Explore the new Word 2007 Interface
Microsoft Office Word 2007 is one of the application that has been completely redesigned (visually), with the introduction of the "Ribbon", an interface element that replaces menus and toolbars. In this brief tutorial, we will examine the main interface elements of Word 2007: knowing where they are located, and how they are called, will help you make the most of the upcoming tutorials, which will assume some basic understanding of the interface.
A quick tour of Microsoft Word 2007
The most striking change in Word 2007, compared with Word 2003 or before, is the complete elimination of a menu system, and its replacement with "The Ribbon", a set of tabs organized around tasks. While the ribbons takes getting used to, it makes finding and using common Word commands much easier (both Microsoft studies and public feedback confirm this overwhelmingly).
The Ribbon's Home tab
The Home tab in Word 2007 stores the most commonly used commands of all, including: font family, font size, bold-italic-underline, highlight color, text color, alignment, etc. 90% of the time, you will only need to use commands on the Home tab.
The Ribbon's Insert tab
Word 2007 displays under the Insert tab every object or type of text you can insert inside Microsoft Word documents, from links and page breaks to headers, footers, images (pictures), and tables. With this approach, Word 2007 consolidates commands that used to be scattered around different menus and sub-menus in Word 2003 and older versions of Microsoft Word.
The Ribbon's Page Layout tab
Document margins, watermark (background image or picture), page orientation, margins and indents all found a new home under Word 2007's Page Layout tab.
The Ribbon's References, Mailings, and Review tabs
Word 2007 stores previously hard-to-find commands under these three tabs: all the collaboration, commenting and feedback functionality Microsoft Word offers is now under the Review tab. The Mailings tab contains specific functionality like Mail Merge. The References tab contains commands relevant to professional document editing and copywriting, like footnotes, citation, bibliography, etc.
The Ribbon's View tab
Word 2007 places many of the commands that used to be under the View menu in previous versions of Microsoft Word, under the View tab. These have to do with the way Word 2007 displays the document in front of you, for example: zooming in and out, full page reading, ability to show or hide interface elements like ruler and document map, etc.
Additional tabs in the Word 2007 Ribbon
You may see additional tabs in Word 2007: this is because some less common tabs can be hidden by default (like the Add-Ins tab, or the Developer tab, which contains programming and macro information), or third-party tabs that are added in Word 2007: if the full version of Adobe Acrobat is installed on your computer (not just Reader), you will see an Acrobat tab in Word 2007, containing PDF-and-Microsoft-Word-documents type commands.
The toolbars and status bar in Microsoft Word 2007
With the exception of a completely new look, little has change with Word 2007's toolbars and status bar, compared with previous versions of Microsoft Word: