Saturday, July 22, 2006

(You can view the text with images at http://www.chrisgreaves.com/Office2007User/)

Ribbon

Please take a look at a snapshot of my re-vamped UnderTheHood toolbar. I have compressed the eight-inch wide menu bar into a typical (for me) one-incher, almost.
It is an experiment, to see how I feel about one extra click to open up this new level of menu, and to see if it is a stop-gap solution to my problem with the AddIns ribbon in Word2007.

I am strong on real estate, because I know that my eyes/brain can search a large area faster than my hands/wrists can move things around. “A six-foot wide plasma screen fed from both computer systems” (if my budget could manage it), since you ask.
This step is retrograde for me; it is more boring and repetitive manual work, and I’ve spent years trying to avoid just that. It is why I write macros and programs!

I have circled my new Under toolbar in the snapshot above.

Here is a snapshot of my new Under toolbar in Word2007:

Compare it with an earlier snapshot when Under had its screen-wide menu bar:

What do you notice?

My old method wasn’t handled very well by the AddIn ribbon. It displayed my broad Under toolbar, but compressed/hid the other eleven one-inchers off to the right, forcing me to click to locate them.

The AddIn ribbon didn’t appear to be smart enough to locate smaller toolbars in the unused space above and below my Under toolbar.

Maybe I should push Microsoft to use my BestFitToolbars macro!

Quick Access Toolbar

This is relevant.

The Quick Access Toolbar is where most users will probably place their toolbar buttons for home-grown macros.

The QAT can be placed either above, or below the ribbon.
“Above the ribbon” shares space with the application title bar; “below the ribbon” take sup more valuable screen real-estate.

Back it goes!

PowerPoint2007

I’ve been asked to make a presentation next Thursday.
What better way to spend a quiet Friday evening than testing PowerPoint2007?
In my normal fashion, I fired up Word2007 and keyed in my text in Outline mode.
I figured a quick Alt-Tab to PowerPoint and I’d be done.
Not!

I think I have to learn about slip-streaming.

Maybe, maybe not.

I don’t have the CD required – I have the d/l files from Microsoft’s web site.
I drop PowerPoint2007 and revert to PowerPoint2000.

It’s a slide show from a text outline, right?