Word 2007: The Missing Manual

Chapter 17. Customizing Your Workspace

If some aspect of Word’s appearance or behavior bugs you, never fear—it’s much easier to change than, say, the appearance and behavior of your teenager. In fact, Microsoft is known for providing multiple ways to do the same job, multiple paths to the same dialog box, and multiple ways to view your work. More often than not, you can tweak the aspects of Word that you find annoying.

On the other hand, Word’s factory settings work quite well, and you can safely ignore this chapter. Think of this chapter as a laundry list of the settings in the Word Options dialog box, which you can tinker with at your leisure. Scan the headings and the bullet points, and zero in on the features that are important to you. For example, this chapter explains:

• How to put your favorite commands in the Quick Access toolbar in the upper left corner of most Office programs.

• How to create your own keyboard shortcuts.

• How to change the appearance of menus, tools, and documents.

• How to fine-tune the way Word behaves when you’re editing documents.

Customizing the Quick Access Toolbar

The Quick Access toolbar lives in the upper-left corner of all Office programs. Sometimes on the Internet you see it referred to as the QAT, because computer gnomes have a strong affinity for acronyms. New in Office 2007, the Quick Access toolbar is designed to put your most frequently used commands in one spot, no matter which Office program you’re using. Best of all, you get to choose which commands ...