Making Word 2007 a Little More Familiar
Moving from Word 2003’s toolbars and menus to Word 2007’s ribbon can be a bit of a shock to many users of earlier versions of Word. Some of this shock can be eased, however, by making your most-used tools from Word 2003 as visible as possible in Word 2007.
Contrast the interfaces for Word 2003 and Word 2007. Here, I’ve told Word 2003 to show the Standard and Formatting toolbars on two rows:
Notice that right above the ruler, you see the style name, the font name, and the point size. For the most part, no matter what you’re doing in Word, this information is always there where you can see it.
Now, take a look at the default view for Word 2007:
Here, too, you see the style, font, and point size, at least initially. However, if a style other than the ones that fit in the current style gallery window is one other than the first 4 or 5 (sometime more, sometimes fewer), then the current style name isn’t available to the user. Moreover, if you move out of the Home tab, style, font, and point size are no longer knowable at a glance.
I’m guessing that the programmers at Microsoft aren’t writers. I can tell this because no veteran Word writer would put up with not knowing at all times the current style, font, and point size. These are vital pieces of information. Well, perhaps you don’t agree. If you don’t, then this post isn’t meant for you. It’s meant instead for users who want to know at all times what’s in their document.
A solution is at hand, however, in the form of the Quick Access Toolbar, or QAT as it’s more affectionately known. First, look at where the Quick Access Toolbar is. It’s up there in the stratosphere, thousands of miles above where you’re working. This means that to see it, you’re going to have to look way above where you’re accustomed to looking. It also means that you’re going to have to move the mouse quite a bit more than you did when accessing the Formatting toolbar in Word 2003 and earlier.
So, let’s move it. Right click the QAT and choose Show Quick Access Toolbar Below the Ribbon, as shown here.
Great. Now the QAT is closer to the battlefield, even if the selection of tools is somewhat lacking. Let’s address that problem right now.
First, let’s add a style tool to the QAT so you can see what you’re wearing, so to speak. Right click the QAT and choose Customize Quick Access Toolbar. Set Choose commands from: to Commands Not in the Ribbon. Click in the list of commands and tap the T key to accelerate to just below the last command that starts with “S”. Scroll up a few commands and look for one that says Style. When you hover the mouse pointer over it, you see this:
The word Classic is the clue that you’re in the right place. With Style selected, click Add to move the command into the right-hand panel. Click the up arrow (5) to the right of the right panel until Style is at the top:
Click OK. Let’s see what it looks like now:
Great! Now we can always tell what style is applied at the insertion point. Not so great, however, is that unless the Home tab is displayed, you can’t necessarily tell what font and point size are selected. Let’s fix that.
In the Home tab, right click the font tool’s dropdown arrow, and choose Add to Quick Access Toolbar. Next, right click the point size tool’s dropdown arrow and choose Add to Quick Access Toolbar.
This done, you’re almost there:
But, there’s a visual problem. If you came here from Word 2003, you’re used to the three tools–style, font, and point size–being side by side. Click the dropdown arrow at the right end of the Quick Access Toolbar and remove the checks next to Save, Undo, and Redo. You’ll have to do this in three motions, since the dropdown list doesn’t remain displayed.
Once that’s done, the three formatting tools you added will now be side by size. Now you can click the dropdown arrow on the Quick Access Toolbar and put those tools back. They’ll be added to the right of point size, rather than where they were.
If you like, you can set up the newly positioned Quick Access Toolbar as a combination of Formatting and Standard toolbar tools so that the tools you need most often are right in front of you:
From left to right, we now have: Style, Font, Point size, New, Open, Save, Bold, Italic, and so on. But, notice which ribbon tab is selected: Review.
Now, no matter which ribbon tab is displayed, you’ll always have those tools at the ready. But, most important, if the style, font, or point size in the current document ever look a little strange to you, you’ll be able to tell at a glance what’s what.
Bigger matrices using the Linear method for inserting equations
As shown here, Word 2007’s equation interface provides a maximum matrix size of 3×3:
So, what if you need a 3×4, 4×4, 4×3, or some other size matrix? Are you out of luck? Not at all.
