Faithe Wempen’s Favorite Office 2010 Features Microsoft Office includes the world’s most popular applications, and the newest version—Office 2010—is loaded with even more features to help you dress up your documents, track your budget and investments, create presentations for family reunions, stay in touch via e-mail, and a whole lot more! From Word to Excel and Outlook to PowerPoint, get the scoop on the latest Office features, with this fun and easy advice from Office For Seniors For Dummies author Faithe Wempen. 1. E-mailing Documents No more having to interrupt your creative process to send someone a copy of what you’re working on! In most Office applications, you can use the File, Save & Send command to send the active data file to someone as an e-mail attachment without closing the application and without having to open up your e-mail program. 2. Version Management If you save changes to a document that you later regret, you can go back to the earlier version via Office’s new Versions feature. Windows Vista and Windows 7 users have always had some access to previously saved versions, but Office 2010 is the first Office suite to provide direct access to prior versions of files. 3. Customizing the Ribbon Users of Office 2007 were mostly out of luck when it came to customizing the Ribbon interface, but Office 2010 offers much more flexibility. You can not only add and remove buttons from the Quick Access Toolbar, but you can create your own Ribbon tabs and groups and place anything in them you want, especially those functions that you use on a regular basis. 4. Automatic Formatting of Bibliographies Anyone who has written academic or professional papers can attest to the fact that formatting a bibliography can be time-consuming and difficult. There are many different kinds of sources, and each one requires a different syntax. Furthermore, there are half a dozen different citation formats, and each one has its own rules. In Word 2007 and 2010, though, you can simply type each source into an easy-to-use dialog box, and then let Word do all the formatting for you. You can even change citation formats mid-project, and Word will automatically reformat everything. 5. Language Translation Several Office 2010 applications have a built-in translator utility that can easily translate a paragraph of text between a variety of languages. It doesn’t always get the grammar exactly right, but it’s close enough that a native speaker should be able to figure out what you meant.
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Faithe Wempen’s Favorite Office 2010 Features 6. Built-In PDF Creation All Office 2010 applications allow you to save your work in Adobe PDF or Microsoft XPS formats, making for easy and secure distribution of data to people who don’t have Office. That’s a huge deal because now you no longer have to own a copy of Adobe Acrobat in order to create your own PDF files. 7. Automatic Detection of Mail Account Settings In Outlook 2010, you no longer have to struggle with entering technical data about an e-mail account you want to set up. Just enter the e-mail address, and Outlook will query the mail server to find out what settings it needs to use. It’s not perfect—sometimes you might need to adjust a setting or two— but for the majority of accounts, it’s all you need to get going. 8. Consistent Themes Across Applications Most of the Office applications use the same type of formatting themes, including color and font choices. You can save your own custom themes, and then apply them to documents from different programs. For example, you can apply the same custom theme to a Word document that you used in a PowerPoint presentation, and vice-versa. The same goes for Excel and Publisher. 9. More Video Formats Earlier versions of PowerPoint suffered from a lack of compatibility with certain video formats, such as Flash. In PowerPoint 2010, though, you can insert almost any type of video and add some creative flair to your presentation. 10. Make Your Own DVDs PowerPoint 2010 enables you to output your presentations to movie format. Then you can use free Windows utilities to convert those digital movie files to DVDs that will play on any television. Your audience doesn’t need a computer to watch the show, and you won’t need to spend extra money on software to create custom DVDs.
About the Author Faithe Wempen teaches computer hardware and software architecture at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI). She also teaches online courses in Microsoft Office applications, hardware technologies, buying a PC, and more for Powered.com. She is the author of Office 2010 For Seniors For Dummies and the PowerPoint 2010 Bible.
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Wiley, the Wiley logo, For Dummies and all related trademarks, logos, and trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates.