Simple Ways to Personalize Your MS Word 2007 Documents

Style has always been in my mind the author’s Self, the creative expression of that Self.

Working Smart in Word 2007-2010

With MS Word 2007 Microsoft took a vastly different approach than it had with pervious versions of Word. Even though Word 2007 and Word 2010 look different than its earlier versions, it can still be customized to increase productivity and help you work smarter than ever before. In this article expert Jessica Keren looks at some features in Word you may not have noticed before.

MS Word is the most popular word processor being used by almost all people who use Windows operating system. People often use it without personalizing the look while there are many ways to make it work how you would want it to. Word 2007 has a very different look than the word processors of other versions. All the menu options and dialogs are displayed on the top so that it will be easy for the users to format their text. Unlike other versions, you needn’t click on the fonts to see how it appears. You just have to select the text you want to change and pause on the fonts and Word will show you the preview. The other feature is the heading styles, paragraph formatting tools, editing tools, are all brought under a single tab and in a single window. However, not all users find it easy to work with the 2007 version of Microsoft Word. Read on to know what small changes you can do to make it comfortable for you.

Changing the Colors:

Word 2007 comes with a cool blue as its default color but did you know that you can change the color theme? Yes, if you are using a different color theme for Windows, you can change the color theme of Word 2007 to suit that color. There are two options, silver and black. You may think that black would not be easy on the eyes but actually for Word 2007, it looks good. To change the color, click on the office button on the left top corner and select the Word Options menu. Select the color scheme you want in the Popular menu on the left side and click on OK.

Changing the appearance:

Though the broad ribbon on the top is useful, many people find it uncomfortable as the work space becomes smaller due to its presence. If you feel that you don’t want the ribbon, just click on the small down arrow near the quick access toolbar and select Minimize the ribbon option and you can have a bigger workspace. People who write large amounts of text find it comfortable to minimize the ribbon first and enlarge it later to format the text.

Customizing the workspace:

Another interesting feature that word processors have is they let you watermark the pages. You can insert watermarks to personalize the documents you create. The watermarks can also be printed so that the people reading it can know who the owner of the document is and what the purpose of the document is. Watermarks are usually used for messages like Confidential, Sample, Do Not Copy, ASAP, and so on. To set a watermark, click on the watermark button in the Page Layout tab and select the watermark you want in the dialog box that pops up. You can also select the color of the watermark and click on OK to make the changes.

Editing the Quick Access Toolbar:

By default, the Quick Access toolbar has only three buttons, i.e. save, undo and redo. If you want to have more buttons on the Quick Access toolbar, you can add more buttons or commands by clicking on the small down arrow next to the Quick Access toolbar and select More Commands to add more commands to the toolbar. If you want to use Word with the ribbon minimized, you can add those commands you use often to the Quick Access toolbar. You can also bring the Quick Access toolbar below the ribbon by selecting Show Below the Ribbon from the menu.

These are a few simple steps that you can follow to change the appearance of Word 2007. Please get software tech support for more assistance.

Contributed by: Jessica Keren from uPublish.info

Resources

Any links appearing in red were links our contributor included in the original article.

How to Customize Word 2007 Tabs
Can I Customize the Ribbon?
Customize Microsoft Word 2007 for Maximum Efficiency

Micrsofot Word 2007 – The Ribbon

Microsoft Word 2010 Custom Ribbons

About Our Contributor: Jessica Keren

Contributor Jessica Keren is a freelance writer and an active blogger.

About Our Quotester: Whit Burnett

Author Whit Burnett (1900–1972) was a writer and writing teacher who founded and edited the literary magazine Story, which in the 1940′s published early works of many writers who went on to become major authors. Some of the authors introduced by Burnett were J.D. Salinger, Charles Bukowski, Tennessee Williams, John Cheever and Josph Heller. Also, early works from Truman Capote, Norman Mailer and John Knowles were published.

There were only 67 copies of the 1931 debut issue. It was mimeographed in Vienna by Burnett and his wife. Burnett created The Story Press in 1936. By the late 1930′s circulation had climbed to 21,000. The magazine folded in 1967 due to a lack of funds to continue it.

In 1939, Harper & Bros. published his memoir The Literary Life and to Hell With It.

Our Quotester Image is linked from oddbook.co.uk.

This biography was adapted from wikipedia.org. Learn more about Whit Burnett by reading the original article here.