Begin by inserting a 3×3 matrix as shown above. What you see in your document is shown here, minus the “Click here” balloon:
Click as shown to drop down the control menu for the equation object for the choices shown at the right. Click on Linear.
This now exposes the ugly syntax for creating a matrix using the linear syntax:
So, what does this mean? Well, first of all, you’re not seeing the entire picture. What’s missing is the full syntax. If you could see the full syntax, you’d see:
\matrix(&&@&&@&&)
& corresponds to columns, and @ corresponds to rows. For x & characters, you get x+1 columns. For y @’s, you get y+1 rows.
When modifying the syntax to add additional columns, it’s easy. Just add a & as shown here:
(&&&@&&@&&)
Now, right-click the equation and choose Professional, and you’re rewarded with:
Right-click again and choose Linear, however, and you’ll see that Word automatically completed the syntax for you:
(&&&@&&&@&&&)
That’s because ragged matrices aren’t allowed. What’s a ragged matrice? Had they been permitted, the modified matrix using (&&&@&&@&&) would’ve looked something like this:
| Â | Â | Â | Â |
| Â | Â | Â | Â |
| Â | Â | Â | Â |
Â
So, if you wanted a 4×4 matrix, what would you do? Insert a 3×3 and modify like so:
(&&&@&&@&&@&&)
Notice that I’ve added another column, and I’ve said to include 4 rows in that column. But, I haven’t added additional &’s in the other parts of the syntax specification. Nonetheless, when I right-click the equation and choose Professional, I now get this:
If I now flip this back to linear, I see that Word graciously filled out the needed syntax for me:
(&&&@&&&@&&&@&&&)
When going the other way – shrinking an existing matrix – you would need to completely modify the syntax. Word isn’t smart enough to sense that you’ve removed an & and now want a bunch more removed. But, frankly, if you want a smaller matrix, just use the built-in user interface.
Creating New Word 12 Files from Windows Explorer
A few days ago, in one of the public newsgroups, someone posted about a problem when creating new Word files in Windows Explorer. First, set your default font in Word to something other than Calibri 11 point. To do this, press Ctrl+D, select a different font and/or point size, then click Default. Click Yes to changing the default. If prompted later, say Yes to saving the changes in Normal.dotm.
Next, try the following:
- In Windows Explorer, right click in the files area and choose New->Microsoft Office Word Document.
- Type a name for the file, the double-click to open it.
- Regardless of your own default font and point size, Word will have created a file that uses Calibri 11 point as the default font.
Now, try it again, only this time choose New->Microsoft Office Word 97-2003 Document. This time, Word will correctly use your defaults, rather than its own hard-coded Calibri 11.
CAUTION: Editing the registry can damage windows and prevent your computer, office, and word from starting. It can also put out an eye. Edit your registry at your own risk.
The behavior for Word 97-2003 documents is controlled by the registry’s settings for what it does when you create a new .doc file in the “shell” (Windows Explorer). This is controlled by the following registry location:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.doc\Word.Document.8\ShellNew
In particular, it’s controlled by the FileName variable, which tells the system to look for WINWORD8.DOC, contained in the \windows\ShellNew folder.
If you look down a little later, however at:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.docx\Word.Document.12\ShellNew
there is no FileName variable. So, when you create a new .docx file this way, Word sees that there is no reference template or file, and it uses its own internal default Calibri 11 rather than the user’s default font settings.
A partial fix for this behavior is to create a new FileName variable in the docx registry location, pointing to a file that contains the desired default fonts, such as a file you might name WINWORD12.DOCX (you would need to create that file, too, not just a pointer to it). Then, when you create a new file using the NewðMicrosoft Office Word Document method from Windows Explorer, it will use the defaults contained in that file (WINWORD12.DOCX, for example).
This does not solve the whole problem, however. That’s because when you change the default font in Word 12, it stores the new default in Normal.dotm and in WINWORD8.DOC. The change doesn’t get communicated to your WINWORD12.DOCX.
