Beyond the Ribbon: Create better documents using the 2007 Office release

Document themes

Themes are sets of colors, fonts, and graphic effects that you can apply to an entire document with just one click. Once you apply a theme, its formatting is saved with your document, so that you can continue to apply theme formatting as needed when you add or edit content. You can use any of the 20 built-in themes, or customize and create your own. You can even apply a theme from one document to another, or share your custom themes across your group or your entire organization. The same themes are available in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, so that you can effortlessly coordinate all of your document content.

Find themes on the Page Layout tab in Word and Excel, and on the Design tab in PowerPoint. When used in PowerPoint, themes can also provide slide master formatting and slide background options.

Learn more about how to apply a document theme.

The themes group, shown here as it appears on the Page Layout tab in Excel, provides galleries for complete themes, as well as theme colors, fonts, and effects.

Quick Styles

If you're familiar with styles in Word, you know that a style is a collection of formatting attributes that has a name. You can select just that name to apply all included attributes to your content at once. In the 2007 release, the concept of styles has been greatly expanded to the new Quick Styles functionality. Quick Styles are galleries of style options available to a wide range of features across Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, ranging from text to tables and graphics.

For example, you can click a Picture Style from the gallery in the image below to apply a border, shadow, 3-D rotation, and other effects to selected images all at once. You'll find Quick Styles available on many contextual tabs (Ribbon tabs that appear only when you select a given feature, such as a table or a graphic object).

Picture Styles are available on the Format tab under Picture Tools in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Additionally, most Quick Styles coordinate with themes. Content formatted with Quick Styles automatically updates when you change the active theme in a document. In fact, the previews that you see in many Quick Style galleries adjust, as applicable, when you apply a new theme.

Learn more about working with themes and Quick Styles.

Live preview

Point to a theme in the themes gallery, or to a style in most Quick Styles galleries, but don't click. You no longer have to apply formatting to see exactly how it will look in your document.

One of the coolest, simplest, and most practical advances for document production in the 2007 release is the new Live Preview capability. Just point to an option in a formatting gallery to preview that formatting in your document, and only click to apply the formatting once you find an option you like.

SmartArt graphics

The new SmartArt graphics tool replaces the Diagram and Organization Chart tool that you may know from earlier versions. But, don't look for a simple upgrade here. SmartArt graphics provide an entirely new approach to business graphics. Just take a look at a couple of examples.

Each of the diagrams shown here took less than a minute to format.

SmartArt graphics are available from the Insert tab in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. However, when you create SmartArt graphics in PowerPoint you get additional tools, such as the ability to convert a bulleted list to a diagram. Learn more about creating SmartArt graphics.

Charts

Excel charts have been redesigned to use the new graphics engine. What does that mean for you? It means more beautiful, visually effective charts because you can now format Excel charts as simply as shapes, with just as much formatting flexibility. Additionally, the new charting tools make it easy to customize your chart, with three contextual tabs that expose almost all charting functionality.

Find Chart Styles and Chart Layouts (two types of Quick Styles) on the Design tab under Chart Tools. Or, use the Format tab under Chart Tools to format chart elements just as you do shapes. Take a look at a few examples of what you can do in the image that follows.

Use themes, Quick Styles, and individual formatting effects to format charts with the same flexibility as shapes and other graphics.

Learn more about creating Excel charts or formatting Excel charts.

Word: Building blocks

The new building blocks capability in Word is the evolution of AutoText. Insert complete, formatted document elements—such as cover pages, headers, footers, or tables of contents—in one step. No fuss, no muss, no wasted time.

For example, insert a Cover Page from the gallery shown here. You can select from the many built-in cover page options or create and save your own.

The Cover Page gallery in Word is available in the Pages group on the Insert tab.

Cover pages become the first page of the document by default, or you can right-click an option in the gallery to select another location. Once inserted, you can add or edit content on the cover page, such as adding a document name, your name, contact information, and so on. If you then decide to change the cover page design, you can simply select another option from the gallery and your cover page will swap, retaining the text you added to the original page.

Building blocks use another new feature, called content controls, to enable you to add content to the document that provides easy, dynamic solutions such as the ability to retain your content when you change design and layout.

Learn how to save your own building block entries and find out more about content controls.

PowerPoint: Custom layouts

PowerPoint users just might feel like shouting this one from the rooftops. Finally, you can customize every individual layout in a slide presentation and even create your own layouts. When you open the slide master in a presentation, you now see the master with several layouts attached. These are the same slide layouts available from the Layout gallery.

When you open the slide master (to do this, on the View tab click Slide Master) you see the master with each of its layouts as a separate entity. Just select a layout from the Slide pane shown here to customize it while in Slide Master view.

You can still use the master to customize formatting and content across all layouts, or you can select an individual layout and customize it as you choose. You can even add additional content placeholders to existing layouts or design your own, entirely custom layouts. Learn more about working with layouts.

Excel: Excel tables

Managing and analyzing data is easier than ever with the new Excel tables feature. You can convert any worksheet range to a table for new formatting options (table styles), automatic calculation features such as calculated columns and total rows, and several enhanced data features ranging from new sort and filter options (such as sorting by cell or font color) to structured references that simplify complex data analysis.

Learn more about working with Excel tables.

To format an existing range as a table, click in the range and then, on the Home tab, in the Styles group, click Format as Table and then click to apply a table style. Or, on the Insert tab, in the Tables group, click Table.