A Smart New Office

Initial Confusion

In my tests with Word, I was initially confused by the relocation of features: In some cases I had to do more clicking to get to functions I previously could have accessed via toolbars. Thankfully, Microsoft has retained the default keyboard controls (such as <Ctrl>-S for Save and <F12> for Save As), and other new features compensate for having to learn a new interface.

Chief among the additions is the live preview capability. As you hover the mouse over a format--for example, a new font or paragraph style--in the ribbon, the change shows in your document before you commit to it. This time-saving feature is available across the suite for a variety of options.

One downside: The ribbon does cut into your screen real estate, and the ribbon's size is not adjustable--the larger your monitor screen, the better.

Another significant interface change in Word: The Status toolbar at the bottom of the window, which shows the number of pages and the current page of a document, now also displays a running word count and a sliding zoom bar for adjusting your view from the default 100 percent.

An equally welcome addition to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint is the Document Inspector (under File, Finish), which searches for hidden text that you might not want others to see--comments, the document owner's name, and the like--and offers to remove any or all such material.

The improvements in Excel 12 include enhanced help for beginning users, beefed-up capacity (worksheets can now handle up to 1 million rows and 16,000 columns), and easy-to-apply cell designs.