The obvious solution is to point the .docx\Word.Document.12\ShellNew FileName variable at WINWORD8.DOC, right? Well, that is what logic dictates. However, when you do that and create a new file, the resulting file cannot be opened by Word. So, FileName has to point to a different file.
You might be tempted to point FileName at Normal.dotm in its default location. This, too, doesn’t work. It tells you that the folder is in use, creates two new files (instead of one), and both use Calibri 11 regardless of your default settings. So, unless someone else discovers a different work-around, we’re left with half a solution.
Of course, if you create new files from within Word 12/2007 itself, then you don’t need this solution. You need this solution only if you’re addicted to the Windows Explorer method. In a later article, I’ll look at other solutions.
Out of Sync
I’m transferring where my blog resides from word2007bible.blogger.com to word2007bible.herbtyson.com. This will allow me to incorporate screen shots, etc. more easily.
However, there doesn’t appear to be a way to import the entries and to keep the dates/times. So, if things seem out of sync, that’s why. Everything posted after this message will be new.
Repost from 3/8/2007
March 8, 2007
Dian Chapman, my technical editor for the Word 2007 Bible, tells me that her two copies of the book arrived yesterday. I still haven’t seen any yet. I emailed Jim Minatel (my AE) to find out why not, and he tells me that the first printing is already out of stock! They’ve ordered a second printing, which will be ready next week. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Wal-Mart, and other online booksellers seem to have it in stock. So, Wiley’s warehouse loss is their gain. If you order the book now, there should be no delay in its shipping to you.
On the computer front, I ultimately determined that either the motherboard or the GeForce 7300GT was defective. I exchanged the T470 for a different one, and this one has been working like gangbusters. I sure wish I hadn’t invested five days trying to get it to work. But, at least I now have a better idea about how to recognize defective hardware… as opposed to defective Vista drivers. Even so, I’m still gun-shy about installing new versions of the driver.
My most recently solved Vista mystery—apparently—was the presence of an error in my events log:
The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load: i8042prt
I searched the internet, and didn’t find much specific having to do with Vista. However, in an old Windows 2000 discussion—in Spanish, no less—someone indicated that you see that error message when your mouse and/or keyboard are connected using USB rather than the PS/2 connectors. So, apparently, it’s nothing to worry about. I’m blogging about it here so it might be useful to someone else when they search for the error message.
Another pending mystery—and I hope it doesn’t recur—is why my computer suddenly started saying that my Documents folder was off-limits this morning. This morning while editing an Excel spreadsheet, I suddenly got an error message that the file I was editing was in use and that I couldn’t save to it.
Because I didn’t want to lose what I was doing, I decided to take a quick screen shot. When I tried to save the screen shot, I was informed that I didn’t have permission to access my Documents folder. So, I grabbed the camera, and took a picture of the data onscreen as a last resort.
During this time, the computer was responding extremely slowly, but I didn’t see anything grabbing the CPU in the Task Manager.
I closed everything and rebooted, and the problem has not [yet] recurred. I studied the event logs, but I don’t see anything that happened during that time.
I have two suspicions so far, neither of which are based on anything solid:
- My first suspicion is that it has something to do with having installed NOD32 last night — always suspect the new guy, right? — but, that’s just a desperate grasp.
- My second suspicion–this is a new computer with an Intel Core2Duo 6300–is that the CPU developed schizophrenia, and that possession of everything disk-based resided in one of the cores and was claiming ownership of my user files and folders, while the other core had suddenly assumed control of the program memory space, and wouldn’t let me access anything because the other core “owned” it.
In months and months of beta testing Vista and running RTM, I never had anything like this happen. But, all my testing/running until this past Tuesday was with a single core Pentium 4, and my A/V software was AVG, not NOD32.
Anybody seen anything similar?
My next adventure is to decide whether to replace Vista Home Premium with Vista Ultimate. Actually, I already know that I’m going to do that. But, I think I’ll install my large SATA, first, and install Vista Ultimate on it. Now, I’ll need to decide whether to install the 32 bit or 64 bit version… or both—maybe one to my X partition and other to my Z partition.
