palettes, as do Adobe and Macromedia programs. What you do have is what Microsoft refers to as contextual "Ribbons," which are slabs of editing options that simulate what they consider to be a normal workflow.

Your first ten minutes will be the worst, but then I promise it gets a lot better.

If you happen to be a new user of Microsoft Office (hard to imagine, at this point), the new User Interface may well be very superior and intuitive. Unfortunately, if you're used to starting with Insert > New Slide, when you do that you are greeted with a different "Ribbon."

Other Ribbons are for Design, Slide Show, Animation, Media and Finalize, at this point in the design process. In each case, they bring up a complete array of the formatting choices for that step.

It just takes a little while to get used to. For example, there are only five or six Slide Layouts available for new slides. There is no more Content Layout. The various Content choices – Table, Chart, Clip Art, Picture from File, Diagram and Media – are all up on the Ribbons.

This is a good thing. It's easier to use than using the Task Pane. You don't have to get rid of the default Title and Bullets layout. And, I think you can make a nice slide that won't bore the audience to tears.

Without working on the new version extensively, it's hard to know for sure how this will work on a day to day basis. However, it seemed that some of the AutoLayout features (which tended to revise your slide without your consent) are no longer hanging around, just asking to be turned off.

In addition to the usual Slide Designs, you can apply a nice set of "Themes" to your slides very quickly. They have a nice clean look that instantly enhances your presentation. Naturally, you can easily add your own custom themes to the Theme Gallery.

In addition, there is no more Drawing toolbar docked on the bottom of the screen. Instead, all of the familiar drawing tools, including AutoShapes, pop out of a contextual menu on the main ribbon.

So all of the main features are still there. Diagrams are in a drop down menu and they are perhaps the best new feature that I saw. There is an extensive new array of Process and other diagrams, with a fine gallery of instantly applied looks (like glowing 3D) that add a professional touch to your slideshow. At first look, my comment was, "They've cannibalized Visio."

By the way, the other Office programs, like Visio and OneNote are also being upgraded with swell new features, but they won't have the new User Interface.

One thing you'll look for are your Menu options, like View. You'll wonder where the Masters went. They're all down at the lower right of your screen, popping up from new menus, and they give you familiar choices.

If you're getting worried, don't. Right-click contextual menus still work. Things that you learned the hard way, like Custom Animation, look identical once the pop up menu pops up.

As I said, I concentrated on PowerPoint but also got a quick tour of Excel, Word, and Access. In each case, the interface has changed dramatically with Work Flow Ribbons replacing the more familiar menus and toolbars. I don't think it will take very long for experienced users to continue working naturally...

And there is a payoff. Formatting options for some items (tables and charts in particular) have taken on a Mac-like flavor. As you scroll through a gallery of formatting choices, you instantly see exactly how an option will look if and when applied. You can still use dialog boxes for complex formatting if you want to do so. Yet, the new interface lets you avoid them for the most common choices (such as bold, italic, and font size, as well as fill and line colors) by providing visual examples instead of words and numbers.

This is very cool when demonstrated by someone who has used the program(s) for a while, but it shouldn't take more than a few days for an experienced user to get used to.

Lots of XML

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the new Office 12 is the new XML-based file types. This was demonstrated to me in a way that blew me away. We saved a new PowerPoint format file to the desktop, right-clicked on it, and changed the file extension to .ZIP!

The icon changed to a Compressed Folder icon. When opened, the file suddenly revealed itself to actually be a collection of files and subfolders – all coded in XML. Then we changed the icon back to a PowerPoint file icon, double-clicked it, and launched the "file" again in PowerPoint.

Many users will never want to look under the hood of the program like this, but for power users it opens up a (Pandora's?) box of potential revision options and programming choices.

Developer Features

This brings up another point. The programs have a Developer option that still opens the familiar VBA environment, and they have file types that are labeled Macro-Enabled. My supposition at this point is that this will help get around the security concerns that users face when opening a document with macros.

Much of Office is also server-related. For example, in PowerPoint you can post one or more slides into a repository of slides for reuse. It's very cool, but you need to use a Windows Server with Sharepoint services to take advantage of that.

There is also the presence of the newly acquired Groove program on the main menu. This gives you instant access to a way of organizing your work with shared versions in a workgroup, and keeping track of the latest version in a shared workspace; but again, this is different from SharePoint.

Finally, there was also a new Office program in the group called InterConnect. None of the Microsoft folks knew anything about it but I intend to follow up on that in the near future and let you know what's going on.

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