Office 2010, the latest office suite from Microsoft, has been out for about a year and a half now. To IT guys like us, that means enough time has passed that the product is probably stable enough to recommend to clients for an upgrade. We’ve been using Office 2010 as well, ironing the kinks out and thinking about how new users might take to the new interface if they were upgrading from Office 2003. That’s why we prepared this list of useful tips and tricks for getting up and running with Office 2010:
- Create a Customized Tab on the Office 2010 Ribbon
A brand new feature for Office 2010 is the ability to custom-tailor the ribbon interface by adding customizable ribbons. It’s simple and really helps users get going in Office 2010 who might be more comfortable with older versions of the office interface. All you do is right-click on the ribbon interface and select “Customize the Ribbon”. From there we add a new tab, label it whatever we like, and add any features we want. If you want to have some tools from the “Insert” tab and other features from the “Review” tab all lumped together to make your work-flow easier, you can.
- Find Office 2003 Commands in Office 2010
Customizing is great, but what if you just want to get up to speed with the new design? Microsoft has thoughtfully designed really useful how-to guides for getting used to their user interface changes. It’s called the “Office 2010 interactive guide”, and it can be located at this link: http://office2010.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/learn-where-menu-and-toolbar-commands-are-in-office-2010-HA101794130.aspx
- Bring Office 2003 Menus Back to 2010 with UBitMenu
If learning about or customizing the new ribbon interface doesn’t make you or one of your worker’s comfortable, or you just don’t want to use it, there’s actually a great option for bringing back the old look. It’s not exactly Microsoft-sanctioned, but it’s called UBitMenu. It’s a small utility you install after you’ve installed Office 2010, and it automatically inserts an old style menu into the ribbon interface. Find the utility here: http://www.ubit.ch/software/ubitmenu-languages/
- Crop Pictures in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
It’s an old problem. Inserting images in Word or Excel is pretty simple and straight forward, but getting them to fit right can be a real time suck. That’s mostly because it was impossible to crop the photo at all. You simply select the “Format” tab in the ribbon, and click the “crop” option. This will allow you to select any of an inserted image’s four corners and drag the border in to where you need it. Select “crop” again, and voila, your image fits. Handy.
- Center Pictures and Other Objects in Office 2007 & 2010
This used to be another big pain in older versions of Word. Getting an image to be right where you want it in a document used to be endlessly fussy, but now you can center an image easily. After inserting an image, change it’s “word wrap” setting to anything BUT “In Line with Text”. This will free the image up to be aligned however you like.
- Take Screenshots with Word 2010
Some more advanced users know how to use the inefficient “print screen button”, but for most users, taking a snapshot of something on their PC is a little beyond them. Office 2010 makes it dead simple. You just select “Insert” tab and click the “Screenshot” button. It will present you with the available windows, and you can select which program you’d like to snapshot. It will then automatically insert that snapshot in to the document. Neat.
- Add Security to Your Important Documents in Office 2010
Working on a document you want to make sure stays away from prying eyes? Office 2010 has a built-in encryption feature that allows you to password-protect individual documents. All you have to do is click the “File” button, click “Info”, click “Protect Document” and then select “Encrypt with Password”. There are several other options on that menu as well for other types of file security.
That was just a basic sample of what Office 2010 can do to improve workflow and security.