I also want to boost my RAM to 4 GB. It turns out that the 7300GT actually uses shared memory—robbing almost 500MB from main memory—in addition to its own 256MB. Greedy little sucker. I could try to turn off this sharing, but when I did that on the defective T470, my graphics index score went from 4.3 down to 1.0! So, I think I’ll try the upping-the-memory solution, instead.
Redaction in Word 2007
If you look in Word 2007’s Help under redaction, there is an entry for the Microsoft Office Word 2007 Redaction Add-in. Sounds good, right.
Well, as of March 13, 2007, it doesn’t exist.
If you click the link to download it, you’ll get:
The download you requested is unavailable. If you continue to see this message when trying to access this download, go to the “Search for a Download” area on the Download Center home page.
If you search, you’ll discover an add-in for Word 2003, but none for Word 2007. And, if you download it and try to install it in Vista, you’ll get an error saying that you need to install .NET Framework 1.something. Well, by default, Vista includes .NET Framework 3.0, and apparently, that’s not good enough for the Word 2003 redaction tool. If you thought that having version 3 would include the ability to run items requiring version 1, you’d be wrong at least in this case.
Meanwhile, over on my laptop, which is running Windows XP and does indeed have the requisite version of .NET Framework, it installs just fine. This should let me see if it works in Word 2007, since my laptop has both Word 2003 and 2007, right?
Amusingly, at the Installation Complete screen, the Redaction Add-in setup program includes the ironic notation:
This add-in is built on the Microsoft .NET Framework. Please use Windows Update to check for any critical updates to the .NET Framework.
Yeah, right. But, not .NET Framework version 3.0, I guess.
All installed… um. Well. I see it the files in an offshoot of the Program Files folder. But, not only is it not showing up in Word 2007, it’s not showing up in Word 2003, either. Not there after rebooting, either.
Well. I don’t have the patience or time to play with it now. But, it’s not looking good for redaction in Word 2007, even if you happen to have the correct version of .NET Framework installed. It looks as if Microsoft expected to have it ready in time for Office 2007 RTM, but didn’t make it.
Word 2007 and Word 2003 Coexisting
If you’ve ever used two recent versions of Word on the same computer, you know doubt have encountered that infuriating dialog that tells you to wait while Word is configured. You use Word 2003 for a little while, and then you switch back to Word 2007, and you get the “Wait, while…” yet again–multiple times in the same session.
Until now, I thought that the only way for two versions of Word to peacefully coexist was if one of them always loaded using the /a switch. Among other things, this meant that the /a version would not be able to use any of your custom settings (except for Word 2007’s Quick Access Toolbar settings, which seem robust with respect to /a).
It can now be revealed, however, that there’s an easy registry solution that allow multiple versions of Word to exist, and for you to have your various customizations remain in play as well.
Caution: Edit your registry settings at your own risk. Incorrectly editing your registry can damage Word, Office, Windows, your community, the planet, and the universe. For additional information on how to edit your registry, consult Google. I’m assuming here that you know what you’re doing, and hence will give you only the bullet. It’s up to you to buy your own gun.
Note: Do not do this if you’re running just one version of Word! Otherwise, occasional and useful self-repairs won’t happen.
Now, for the juicy bits. You’ll need to add a NoRereg DWORD (32-bit) value to the Options section for each version of Word that you want to run. In Office 12, this value goes here:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Options
After you create the NoRereg value, set it equal to 1. And you’re done!
Repeat this for each additional version of Word you plan to run. For Word 2003, for example, the place to add the NoRereg value would be in:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Options
Last night as I was responding…
Last night as I was responding to an email message, I got a cryptic message when I clicked Send. It was so cryptic–and came amid other odd system happenings–that I failed to see exactly what it said. The upshot was that Outlook 2007 needed to be closed. When I tried to restart it, I got a dialog telling me I needed to reinstall Outlook.
