Customizing Office 2007

The default settings of software applications can impact your productivity and accuracy. Taking the time to address those that are annoying or counter-intuitive place the control for formatting your documents back in your hands. Without addressing these issues, you may be living with needless editing and inconsistencies.

Customizing Word

In Microsoft Word 2007, the user preferences are displayed in the Word Options screen. Click the Office button, then the Word Options button. The navigation pane along the left replaces the cluttered tab approach used in earlier versions. The user interface options are shown in the first category called Popular. The out-of-the-box settings here are the accepted preferences for most users. Look over the user name and initials for accuracy as these are used in tracked changes and comments to distinguish reviewers. As you hover the mouse pointer over a setting, a screen tip appears, providing additional information.

Review the next window of preferences by clicking Display from the navigation pane. Display provides options for changing the printed and screen display of documents. Consider selecting the last item ' 'Updated linked data before printing' ' so that objects linked to external sources are updated before printing. For instance, if an Excel spreadsheet is embedded in your document, enabling this option will print with the latest results from the source file.

The Proofing window, next on the navigation pane, contains options that provide proofreading assistance through the spelling and grammar checker and automatic correction of common misspellings and typographical errors. The AutoCorrect Options window contains several options that deserve consideration. Specifically, the default settings for 'AutoFormat As You Type' give Word permission to take over your formatting by making assumptions about what you are doing or want to do.

Each of the 'Apply as you type' and 'Automatically as you type' options that follow should be turned off; otherwise, you'll experience styles being applied without warning and consequently defying the best practices typically used in law firms. This will also eliminate the resulting aggravation and surprise upon discovering your bullets or numbers have suddenly changed format.

Returning to the Proofing window, you'll notice that by default Word does not check the spelling of words typed in uppercase. Unless you find some reason to systematically ignore these words, select this option. Additionally, a couple of the grammar options can be undesirable. Consider deselecting 'Mark grammar errors as you type' and 'Check grammar with spelling.' Many find that the grammar suggestions offered are unnecessary and laborious for legal documents.

From the Advanced window, disable 'Keep track of formatting' to eliminate the proliferation of faux styles in your documents. This feature, combined with certain options on the Styles task pane, will list every variation of legitimate styles in the document. In other words, if a certain paragraph using the Body Text style has also been manually formatted with Bold, a new item is added to the Styles list called Body Text + Bold. The problem is this is not really a style and its unique attributes are not controllable from Styles commands. It's advised to prevent these from being included in the Styles list to avoid confusion.

While in the Advanced window, also turn off 'Enable click and type' again to maintain control over formatting. Use the scroll bar to navigate through all the Advanced options. The General section contains some items you might customize as well. For instance, enabling 'Update automatic links at open' will automatically update any content linked to other files that were created in another program.

Customizing Excel

The Excel Options are much less intrusive than those in Word. The purpose of changing Excel's defaults is an effort to personalize its behavior to your individual tastes, not as much to enforce industry-specific best practices. User preferences for working with spreadsheets tend to be more globally accepted, such as automatically calculating formulas or display the results of formulas instead of the formulas themselves. In Excel, most of the out-of-the-box defaults seem to be generally accepted by most users.

To personalize the Excel environment, select Excel Options from the Office button. If anything, review the Popular category that includes options for setting the default font, view, number of sheets and user name. Excel 2007 has added Page Layout view to its displays options, which allows you to visualize the document with headers and footers and page breaks applied. This particular setting can also be selected on an as-needed basis from the View ribbon.

Customizing PowerPoint

The PowerPoint Options are accessible from its Office button as well. The Popular section lists the same options considered previously. At the Proofing window, 'Use contextual spelling' is not selected by default as it is in Word. This is a new and helpful feature that identifies the improper use of a word. For instance, using the word 'hear' instead of 'here' when referring to a location will be underscored with a blue squiggle, contrasting with the red squiggle on spelling errors, and green for grammatical errors. It's not a perfect science, so a manual proofread should always follow automated error checking.

The 'AutoFormat As You Type' options under 'AutoCorrect Options' may require adjustment. The same issue with fractions, hyphens, and bullets and numbers exist in PowerPoint. Deselect these features to maintain formatting control and consistency in your presentations.

From the Save window, 'Embed fonts in the file' is a document-based setting, but consider it when working with presentations that contain nonstandard fonts. Selecting this option will maintain the font formatting when the presentation is accessed on other machines. This does significantly increase the file size but is necessary if the use of unique fonts is required in the current document.

Customizing Outlook

The user preferences for customizing Outlook's environments are set from Tools, Options as in earlier versions. Tools, Options groups the settings using a tabbed dialog box. Here, the settings to consider for best practices are found on the Mail Format tab, under Editor Options. A 2007-type navigation pane groups these editing options. The settings under Proofing, AutoCorrect Options require some familiar modification. 'AutoFormat As You Type' offers the same options as those shown in Word. Review these based on your preferences for working in Outlook.

