Wherever you go, there you are—and wherever you are you’re probably not far from a computer running Microsoft Office. Installed on Macs and Windows PCs, no other program is so omnipresent at work and at home. In most corporations, anyone not using Word, Excel, and PowerPoint is considered an oddball. Office’s familiar .docx and .xlsx file formats for Office are a common language, so even if you use iWork or some other program, chances are you save your documents in an Office file format.
Office has been on the Mac in one form or another since 1985, but it gained greater acceptance with the release of Office 2001. Then before the year 2001 was even torn off the calendar, Office X exploded onto the scene with some of the first—and best—productivity programs available for the Mac’s new operating system, Mac OS X. With each new version, Microsoft has not only given Office greater speed and more new features, but has designed the programs to work better together. This continued evolution led to the subject of this book: Office 2011.
When Mac owners complained about earlier incarnations of Office, it was usually about one of three issues—One: Why doesn’t Office for Mac have all the features of the Windows version? Two: Why can’t Word, Excel, and PowerPoint look and feel more Mac-like? And last but not least: I’m required to use Outlook at work—why is there no Outlook for the Mac?
Microsoft has stumbled more than once trying to answer these questions, but Office 2011 is a big step in the right direction. The new Office for Mac features are closer than ever to those in the Windows version. No more Entourage for email—the business version of Office includes Outlook. If you share your work with the Windows crowd, you’ll find life a lot easier using the collaboration tools built into the programs. At the same time, Office 2011 makes extensive use of your Mac’s native tools like Spotlight, the Mac OS X Help system, and Mac’s gorgeous color pickers. Now available only for Intel Macs, you’ll find Office 2011 loads faster and is more responsive than previous versions.
Microsoft continues to declutter and modernize windows, icons and other features, but don’t worry, you won’t confuse Office 2011 with Apple offerings like iWork. Office still has those Microsoftian characteristics that Mac fans love to hate. On the love side, you get exquisitely detailed control over just about every aspect of every element in your text files, spreadsheets, and presentations. On the hate side, this control is achieved through labyrinthine menu→submenu paths and multipaneled dialog boxes. Office 2011’s commands may be better organized, but there are enough of them to fill the Oxford English Dictionary. That’s why you’ve got this book to help you zero in on the commands and tools you need.
One of the most visible changes in Office programs is the ribbon—a supercharged toolbar attached to the top of document windows (Figure 1-1). The ribbon thankfully replaces the floating toolbars that seemed to multiply like rabbits with each version of Office. You’ll find the most common commands logically arranged on the ribbon; tabs at the top of the ribbon organize these commands into activities. Creating a Chart? All the commands are there on the Chart tab. Best of all, there’s consistency between Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Learn your chart-making skills in one program and you can use them in the others.
Figure 1-1. Open an Office document, and you’re greeted by the new ribbon, which replaces multiple, floating toolbars. Need more screen real estate? You can minimize the ribbon or hide it entirely. If you’re searching through a big document, use the Spotlight box right there in the upper-right corner.
Although Microsoft originally designed Word, Excel, and PowerPoint as individual, disparate programs, over the years it’s designed the programs to look and work more alike—sharing elements and working much more like a cohesive whole. This trend continues with Office 2011, letting you work more effectively within Office and with other programs. For example:
The ribbon brings logic and consistency to Office commands. Features like Charts, SmartArt, and Tables work the same way whether you’re in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.
The Media Browser gives you easy access to the photos, movies, clip art and sound files on your computer and it works in the same way for all Office programs.
The Office Art graphics engine makes the most of the Mac’s Quartz graphics, providing effects like 3-D, reflections, and shadows to enhance objects and charts.
Excel’s charting templates let you easily create modern looking charts that can include 3-D, transparency, and shadows. You can insert charts directly in Word and PowerPoint using the Charts tab on the ribbon.
SmartArt graphics offers a collection of dozens of carefully designed graphic elements that can help you visually represent lists, hierarchies, and processes in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
My Day gives you a simplified view of your appointments and to-do items without even opening Outlook—and without the danger of getting sucked into your email.
