Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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As I continue to cover the significant advances in Office 2007, and get deeper into the product during a large book project, I am also finding that there are some key features that have been moved, replaced or made unavailable on the Ribbon.

Many commentators on Office 2007 have said that it is a big breakthrough in terms of mastering these programs for new users. But what about previous users, or more important, those who were power users? Will they be happy to learn that one or more features that they were used to having at their fingertips either require a workaround or are simply absent in the new version?

This has happened before. After some research Microsoft decided that Meeting Minder and Agenda, two features in PowerPoint 2002/XP were not being used by a significant number of presenters and removed them in subsequent versions.

I would be curious as to the research involved, because several of them offered a serious amount of positive functionality.

Probably the most important feature missing from 2007 that I have discovered so far is the AutoContent Wizard in PowerPoint.

This was a great teaching tool because it allows a user to create an entire presentation with generic content to get practice on using the editor and projecting a slide show.

Now that feature is only available to users of the genuine version who can access the Office Online web site and download entire "Presentations." Users of the previous versions will recognize AutoContent Wizard refugees on this site, and once downloaded they work quite well.

On a more mundane level but still quite useful, when you click to Insert a Picture in Office programs, you used to have the option to insert directly from a scanner or digital camera.

This is also gone. I found it helpful several times when I wanted to scan a document into another document. Now it requires the use of the utility program or the use of the Clip Organizer which retains this helpful feature.

The way it works now is that you can add a scanned image or digital camera file to the Clip Organizer, which stores it God knows where but keeps a handy reference to let you insert it into a document, or you can save it as a real file in My Documents or My Pictures or wherever, and then insert it as a Picture from File.

Speaking of working with images, the Picture toolbar is no longer available, which is no surprise, because all toolbars and menus have been folded into the Ribbon.

And in fact, when you click to select an inserted picture, contextual tools with everything the Picture toolbar had do pop up.

But if you’re not really aware of that, you’ll think they’re gone.

More important, my favorite toolbar that nested at the bottom of the screen — the Drawing Toolbar — is of course also gone.

Most of its features are in the Shapes feature on the Insert panel of the Ribbon, and again when you click on a Shape, most of the editing tools associated with the shape are available.

But you can’t drag out a palette of AutoShapes to keep working with your favorites, and the Connector shapes, which used to snap to other connector shapes, are inexplicably no longer on the Shapes panel.

Also in PowerPoint 2007, the Summary Slide feature is no longer available. To create a Summary Slide or a Table of Contents you need to manually copy and paste the text placeholders for titles of various slides into the bullets of the new Summary Slide.

Now I have to admit that my time working with the new versions is relatively brief, and there are a lot of neat new features — I’ve covered many of them over the past series of updates.

But unless I am missing something, these specific features are simply gone.

The Excel Data Form

With the absence of some features, specifically like the Data Form in Excel, you now need to customize the Ribbon itself, or customize the Quick Access toolbar at the top of the Office programs to get some of the same functionality you used to get by putting your own commands and macros on toolbars and menus.

The Quick Access toolbar is a drop down option next to the Redo button on the top of the interface, above the Ribbon.

Figure 1

Clicking More Commands opens the Customize options for the program you are using and lets you move some of your favorite features to that drop down menu.

Figure 2

Once you have added the Form to the Quick Access Toolbar, it is easy to impose a form on a Data Table, to add or delete records.

Figure 3

I doubt that the absence of many features will impact the adoption of Office 2007, but it should be helpful for those who are contemplating the move to know about how to cope with those that may be hidden, like the Excel Data Form.

As I said, I am new to the suite as a day to day user, and I suspect that as I delve into the other programs beyond Word and PowerPoint other missing in action features will pop up.

On the other hand, I really like the professional polish that the newer versions bring to documents, so it’s somewhat of a tradeoff.

But if you’re thinking about whether to go to Office 2007 now or later, consider the possibility that something you are used to having at your fingertips on a daily basis may not be there quite as easily after you upgrade.

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