To give a command to Office 2007, you need to follow these basic steps:

1. Select an item (text, picture, table, and so on) that you want to modify.

2. Click a tab that contains the command you want.

3. Click the command you want to use.

Command icons work in one of three ways:

 Clickable icons: Clicking an icon immediately chooses a command to alter your data. The Bold and Italic icons are examples of icons that you click only once to choose them.

 List box icons: Some icons display a downward-pointing arrow to the right. Clicking these icons displays a list of additional options. The Font and Font Size icons are examples of list box icons.

 Gallery icons: Some icons display a downward-pointing arrow that displays a drop-down list of additional commands, called a gallery.

Customizing an Office 2007 Program

If you want to modify how a particular Office 2007 program works, you can customize its features. To customize an Office 2007 program, follow these steps:

1. Load the Office 2007 program you want to customize.

2. Click the Office Button. A pull-down menu appears.

3. Click the Options button in the bottom-right corner, such as Word Options or Excel Options.

4. Click a category, such as Save or Display. The Options dialog box displays multiple options for you to customize.

5. Click OK when you’re done choosing different customizing options. If you click the Save category in Step 4, you can define a default file format and file location for storing files for each Office 2007 program (Word, Excel, and so on).

Exiting Office 2007

No matter how much you may love using Office 2007, eventually there will come a time when you need to exit an Office 2007 program and do something else with your life. To exit from any Office 2007 program (except Outlook), choose one of the following:  Click the Close box in the upper-right corner of the Office 2007 window.  Click the Office Button and then click the Exit button.  Press Alt+F4. If you try to close an Office 2007 program before saving your file, a dialog box pops up to give you a chance to save your file. If you don’t save your file before exiting, you’ll lose any changes you made to that file. To exit Microsoft Outlook, just choose File➪Exit.

Editing Data Although you create a file only once, you can edit it many times. Editing can add, rearrange, or delete data, such as text, numbers, or pictures. All Office 2007 programs work in similar ways to edit data, so whether you use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Access, you’ll know the right commands to edit data no matter which program you may be using. Whenever you edit a file, save your file periodically by clicking the Save icon in the Quick Access toolbar, pressing Ctrl+S, or clicking the Office Button and choosing Save. That way if your computer crashes or the power goes out, you won’t lose all the editing changes you made.

Adding Data by Pointing

When you enter data into a file, your data appears wherever the cursor appears on the screen. The cursor appears as a blinking vertical bar, which basically says, “Anything you type now will appear right here!” Because the cursor won’t always magically appear exactly where you want to type data, you must move the cursor using either the mouse or the keyboard. To move the cursor using the mouse, follow these steps:

1. Move the mouse pointer where you want to move the cursor.

2. Click the left mouse button. To move the cursor using the keyboard, you can use one of many cursor movement keys:

    The (up/down/left/right) arrow keys
    The Home/End keys
  The Page Up/Page Down keys

Use the up/down/right/left arrow keys when you want to move the cursor a small distance, such as up one line or right to the next cell in an Excel spreadsheet. To move the cursor faster, hold down the Ctrl key and then press the arrow keys. If you hold down the Ctrl key, the up-arrow key moves the cursor up one paragraph, the down-arrow key moves the cursor down one paragraph, the left-arrow key moves the cursor left one word, and the right-arrow key moves the cursor right one word.

Pressing the Home key moves the cursor to the beginning of a sentence (or a row in a spreadsheet), and pressing the End key moves the cursor to the end of a sentence (or a row in a spreadsheet). Pressing the Page Up/Page Down keys moves the cursor up or down one screen at a time.

Using any of the cursor movement keys moves the cursor to a new location. Wherever the cursor appears will be where you can enter new data.

Selecting Data

To modify data, you must tell Office 2007 what you want to change by selecting it. Then choose a command that changes your data, such as underlining text or deleting a picture. To select anything in Office 2007, you can use either the mouse or the keyboard. Generally, the mouse is faster but takes some time getting used to coordinating the motion of the mouse with the movement of the mouse pointer on the screen. The keyboard is slower but much simpler to use.

Selecting data with the mouse

The mouse provides two ways to select data. The first way involves pointing and dragging the mouse.

1. Point the mouse pointer at the beginning or end of the data you want to select.

2. Hold down the left mouse button and drag (move) the mouse pointer over the data to select it.

When you drag the mouse, hold down the left mouse button. If you don’t hold down the left mouse button as you move the mouse, you won’t select any data when you move the mouse pointer across the screen. You can also select data by clicking the mouse. To select a picture, such as a chart in Microsoft Excel or a photograph added to a Microsoft Word document, just click the picture to select it. Office 2007 displays rectangles, called handles, around the border of any selected picture. To select text with the mouse, you can click the mouse in one of three ways :

    Single-click: Moves  the cursor
    Double-click: Selects  the word that you click
    Triple-click: Selects  the entire paragraph that contains the word you
 click

Office 2007 defines a paragraph as any chunk of text that begins on a separate line and ends with a Return character (¶), created by pressing the Enter key.

