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There are basically three types of controls found on the Microsoft Word ribbon: buttons, drop-down menus and launchers. The Bold control, found on the Home tab, is an example of a simple button. When you click the Bold button, highlighted text becomes bold. If you click the same button again, the highlighted text reverts to normal.

The Change Case control is an example of a drop-down menu. Clicking the control shows you a series of options. For example, if you choose Other Case, the highlighted text becomes capitalised if it lowercase and vice versa. If I choose Capitalise Each Word, only the first letter in each word is capitalised.

Some controls are a combination of both simple buttons and drop-down menus. One example of this type is Underline, which consists of two sections: a button on the left and a drop-down menu on the right. If you click on the button, the default underline is applied; usually the underline style which was last used. If you click on the drop-down menu, you are given a series of options for customising the underline. You have a choice of styles: solid, dotted, double, and so forth. You can also change the underline colour. As with the Bold button, if you click the Underline button a second time, the underline is removed. Also, any line style that you chose from the drop-down menu will become the default.

Launcher buttons are displayed in the bottom right of certain ribbon tab groups. They replace those menu commands in previous versions of Word which launched dialogue boxes or other options. Clicking on the launcher button displays a series of options either in a task pane or a dialog box. For example, in the Home tab, the Clipboard launcher button displays its options in a task pane. In the case of the Font group launcher button, the options are displayed in a dialog box.

The Microsoft Word 2007 ribbon takes up quite a lot of screen space; approximately 20% of the average screen. If this becomes inconvenient, you can minimise the ribbon at any time by simply double-clicking on the name of any tab. When the ribbon is minimised, it can still be used. Simply click on the name of a tab and the options will appear once more. Once you have chosen an option the ribbon will be minimised again. To revert the ribbon to its normal behaviour, simply-double click on any tab. A second way of minimising the ribbon is to go to the Quick Access Toolbar and choose Minimise the Ribbon. To revert the ribbon to its normal size, choose the same option once more.

The author of this article is a trainer and developer with Macresource Computer Training, an independent computer training company offering Microsoft Word 2007 Classes in London and throughout the UK.

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Using Quick Print and Print Preview in Excel

Excel’s Quick Print facility allows you to send a document to the default printer without the need of entering values in a dialog box. If the Quick Print button is not already displayed on your Quick Access Toolbar, simply choose it from the Customize Quick Access Toolbar drop-down menu. You will notice that the tooltip which appears when you position the mouse over the Quick Print button has the name of the default printer in brackets. If the printer that is displayed is not the one you anticipated you can simply use the regular Print command instead.

If like a growing number of Word users, most of your documents are sent electronically, you may have Adobe PDF set as the default printer. If this is the case, when you click the Quick Print button, you will be prompted to save the file since printing to Adobe PDF means producing a disc file.

Whatever your default printer, Excel will print the documents using its default settings: moderate margins, no header or footer, no column or row headings and no gridlines. If the document cannot be printed on a single page, Excel will produce multiple pages moving down first and then across. Having printed the document Excel paginates your worksheet and subsequently displays the page boundaries as dotted lines.

Whereas Quick Print sends the document to the printer straight away, Print Preview offers a method of previewing the document prior to sending it to the printer and is often a useful precaution. To access Print Preview, click on the Office button in the top left of your screen, choose Print and then Print Preview.

If the preview of the document looks fine, simply click on the print button to send the document of the printer. If the document needs to be modified in order to be printed correctly, one option is to click on Page Setup. This gives you access to settings such as the orientation, margins, header and footer, as well as other advanced features.

You also have the option of zooming in on your data by clicking on the zoom button. When you click the zoom button a second time, the whole page is displayed once more. Excel allows you to preview all the pages by clicking on the Next and Previous buttons.

You can also show or hide margins. Margins consist of dotted lines with drag handles at the end of each line. The margins displayed in Print Preview are fairly comprehensive. Firstly, we have the page margins: top, bottom, left and right. Next, we have margins to control the area available to headers and footers. Finally, we have drag handles allowing us to change the column widths. You will often find that you can reduce the number of pages required to print a document simply by changing the various margins.

Author is a developer and trainer with Macresource Computer Training, an independent computer training company offering Microsoft Excel Training Courses in London and throughout the UK.

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