Word’s Publishing Layout View is a true page-layout program, complete with dozens of professionally designed templates that make it incredibly easy to produce complex document like newsletters, brochures, or posters.
The Full Screen views in Word and Excel should please your minimalist instincts. They strip the work space down to the bare essentials.
Excel’s Formula Builder helps even non-mathematicians create formulas quickly and accurately, search for functions, and easily learn more about any function.
Templates bring preformatted layouts to Excel to perform common tasks such as checkbook registers, invoices, budgets, expense reports, and so on. These templates open with all the appropriate columns and formulas built in.
PowerPoint gets the template treatment also with an array of slide themes that help you get a visually attractive presentation underway in no time.
Rather than marketing the programs individually, Microsoft pushes the Office suite for the same reason that there’s one Missing Manual covering all four programs: If you use only one of the Office programs without the others, you miss out on a lot of timesaving shortcuts.
Microsoft gave Office 2011 significant improvements over its predecessor, Office 2008. You can’t miss the new ribbon and Spotlight search box—but there’s also an array of less obvious enhancements. Here’s a list of the most interesting new features.
Coauthoring features. You can work with equal ease with colleagues whether they’re of the Mac or Windows persuasion. It’s now possible to edit the same document at the same time, and there are multiple ways to share over the Internet or your office network.
SkyDrive. Similar to Mac’s MobileMe, this service lets you save Word documents on the Internet. Once they’re there, you can share and edit them with coworkers.
Full Screen view. This new view makes the most of your screen real estate and lets you focus on your text rather than computer widgets. Use the Read mode when you don’t want to make any changes. Use Write mode to edit in Full Screen. When you need to save, print, or format your precious prose, just mouse up to the top of your screen for quick access to a simplified set of tools.
3D Publishing Layout view. Word’s Publishing Layout view gives you a separate page-layout program at no extra cost. Now when you want to change the way text, pictures, and other objects overlap on the page, you can use a snazzy 3D view to see their exact position.
Threads. This feature arranges messages with the same subject in a single collapsible conversation. It helps you organize your messages and cuts down on Inbox clutter.
Multiple Email accounts. If you have different email accounts for work and home, Outlook lets you manage incoming mail your way. Want to see everything in one unified inbox? No problem. Want to filter email and stash it in separate folders based on the subject or sender? You can do that too.
Scheduling Assistant. When you’re responsible for scheduling a meeting, inviting attendees, and keeping track of who’s coming and who isn’t, this tool puts you in control. Outlook makes it easy to give everyone all of the details and update them when plans change
Sharing Calendars and Contacts. It’s much easier to share your information with Windows workers whether your office uses Microsoft Exchange or not.
Spotlight search. Find what you’re looking for quickly with Spotlight—which now can search even in message attachments.
Enhanced junk filter. Outlook now does an even better job filtering out junk email—and can even warn you when it detects phishing messages.
Sparklines. These little graphs, also called datawords, are here to help you spot trends. They can reveal interesting trends that you’d miss on a full sized chart.
Conditional formatting. Makes important data stand out. Your spreadsheet can speak to you in a clear voice when you apply conditional formatting to your data.
Data tables. With this new answer to List Maker, it’s easier than ever to keep track of data in Excel. The tools to sort and filter your data are in one spot and better organized.
Coauthoring features. Like Word, Excel has new, improved tools for sharing and working with others. You can work with Mac or Windows folks over the Internet or on a local network.
Broadcast presentations online. Use Microsoft’s web servers to broadcast your presentations. These are live broadcasts, so you need to gather everyone to their computer screens at the same time.
3D layering tools. As in Word’s Publishing Layout view, PowerPoint gives you a 3D view of the elements on a slide. You can change the way elements overlap by dragging layers to a different spot.
Media Browser. Use the Media Browser to drop photos and audio visual clips into your presentation. The streamlined media browser works with all the Office programs, but it really shines in PowerPoint.
Coauthoring. Often presentations are more than a solo act. If you work with others, PowerPoint makes it easy to review and comment as you build your presentation.