Selecting data with the keyboard

To select data with the keyboard, you need to use the following keys:  The cursor movement keys (up/down/left/right arrow keys, Home/End keys, or Page Up/Page Down keys)

 The Shift key

The cursor movement keys simply move the cursor. The Shift key acts like the left mouse button and tells Office 2007 what to select. To select data, you have to follow these steps:

1. Move the cursor to the beginning or end of the data you want to select.

2. Hold down the Shift key. (Keep it pressed down.)

3. Move the cursor using any of the cursor movement keys, such as the up-arrow key or the End key.

4. Release the Shift key. You may find it easier to place the cursor with the mouse and then hold down the Shift key while pressing a cursor movement key to select data more precisely than you can by dragging the mouse. To select all the data in a file, press Ctrl+A. Selecting multiple chunks of data with the mouse and keyboard For greater flexibility in selecting data, you can use both the mouse and the keyboard to select multiple chunks of data at the same time. To select two or more chunks of data, follow these steps:

1. Select a picture or chunk of text using either the keyboard or the mouse.

2. Hold down the Ctrl key.

3. Select another picture or chunk of test using either the keyboard or the mouse.

4. Repeat Step 3 for each additional item you want to select.

5. Release the Ctrl key when you’re done selecting data.

Editing Data with the Pop-up Toolbar

As soon as you select data, Office 2007 displays a pop-up toolbar that displays the most commonly used commands (displayed as icons). This pop-up toolbar appears to the upper right of the data you selected as a faint image. The closer you move the mouse towards this pop-up toolbar, the darker and sharper the toolbar appears. The farther you move away from the toolbar, the fainter it appears. To use this pop-up toolbar, follow these steps:

1. Select data using the mouse. Selecting data with the keyboard will not display the pop-up toolbar.

2. Move the mouse pointer to the area to the upper right of the selected data. The pop-up toolbar appears. The closer you move the mouse to the toolbar, the more visible the toolbar will appear.

3. Click a command (icon) on the pop-up toolbar. Deleting Data The simplest way to edit a file is to delete your existing data. If you just need to delete a single character, you can use one of two keys:

    Backspace: Deletes the  character immediately to the left of the cursor
  Delete: Deletes the  character immediately to the right of the cursor

If you need to delete large chunks of text, follow these steps:

1. Select the data you want to delete using either the keyboard or the mouse. (See the earlier section, “Selecting Data.”)

2. Press the Delete key. Office 2007 wipes away your data.

Cutting and Pasting (Moving) Data

Moving data in Office 2007 requires a two-step process: cut and paste. When you cut data, you delete it but save a copy in a special area of the computer’s memory known as the Clipboard. When you paste data to a new location, you copy the data off the Clipboard and paste it in your file. To move data, follow these steps:

1. Select the data you want to move, using the keyboard or mouse as explained in the earlier section, “Selecting Data.”

2. Choose one of the following:

   •  Click the Cut icon (from the Home tab).
   •  Right-click the mouse; when the pop-up menu appears, choose Cut.
   •  Press Ctrl+X.
 

3. Move the cursor to a new location.

4. Choose one of the following:

   •  Click the Paste icon (from the Home tab).
   •  Right-click the mouse; when the pop-up menu appears, choose Paste.
 •  Press Ctrl+V.

If you select data in Step 3, you can replace the selected data with the pasted data you selected in Steps 1 and 2. Copying and Pasting Data Unlike the Cut command, the Copy command leaves your selected data in its original location but places a second copy of that data somewhere else. To copy and paste data, follow these steps:

1. Select the data you want to copy, using the keyboard or mouse, as explained in the earlier section, “Selecting Data.”

2. Choose one of the following:

   •  Click the Copy icon.
   •  Right-click the mouse; when the pop-up menu appears, choose Copy.
   •  Press Ctrl+C.
 

3. Move the cursor to a new location.

4. Choose one of the following:

   •  Click the Paste icon.
   •  Right-click the mouse; when the pop-up menu appears, choose Paste.
 •  Press Ctrl+V.

Dragging with the Mouse to Cut, Copy, and Paste

The mouse can also cut/copy and paste data. To move data with the mouse, follow these steps:

1. Select the data you want to move using the methods described in the earlier section, “Selecting Data.”

2. Move the mouse pointer over the highlighted data.

3. Hold down the left mouse button and drag (move) the mouse. The mouse pointer displays an arrow and a box while the cursor turns into a dotted vertical line. Alternatively, to copy data, hold down the Ctrl key while holding down the left mouse button and dragging (moving) the mouse. The mouse pointer displays an arrow and a box with a plus sign while the cursor turns into a dotted vertical line.

4. Move the dotted vertical line cursor where you want to place the data you selected in Step 1.

5. Release the left mouse button. Your data appears in its new location.

Undo and Redo

To protect you from mistakes, Office 2007 offers a special Undo command, which essentially tells the computer, “Remember that last command I just gave? Pretend I never chose it.” You can use the Undo command any time you edit data and want to reverse your changes. The two ways to choose the Undo command are

 Click the Undo icon on the Quick Access toolbar. Press Ctrl+Z.

Sometimes you may make many changes to your file and suddenly realize that the last five or ten changes you made messed up your data by mistake. To undo multiple commands, follow these steps:

1. Click the downward-pointing arrow that appears to the right of the Undo icon. A list of your previously chosen commands appears.

2. Move the mouse pointer to highlight all the commands that you want to undo.

3. Click the left mouse button. Office 2007 undoes your chosen commands. Until you choose the Undo command at least once, the Redo icon appears dimmed. The Redo command lets you reapply the last command you chose to undo. The two ways to choose the Redo command are

 Click the Redo icon.  Press Ctrl+Y.

Each time you choose the Redo command, you reverse the effect of the last Undo command. For example, if you use the Undo command four times, you can choose the Redo command only up to four times.