the commands for doing mail merges. Excel has a Formulas tab that holds the commands for setting up calculations.
The buttons and controls on the tabs operate in different ways. Figure 1-3 points out some examples on Word’s Home tab.
✔ On/off toggles: When the button is selected (it turns orange), the feature is on. Each time you click the button, it switches between on and off.
✔ Command buttons: When you click the button, the command executes. If you click a command button again, the command repeats.
✔ Connected button sets: In connected sets of buttons, selecting a button deselects (cancels) the previous selection in the set.
For example, Figure 1-3 has four buttons in the bottom row for paragraph alignment. The leftmost one is selected; if you click one of the others, it’s automatically canceled.
✔ Menu buttons: Buttons with arrows on them open menus or color palettes.
✔ Galleries: A gallery is like a permanently open menu or palette; click a selection directly from a gallery. Most galleries also have a More button that shows more choices.
You can hover the mouse pointer over a button to see a pop-up box, called a ScreenTip, which tells the button’s name and/or purpose.
With some buttons that contain arrows, you can click anywhere on the button face – directly on the arrow or not – to open the menu or palette (an array of colored squares from which you can choose a color). With others, the button face and the arrow are separate clickable areas. Clicking the arrow opens the menu, but clicking the button face applies whatever setting was most recently chosen from the menu.
To tell the difference between the two types of menu buttons, point the mouse at the button. If the button face and the arrow are different colors or if there is a thin line between them, it’s the type where you have to click directly on the arrow to get the menu. If there’s no separation, you can click anywhere on the button.
In the bottom-right corner of many of the groups is a small square with an arrow. Clicking this square (called a dialog box launcher) opens a dialog box related to that group. For example, the one for the Paragraph group in Figure 1-3 opens the Paragraph dialog box, which contains controls for every button in that group plus more options not available on the Ribbon.
Not sure which tab contains the command you want, or what the command is called? The Tell me what you want to do… box (shown in Figure 1-2) enables you to ask questions in plain English. Just type your question in the box and press Enter to see a list of relevant commands, and then click the one you want to issue that command.
When you resize the application’s window so the window is narrower than normal, or when you run the application on a computer that has low-resolution video settings, the controls on the Ribbon compress (squeeze together). Some of the groups turn into single buttons with drop-down lists for accessing the individual controls within that group. For example, in Figure 1-4, most of the groups are compressed, and one of the groups has been opened as a drop-down list.
Above the main part of the Ribbon is a small toolbar called the Quick Access toolbar. You can add buttons for frequently used commands here (as many as you can fit). To add a button, right-click any control from any tab and choose Add to Quick Access Toolbar, as shown in Figure 1-5. To change the position of the Quick Access Toolbar, right-click it and choose Show the Quick Access Toolbar Below the Ribbon (or Above, if it’s already below).
Clicking the File tab opens the File menu, also known as Backstage view. Backstage View provides access to commands that have to do with the data file you are working with – things like saving, opening, printing, mailing, and checking its properties. The File tab is a different color in each application. In Word, for example, it is blue. To leave Backstage view, click some other tab or press the Esc key.
When a document is open and you enter Backstage View, the Info category appears. It provides information about the current document, and offers commands for protecting the document, checking for issues, and managing versions. In addition, if the document uses a different file format than Word 2016, a Convert button appears, enabling you to upgrade the document format. See Figure 1-6.
Some of the other categories, when selected, make additional commands or options appear to the right of the list. For example, in Figure 1-7, you can see that when Share is selected (in Word), a submenu of commands appears to the right, along with buttons for specific operations.
The bottom-most command is Options, which opens a dialog box from which you can control the settings for the application.
In Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, the Start screen appears when you start the application, and from there you can create a new document (or workbook, or presentation) by pressing the Esc key or clicking the Blank template. You can then just start typing or inserting content into it.
You can also create additional new documents. An easy shortcut to do so is to press Ctrl+N. You can also choose File ⇒ New. That latter method has the advantage of opening a selection of templates you can use to jumpstart your work if you don’t want a totally blank document to start with. Choose one of the templates that appears, or click in the Search for online templates box, type a keyword, and press Enter to look for a certain kind of template. Let’s forego the templates for now, though, and keep working in this chapter with a blank document.
Putting text on the page (or onscreen) is a little different in each of the three major Office applications: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
✔ Word: The main work area of the program is a blank slate on which you can type directly. Just click in the work area and start typing! Chapter 2 explains more about typing and editing text. See Figure 1-8.