Slide templates. PowerPoint comes packed with dozens of professionally designed slide templates with coordinated fonts, backgrounds, and effects. Assemble your presentation quickly, with elegant results.
Export to iPhoto. Keep your presentations always available on your iPod—no laptop required! You can give presentations directly from a video iPod thanks to PowerPoint’s ability to export presentations to iPhoto. Then transfer the resulting photo album to your iPod, which you can then connect to a video projector, for example.
Apple remote control enabled. If you’re giving your presentation on a MacBook, iMac, or other Mac that came with a remote control, you can control your presentation without being anywhere near your computer.
Office Web Apps. Along with Office for Mac, you get SkyDrive, where you can store your documents and Web Apps that you can use to edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations from almost any computer with a browser.
Ribbon. This über-toolbar adds order and consistency to Office commands. Great for beginners, the ribbon puts the most-used tools within reach. Even if you’re a grizzled Office veteran, you owe it to yourself to give the ribbon a test drive.
Visual Basic returns. Gone in Office 2008, Visual Basic for Application makes a comeback in 2011. You can record macros and write visual basic code for Word, Excel and PowerPoint programs.
Elements Gallery. Quickly find templates, charts, tables, SmartArt graphics, and so on in the Elements Gallery—located below the toolbar in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. No more choosing from the labyrinthian Insert menu or fumbling with the Toolbox.
SmartArt graphics. Quickly create designer quality diagrams and charts using SmartArt graphics. Use these highly customizable graphic elements to illustrate processes, hierarchies, and so on.
Improved Help. No hokey help icons. Office now provides better help using familiar OS X help tools.
You’ll find very little jargon or nerd terminology in this book. You will, however, encounter a few terms and concepts that you’ll see frequently in your Macintosh life. They include:
Clicking. This book gives you three kinds of instructions that require you to use the mouse or trackpad attached to your Mac. To click means to point the arrow cursor at something onscreen and then—without moving the cursor at all—to press and release the clicker button on the mouse (or trackpad). To double-click, of course, means to click twice in rapid succession, again without moving the cursor at all. And to drag means to move the cursor while keeping the button continuously pressed.
When you’re told to ⌘-click something, you click while pressing the ⌘ key (next to the space bar). Such related procedures as Shift-clicking, Option-clicking, and Control-clicking work the same way—just click while pressing the corresponding key in the lower corner of your keyboard.
Menus. The menus are the words in the lightly shaded bar at the top of your screen. The menu titles are slightly different in each of the Office programs. You can either click one of these words to open a pull-down menu of commands (and then click again on a command), or click and hold the button as you drag down the menu to the desired command (and release the button to activate the command). Either method works fine.
Ribbon. The ribbon (Figure 1-1) puts the commands that you use most of the time front and center. Click one of the tabs at the top of the ribbon—Format, Charts, or Reviewing, for example. Home is not only where the heart is, it’s the tab you’ll keep visible most of the time because it has the most-used commands whether you’re in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. Select an object in your document, and special purple tabs may appear on the ribbon. These purple tabs give you specific tools to work with the object you’ve selected.
Keyboard shortcuts. Every time you take your hand off the keyboard to move the mouse, you lose time and potentially disrupt your creative flow. That’s why many experienced Mac fans use keystroke combinations instead of menu commands wherever possible. ⌘-B, for example, is a universal keyboard shortcut for boldface type throughout Office 2011 (as well as in most other Mac programs). ⌘-P opens the Print dialog box, ⌘-S saves whatever document you’re currently working in, and ⌘-M minimizes the current window to the Dock.
When you see a shortcut like ⌘-W (which closes the current window), it’s telling you to hold down the ⌘ key, and, while it’s down, type the letter W, and then release both keys.
Pop-up buttons. The tiny arrows beside many of Office 2011’s buttons are easy to overlook—but don’t. Each one reveals a pop-up menu of useful commands. For instance, the arrow button next to the Undo button on the Standard toolbar lets you choose any number of actions to undo. Meanwhile, the arrow next to the New button in Outlook lets you specify what kind of item you want to create—an appointment for the calendar, an address book entry, and so on.
