Master the Office 2007 System Ribbon

The Office 2007 System, formerly code-named Office 12, was made available for the general consumers on January 30 concomitantly with the launch of Windows Vista. And just as Microsoft's latest operating system featured a revamped graphical user interface and introduced Vista Aero, so did Office 2007 bring to the table the Ribbon. The UI of Office 2007 is based on a new graphics engine introduced to the productivity tool and shared even by the Office 2008 for Mac with the Elements Gallery interface.

"When planning the release of the 2007 Microsoft Office system we took on the challenge of making the core Microsoft Office applications easier to work with. Taking into account extensive usability data and recent advancements in hardware and software, the team has delivered the most significant update to the Microsoft Office user interface in more than a decade," Microsoft revealed, explaining that the traditional menus and toolbars that the users had to navigate in prior versions of the productivity suite have been translated into a collection of tabs.

Still, the Ribbon does manage to pose some problems to users more accustomed to the classic menus. This is why Microsoft has set up a resource dubbed "Getting started with Office 2007 - Basic training for the Ribbon." I think the title is pretty much self explanatory. And the training is a great place to get you started, make sure to access it.

Microsoft is also offering Word, Excel and PowerPoint downloads to enable access to online information (click on the links to get the add-ons). "These three additional add-on's add a tab into the office application to provide access to the on-line interactive guide. It also provides access to other training resources," stated Joseph Lumia, Account Technology Specialist, HED West Sacramento, CA. And last but definitely not least, the Redmond company is providing interactive guides to help find the connections between the Office 2003 UI and the Office 2007 ribbon.

- Excel 2003 to Excel 2007 (online & download)
- Word 2003 to Word 2007 (online & download)
- PowerPoint 2003 to PowerPoint 2007 (online & download)
- Outlook 2003 to Outlook 2007 (online & download)