The default settings of software applications can impact your productivity and accuracy. Taking the time to address those that are annoying or counter-intuitive place the control for formatting your documents back in your hands. Without addressing these issues, you may be living with needless editing and inconsistencies.

Customizing Word

In Microsoft Word 2007, the user preferences are displayed in the Word Options screen. Click the Office button, then the Word Options button. The navigation pane along the left replaces the cluttered tab approach used in earlier versions. The user interface options are shown in the first category called Popular. The out-of-the-box settings here are the accepted preferences for most users. Look over the user name and initials for accuracy as these are used in tracked changes and comments to distinguish reviewers. As you hover the mouse pointer over a setting, a screen tip appears, providing additional information.

Review the next window of preferences by clicking Display from the navigation pane. Display provides options for changing the printed and screen display of documents. Consider selecting the last item ' 'Updated linked data before printing' ' so that objects linked to external sources are updated before printing. For instance, if an Excel spreadsheet is embedded in your document, enabling this option will print with the latest results from the source file.

The Proofing window, next on the navigation pane, contains options that provide proofreading assistance through the spelling and grammar checker and automatic correction of common misspellings and typographical errors. The AutoCorrect Options window contains several options that deserve consideration. Specifically, the default settings for 'AutoFormat As You Type' give Word permission to take over your formatting by making assumptions about what you are doing or want to do.

Each of the 'Apply as you type' and 'Automatically as you type' options that follow should be turned off; otherwise, you'll experience styles being applied without warning and consequently defying the best practices typically used in law firms. This will also eliminate the resulting aggravation and surprise upon discovering your bullets or numbers have suddenly changed format.

Returning to the Proofing window, you'll notice that by default Word does not check the spelling of words typed in uppercase. Unless you find some reason to systematically ignore these words, select this option. Additionally, a couple of the grammar options can be undesirable. Consider deselecting 'Mark grammar errors as you type' and 'Check grammar with spelling.' Many find that the grammar suggestions offered are unnecessary and laborious for legal documents.

From the Advanced window, disable 'Keep track of formatting' to eliminate the proliferation of faux styles in your documents. This feature, combined with certain options on the Styles task pane, will list every variation of legitimate styles in the document. In other words, if a certain paragraph using the Body Text style has also been manually formatted with Bold, a new item is added to the Styles list called Body Text + Bold. The problem is this is not really a style and its unique attributes are not controllable from Styles commands. It's advised to prevent these from being included in the Styles list to avoid confusion.

While in the Advanced window, also turn off 'Enable click and type' again to maintain control over formatting. Use the scroll bar to navigate through all the Advanced options. The General section contains some items you might customize as well. For instance, enabling 'Update automatic links at open' will automatically update any content linked to other files that were created in another program.

Customizing Excel

The Excel Options are much less intrusive than those in Word. The purpose of changing Excel's defaults is an effort to personalize its behavior to your individual tastes, not as much to enforce industry-specific best practices. User preferences for working with spreadsheets tend to be more globally accepted, such as automatically calculating formulas or display the results of formulas instead of the formulas themselves. In Excel, most of the out-of-the-box defaults seem to be generally accepted by most users.

To personalize the Excel environment, select Excel Options from the Office button. If anything, review the Popular category that includes options for setting the default font, view, number of sheets and user name. Excel 2007 has added Page Layout view to its displays options, which allows you to visualize the document with headers and footers and page breaks applied. This particular setting can also be selected on an as-needed basis from the View ribbon.

Customizing PowerPoint

The PowerPoint Options are accessible from its Office button as well. The Popular section lists the same options considered previously. At the Proofing window, 'Use contextual spelling' is not selected by default as it is in Word. This is a new and helpful feature that identifies the improper use of a word. For instance, using the word 'hear' instead of 'here' when referring to a location will be underscored with a blue squiggle, contrasting with the red squiggle on spelling errors, and green for grammatical errors. It's not a perfect science, so a manual proofread should always follow automated error checking.

The 'AutoFormat As You Type' options under 'AutoCorrect Options' may require adjustment. The same issue with fractions, hyphens, and bullets and numbers exist in PowerPoint. Deselect these features to maintain formatting control and consistency in your presentations.

From the Save window, 'Embed fonts in the file' is a document-based setting, but consider it when working with presentations that contain nonstandard fonts. Selecting this option will maintain the font formatting when the presentation is accessed on other machines. This does significantly increase the file size but is necessary if the use of unique fonts is required in the current document.

Customizing Outlook

The user preferences for customizing Outlook's environments are set from Tools, Options as in earlier versions. Tools, Options groups the settings using a tabbed dialog box. Here, the settings to consider for best practices are found on the Mail Format tab, under Editor Options. A 2007-type navigation pane groups these editing options. The settings under Proofing, AutoCorrect Options require some familiar modification. 'AutoFormat As You Type' offers the same options as those shown in Word. Review these based on your preferences for working in Outlook.