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The book entitled “The Missing Manual for Word 2007 for Starters” is a must for anyone that will be using Microsoft Word 2007. It is almost a necessity because this application is like no other that is, or has been, on the market , for writing a document.

The biggest difference is that there is no “drop down” menu. It has been replaced by “ribbons” that indicate immediately where you want to go to do whatever it is that you want to make or change. The greatest obstacle is unlearning all the strokes that you had to do prior to this version of Microsoft 2007. The learning curve of the “ribbons” takes time, but the bottom line is that once learned, it becomes a treasure because of the amount of time that it saves when adding to, or taking away from, or changing and/or amending the document that you want to present. Every one of the previous Office keyboard shortcuts continues to work the same in Office 2007. There is no relearning for these actions.
This manual is intended to show you how to navigate Word using the ribbon, which is the new tabbed toolbar. In addition it shows you how to present a more professional looking letter or brochure or booklet using various templates and themes. You can craft more sophisticated page layouts using columns and/or tables and hone your writing skills with reference tools and outlining features. You can truly personalize your documents with various lively, showy touches like boxes, borders and art.
Part One of Word 2007 For Starters, The Missing Manual, is for Word Basics and explains the “how to” for creating a new blank document, creating a new document from an existing document, and creating a document from a template. It also teaches and explains in detail how to view your manuscript in different ways. In this section it will also teach you how to show and/or hide window tools, zoom your view in and out and one of the neat features in that you can split the window so that if you are working on one document and need another for reference you can readily access it without leaving your present document. In other words, you can split your window. In Part One, Chapter 1 of the book Word For Starters, it will also show you how to save and close your documents. In this new Microsoft 2007, there are many ways to save your work.
Chapter 2 of Word 2007 For Starters, The Missing Manual, takes you to a whole new concept of entering and editing text. While one might think that the ribbon is just another version of the drop down menu, I must assure you that it is much more. It is, at first, a daunting task to look at and understand the features of the ribbon with all its changes. You can now go from one feature to another with only a click of the mouse. You can take multiple chunks of text from different places and insert it and move around in your document.
Chapter 3 goes on to teach various ways to format your project. It deals with formatting on three levels encompassing small and specific as well as the more complex. It includes character formatting, size font, type of font, line spacing, bold, italics, orientation, margins, color and on and on. Whatever can be done to a project is possible with Microsoft Word 2007. Whatever your imagination allows you to do, can be done easily with this application and The Missing Manual shows you how to do it.
The next several chapters deal with more complicated issues in your project, such as setting up the document margins, page breaks, choosing paper size and layouts, applying page borders, adding headers and footers, working with multiple columns, themes and templates, spelling, grammar and reference tools, thesaurus, autocorrecting and fine-tuning your work.
The Microsoft Word 2007 For Starters, The Missing Manual, also has an excellent chapter regarding information with creating tables, moving tables around, inserting or drawing a table, etc. Again, I must mention that many of these things are not new to Microsoft Word users. The “new” part is the very innovative and comparatively easy way in which all of your work is accomplished.
Chapter 4 deals with setting up the document, margins, page breaks, etc., and Chapter 5 gives you ideas about choosing a theme and/or template. Part 2 of Word 2007 For Starters, The Missing Manual deals with the more complex documents and shows you how to plan with outlines, organizing information with tables, and adding graphics to the documents.