Choice is good. Microsoft wouldn’t be Microsoft if it didn’t give you several ways to trigger a particular command. Sure enough, nearly everything you could ever wish to do in Office 2011 is accessible by a menu command or by clicking a toolbar or ribbon button or by pressing a key combination. Some people prefer the speed of keyboard shortcuts; others like the satisfaction of a visual command array available in menus or toolbars.
One thing’s for sure, however: You’re not expected to memorize all of these features. In fact, Microsoft’s own studies indicate that most people don’t even know about 80 percent of its programs’ features, let alone use them all. And that’s OK. Great novels, Pulitzer Prize–winning articles, and successful business ventures have all been launched by people who never got past Open and Save.
Tip
This book alternates between showing you menu, toolbar, ribbon, and keystroke commands, so you can try your hand at all of them. In the end, it’s up to you to settle on your favorite ways of doing things in Office. Just remember, no matter what you’re doing, there may be a faster and better method just a mouse click away. Experiment! Every new keystroke or ribbon widget you add to your repertoire may afford you more free time to teach ancient Greek to three-year-olds or start your own hang gliding club.
Office 2011 comes in a shiny, attractive package adorned with application icons. What you won’t find inside, however, is a printed manual. To learn this vast set of software programs, you’re expected to rely on sample documents and built-in help screens.
Although Office Help is detailed and concise, you need to know what you’re looking for before you can find it. You can’t mark your place (you lose your trail in the Help program every time you close an Office program), you can’t underline or make margin notes, and, even with a laptop, reading in bed or by firelight just isn’t the same.
The purpose of this book, then, is to serve as the manual that should have accompanied Office 2011. Although you may still turn to online help for the answer to a quick question, this book provides step-by-step instructions for all major (and most minor) Office features, including those that have always lurked in Office but you’ve never quite understood. This printed guide provides an overview of the ways this comprehensive software package can make you act like a one-person, all-purpose office.
This book is divided into five parts, each containing several chapters.
Parts Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 through Part 4, cover in detail each of the primary Office programs. Each part begins with an introductory chapter that covers the basics. Additional chapters delve into the more advanced and less-frequently used features.
Part 5, shows how the programs work together for even more productivity and creativity. For example, it covers the graphics features that work in all Office programs, customizing Office’s menus and keystrokes, and writing scripts—little programs that automate your work.
Four appendixes await you at the end of the book: Appendix A offers guidance on installing, updating, and troubleshooting the software; Appendix B explains the Office online help system; and Appendix C, Menu by Menu, describes the function of each menu command in each of the four major programs, with cross-references to the pages where these features are discussed more completely. Finally, Appendix D gives the complete Missing Manual treatment to the Office Web Apps.
Throughout this book, and throughout the Missing Manual series, you’ll find sentences like this one: “Open the System→Libraries→Fonts folder.” That’s shorthand for a much longer instruction that directs you to open three nested folders in sequence. That instruction might read: “On your hard drive, you’ll find a folder called System. Open that. Inside the System folder window is a folder called Libraries. Open that. Inside that folder is yet another one called Fonts. Double-click to open it.”
Similarly, this kind of arrow shorthand helps to simplify the business of choosing commands in menus, as shown in Figure 1-2.
Figure 1-2. When you read “Choose Insert→Break→Column Break” in a Missing Manual, that means: “Click the Insert menu to open it; click Break in that menu; choose Column Break in the resulting submenu.”
Note
If you read “Choose Edit→Preferences→Mail tab,” click the tab called Mail in the Preferences box that appears.
Office document windows display a ribbon of visual, clickable commands along the top. The ribbon is made of three elements Tabs, Groups, and Tools. In this book, you’ll know when it’s a ribbon command because the Tab name appears first and is followed by a bar: |. After the bar, there’s usually a group name and then the tool commands follow separated by arrows. For example, the instructions for setting a font in Word look like this: Home | Font→Cambria.
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