Lately I've been busy learning Office 2007. So far I've finished Excel and I am now half way through Word 2007. Currently I am planning to finish PowerPoint, Publisher and Outlook before Christmas.

I am learning these things for two reasons: 1st: we can’t get away from Microsoft Office…its everywhere! One way or the other, we have to use one / more Microsoft Office programs for our work; 2nd: I am offering some computer trainings in Oamaru, so it would be great if I know programs like Excel and Outlook because they are very popular in the business world; also...knowing a trick or two in these programs can certainly save you time later on.

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I was talking to a friend the other day and she told me that Office 2007 is not as good as Office 2003 because she have to go through the different tabs on the Ribbon to get what she wants :( In Office 2003, the functionality is just a click away, so why does she have to "increase her mouse clicks" in the new version? Well, what she said was quite true, so does that mean we should switch back to Office 2003?

For example, if you want to use the Close function, you can:

• A. Click on the Office Button; then click on the Close button.
• B. Use keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl + W
• C. <insert more methods here>

Shortcut keys are not everyone’s cup of tea, and we can’t expect the users to remember them unless they use it all the time. Solution A is good, but that’s two clicks away. Since the Ribbon is grouping the functionalities into different categories, this means that most things won’t be just one click away from your finger tips. So does that mean we have to accept the facts and click on different tabs every time we want something that’s not in the Home tab? Well, not really unless you don’t like to use the Quick Access Toolbar. The Quick Access Toolbar is basically a customizable toolbar for the users to store their favorite shortcuts on. Let’s take a look at the Quick Access Toolbar and see what it can do for us.

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By default, the Quick Access Toolbar is located beside the Office Button:

If you click on the downwards arrow, you will see a menu with some commands:

Personally I’d like to put the Toolbar below the Ribbon so that it’s closest to my mouse when I needed it:

This is where it will locate if you put it under the Ribbon:

Since the toolbar is customizable, you can add more buttons / checkbox to it to make it more personalized. There are two ways to do this. We start with the “olden way” first. Right click on the Quick Access Toolbar and click on Customize Quick Access Toolbar:

Now you should see the window below (minus the green & black square):

If you have used Office before, you should be very familiar with this kind of method of doing things. Just click on the items on the left and click on the Add button to add item to the Quick Access Toolbar:

I personally doesn't like to use this method because it takes time to go through all the options and find the ones you use. Here is the second and better way, and I will illustrate this with a few examples:

I really like to use the Zoom to Page Width function, but I can’t get to it within one click, so putting the button onto the Quick Access Toolbar would certainly save my time! But how am I going to do that? Well, first of all, let’s find it on the Ribbon by clicking on the View tab; you will see the Page Width button in the Zoom group:

To add it to the Quick Access Toolbar, all I have to do is right click on the button that you want to add, and click on the Add to Quick Access Toolbar.

You should see the button appearing on the toolbar instantly:

But how about checkboxes, can I add them too? Sure, why not? Just say you want to add the Ruler checkbox under View tab’s Show/Hide group:

All you have to do is right click on the checkbox you want and click on Add to Quick Access Toolbar:

As you can see, the checkbox is now on the toolbar:

What about the items in the Office Button, can they be added to the toolbar too? Let’s give it a try! Sometimes I need to use the Save as PDF function, so having it on the toolbar would be great!  Now all I have to do is navigate / find the function that I need:

Right click on it and click on Add to Quick Access Toolbar:

It’s on the Quick Access Toolbar now!

To delete the icons / checkboxes on the Quick Access Toolbar, just right click on the ones you no longer need and click on Remove from Quick Access Toolbar.

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As you can see, with the methods I've mentioned above, you can really customize your working environment to suite your needs; with the help of the Quick Access Toolbar, your most frequently used buttons will only be a click away :D