Not good news.
So, I rebooted.
Same problem.
I checked the event viewer and found hundreds of these errors, all associated with Outlook:
Failed to determine if the store is in the crawl scope (error=0×80040155).
Not good. Whatever the heck that means. For more on this problem, go here. I was in flailing mode, however, and didn’t discover that discussion until the next morning.
Next, I tried starting Word 2007 and Excel 2007. Same problem. Word 2003 still worked. So, my next step was to attempt to repair Office 2007. I tried to launch Change from Programs and Features, but was told that the installation was corrupted! Uh, oh!
At this point, I was beginning to suspect either hard disk corruption or registry corruption. I backed up my key files to my Maxtor OneTouch II, and booted to my other Vista drive. It seemingly worked fine.
At that point, I was beginning to wonder about Windows Updates. Perhaps one of them had screwed me over. I worried in particular about this one, which I had been prompted to install after adding an additional 2 GB of RAM to the computer. Yet, that one was installed over a week ago, and the updates installed since that time didn’t seem particularly suspect.
Other suspicious factors include the fact that Outlook 2007’s search ability had stopped working. So, I had run a repair earlier in the day. The repair fixed the search. But, I was beginning to wonder if the repair had somehow set up a chain of events that led to the registry having become scrambled.
I tried launching Word with the /r switch to see if it would fix the registry. No joy.
Yet another factor among the recently changed is the use of the NoRereg registry item. Had it somehow prevented some kind of self-healing that Office 2007 sometimes performs?
The other recently added item were drivers for a ViewSonic 22″ monitor. Costco had dropped the price to $299, and I couldn’t resist. But, to work, it needed special drivers for the 1680×1050 resolution.
Having concluded that the problem simply had to be registry corruption, I decided to drop back to a restore point from the previous day.
That managed to fix the problem.
Now more paranoid than ever, however, I’ve changed my update settings so that it will no longer automatically fetch and install updates at 3 am. Instead, I will review updates and selectively decide whether to apply them.
And, now I’m worrying that the problem will recur. <sigh> It’s always something.
Vista’s Narrator, your head, and the wall
It’s a laudable idea. One of Vista’s “ease of access” features is something called the Narrator. StartAll ProgramsAccessoriesEase of AccessNarrator. In theory, it can read your documents aloud to you. Nice, eh? If you’re blind or just tired, sit back and leave the reading to the Narrator.
Except that it doesn’t work with Word 2007 (or Word 2003 for that matter). Some useful shortcut keys that allow you to quickly make this determination are:
| CTRL | Stop Narrator from reading text |
| INSERT+F3 | Read the current character |
| INSERT+F4 | Read the current word |
| INSERT+F5 | Read the current line |
| INSERT+F6 | Read the current paragraph |
| INSERT+F7 | Read the current page |
| INSERT+F8 | Read the current document |
In Word, any of the Insert+F key assignments tell you “Empty document,” “Empty page,” and so on. A feeble work-around is to copy the text into WordPad or Notepad, where Narrator works just fine. But, don’t waste a lot of time trying to get it to work for you in Word 2007 or 2003—or even in Internet Explorer. I’ve already wasted a bunch of time for you, so you don’t have to waste your own. It’s just one of the many services I’m more than happy to provide.
I’ll let you know when and if there is a fix.
Peek-a-boo clipart
Someone asked:
I’d like to set up my clip art so it is peeking out from a page border. It should appear as though the area between the edge of the paper and the page border is blocking a part of the clip art. Can this be done?
I don’t think you can do it with the page border itself, since the border is just a line with no fill. However, if you insert–into the header/footer area (so it can be repeated on multiple pages)–a rectangular filled shape (using white fill, assuming that’s your background color), it will give the same appearance as a border. You can then layer your clip art object behind the shape. Both the clip art and the rectangular shape should be inserted into the header/footer area, and both have their wrapping set to Behind Text. You can use the order settings to send the clip art behind the shape.
Below, I’ve used an off-white colored shape so you can see the effect more clearly.
