Office 2011 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

Chapter 3. Advanced Editing in Word

When your document grows longer than a grocery list, you’ll begin to need Word’s advanced editing tools. In this chapter, you’ll learn where to find your tools and how to use ’em. Word helps you save time with tools for searching through your prose, checking your spelling and grammar, and correcting your errors on the fly. But Word goes way beyond words: You can add tables, pictures, even video. Finally, you’ll even learn how to make Word do your work for you.

Toolbars and the Ribbon

Chapter 2 introduced the Standard toolbar with the buttons like Open, Save and Print. Instead of burrowing deep into menus, toolbars let you issue commands by simply clicking buttons that graphically represent the operation. These picture-button toolbars are popular because they’re easy to understand, save time, and conserve screen space. Developers who customize Word love toolbars, too, because they make it easy to add new commands while hiding others that are seldom used. Responding to toolbar popularity, Microsoft added and refined toolbar features with each version of Word.

There’s a major drawback to the proliferation of toolbars and custom toolbars. It’s easy to get confused if a toolbar is hidden, or if it’s floating instead of docked. Making the problem worse, specific buttons may be added, removed, or moved to a different spot. Microsoft has tackled these issues with this version of Office and the introduction of the ribbon.

If you’re used to an earlier version ...