Creating a New File
Each Office 2007 program offers two ways to create a new file:
- Choose the New command from the Office Button.
- Press Ctrl+N.
When you choose the New command from the Office Button, Office 2007 displays a New Document dialog box, which lets you create a blank file or a file based on an existing template.
When you press Ctrl+N, Office 2007 immediately creates a blank file without making you wade through any dialog boxes. If you want to create a new file based on a template, choose the New command from the Office Button. If you want to create a blank file, press Ctrl+N.
Pressing Ctrl+N in Outlook 2007 creates a different item, such as creating a new e-mail message or task, depending on what you are doing with Outlook at the time.
Checking Your Spelling
Before you allow anyone to see your file, run a spell checker first. Just press F7, and Office 2007 diligently checks the spelling of your text. When the spell checker finds a suspicious word, it displays a dialog box, that lets you choose a correct spelling, ignore the currently highlighted word, or store the highlighted word in the Office 2007 dictionary so it won't flag that word as misspelled again.
Spell checkers are handy and useful, but they can be fooled easily. You might spell a word correctly (such as their) but use that word incorrectly, such as You knead two move over their. Spell-checking won't always recognize grammatical errors, so you still need to proof your file manually just to make sure you do not have any misspelled words in your file.
If you do not want Office 2007 to spell-check your entire file, just highlight the text you want to spell-check and then press F7.
Opening a File
Generally, you will spend more time working with existing files than creating new ones. Here are two shortcuts to open an existing file:
- Use the Recent Documents pane from the Office Button.
- Press Ctrl+O.
The first shortcut appears in the Recent Documents pane from the Office Button. Each Office 2007 program keeps track of the last files you opened, so if you want to open one again, you can just click that filename. To use the Recent Documents pane, follow these steps:
- Load an Office 2007 program, such as Word or Excel and then click the Office Button. A pull-down menu appears and displays the list of Recent Documents.
- Click a filename in the Recent Documents pane.
Your chosen file appears, ready for you to view and edit. A second way to open a file quickly is to press Ctrl+O. This immediately displays an Open dialog box so you can click the file you want to open.