Seeing Possibilities
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Links last verified January 4th, 2009.
This page is meant to help you if you find the Office 2007 interface a little creepy and want some guidance on tackling it, or some tools to make it a bit easier.
To anyone despairing of ever making sense of the new interface, I have a message of hope. Your old keystrokes will more than likely work in the new version. The ribbon thing that has the menu items may look like it was designed by a committee of bandits, but there is plenty of help in the system.
If you're a mouse-hater or a screen reader user, just hold down the Alt key when you go into an Office 2007 program. This will activate the ribbon thing at the top of the screen where the new menus live. Tab repeatedly to get their titles, and then press enter to explore the menu you want. Tabbing through the options will then clue you in to what's there. Either in text on the screen or via speech, there are plenty of help messages to help you as you go. This is a very tedious approach, though, and you'll soon want to get into the new key strokes. If you get stuck, try one of the old ones!
Another message of hope is that once you've used these programs for 4 years, they won't get any worse.
Microsoft Training: Keyboard shortcuts in the 2007 Office system - series of audio tutorials that cover Word, Excel, Access, Powerpoint and Outlook 2007.
Create a Timeline in Microsoft Excel - Microsoft article.
Excel Templates. Download Excel Templates & Excel Training. Excel Template Downloads
Finding the Electronic Furniture in Office 2007 from Kelly's Corner Blog. The new interface, and some Microsoft articles to help you on your way.
GUI Gets a Makeover - why the innovations in Vista and Office 2007 are supposed to be Good Things.
HowTo Geek many handy hints on MS Office, including 2007.
Learning Word 2007 if you're visually impaired - sighted author got some advice from a techie.
Microsoft Excel 12 : Charlie's List, or "214 Keyboard Shortcuts" includes a PDF chart of hot-keys, which unfortunately isn't very accessible to those using access technology. Saved as text, it loses the table format, of course, so is hard to unpick.
Office 2007 and screen readers mailing list - on Gatewayfortheblind.com. This page lets you subscribe or change your membership. Alternatively, send an e-mail to office2007-request@GatewayForTheBlind.com, typing subscribe as the subject line.
Office 2007: Keyboard Shortcuts, LTS Online - the keystrokes are organised by function.
On-Line Technology Practice Modules - Word - basic use of MS Word, including toolbars and keyboard shortcuts.
Word 2007: Handy Keyboard Shortcuts - Tech-Recipes.com
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Understanding the Microsoft Office 2007 Ribbon - an article from the GW Micro Knowledge Base, but the information isn't confined to Window-Eyes users.
Fred's Head Companion: Get a List of All Keyboard Shortcuts in MS-Word - for versions before 2007.
Accessible World: Overview of Microsoft Office 2007 by Karen McCall, Author, Trainer and Consultant - Accessible World podcast audio file (79 mins mp3).
Interactive: Word 2003 to Word 2007 command reference guide Microsoft's very visual conversion guide to doing in Word 2007 what you did in Word 2003. Not a lot of use too blind people, I surmise, as it's a Flash animation and relies on clicking the old menus to get the demo of the 2007 equivalent. But you can tell all your sighted friends about it. I'm not aware of an equivalent keystroke converter. Microsoft ask on this page what you think of this demo - well, let's tell 'em!
Keyboard and Mouse Enhancement Downloads for Vista - Microsoft Intellitype. Intellitype for versions of Windows before Vista.
Microsoft is Dead - this article claims that no-one's afraid of the Evil Empire these days
Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats - users of Office 2000, 2003 and XP can now open, edit and save files in Office 2007 formats. Might help keep the peace with friends and colleagues!
OfficeWatch - great source of news and tips for using Office. 6 newsletters available free.
The Keyboard Lover's Guide to IE7 - from the IE Blog on MSDN.
IEBlog RSS Feed
IEBlog Aton Feed
Top 10 keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Classic Menus - bring back the 2003 menus. The add-on puts an extra tab on the Word 2007 ribbon called Menu, and you can then get something like the old menus. 15-day trial.
Servii add-on is an interface into Microsoft's Word that allows the user to type into Word, using their own words, what they would like. Rather than learning and memorizing Word's intricate menus and dialogs, Natural Word attempts to understand you, the user, and translates your requests into actions Word can understand.
230+ Keyboard Shortcuts for Top Web Services - keyboard shortcuts for Google, Wikipedia, Netvibes, etc.
Google Docs & Spreadsheets: The most useful keyboard shortcuts - Lifehacker
Application Reference Cards from the Access Technology Institute. The versions of programs this site tackles are a mite out of date, but a lot of useful stuff is here, nonetheless. Covers Windows 98, Office 2000/2003 programs, Winamp, ZoomText version 8 and 8.1 and many others.
KeyXL claims to have the largest database of keyboard shortcuts in the world. Windows, Office, Adobe, Mac, Linux, HTML editors, etc, etc.
PC Pitstop Research - Keyboard Shortcuts - gives a table of some of the most popular shortcut keys in Windows.
AutoHotkey - Free Mouse and Keyboard Macro Program with Hotkeys and AutoText
Lifehacker Code: Texter (Windows) - Lifehacker - this program saves keystrokes by inserting longer strings of text when you start typing a trigger word.
Clint Covington: Software design, Microsoft Office Access - this blog includes some articles on keyboard shortcuts.
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Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog on MSDN.
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TechJive Blog » Excel Keystrokes
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The Microsoft Office Word Team's Blog : Keyboard Shortcuts, KeyTips, and Comics
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Using No Need to Remember Keyboard Shortcut Keys in Office 2007 » My Digital Life Blog - an overview of Office 2007 keyboard shortcuts
RSS Feed. There is also a
My Digital Life Forum.
Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive 7 Tips to Get the Most Out of MS Word «
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Go on, you've done a Net search and not been able to throw away interesting but totally irrelevant results.
It's Not On the Keyboard: Typing Special Characters and Foreign Languages in Word - a $5 download in Braille book format from the National Braille Press.
Optimus keyboard - this keyboard has a display on every key that says what function it's performing. Ideal for blind people with a keyboard reader! Oh, hang on, there isn't such a thing as a keyboard reader. Damn!
PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB drives | Your Digital Life, Anywhere™ - free platform that lets you install your software on to a portable device. For those who are compulsively ON THE GO, you know.
Sumatra PDF viewer - open-source PDF viewer. Doesn't seem very screen reader friendly, but has a useful zoom facility for partially sighted readers.
Top 20 Free Applications to Increase Your Productivity - lifehack.org
Word Shoot: Spell Fast or Die! - it's what our young people would call a computer game, I believe, milud.
Remember The Milk On-line to-do list. You won't forget a task ever again, so that's you nailed down for life, then. Why not tell the whole world which disinfectant you use, where you'll be at 9pm tonight? Having blogged about your disinfectant, you'll want a widget to prove it to your thousands of friends, and here are all the tools. Why don't you put up a photo gallery of the disinfectant and discuss it with your electronic mateys on the forum.
ScheduleWorld - why not tell the whole world exactly where you're supposed to be at any given time. Burglars will love you. Last one to accumulate 5000 friends and complete their 20th wiki entry is a sissy, OK?
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