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Microsoft Office System Inside Out, 2003 Edition By Michael J. Young & Michael Halvorson Published by Microsoft Press Pages: 1530, plus a companion CD ISBN: 0735615128

Microsoft Office System Inside Out, 2003 Edition is the second edition of our Office Inside Out series. It covers Microsoft Office version 2003. I would like to thank the readers of the first edition, Microsoft Office XP Inside Out, for making that book a success. For a general description of our Office Inside Out series, please see the companion Web page for Microsoft Office XP Inside Out. For a description of the new Office features covered in Microsoft Office System Inside Out, 2003 Edition, see the topic New Office Features Covered in this Book, later on this page.

Topics on this page:

• Applications Covered
• New Office Features Covered in this Book
• Contents

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Applications Covered

Microsoft Office System Inside Out, 2003 Edition covers the following Office 2003 applications and tools:

• Word
• Excel
• PowerPoint
• Outlook
• Access
• FrontPage
• InfoPath
• Visual Basic for Applications
• OneNote (on the companion CD)
• Windows SharePoint Services
• Shared Office tools, including the help system, Information Rights Management, the speech and handwriting interfaces, the enhanced Office Clipboard task pane, the Clip Organizer, and the drawing tools (including the Office diagram feature)

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New Office Features Covered in this Book

New Shared Office 2003 Features

Each of the following new features is available in most—or many—of the major Office 2003 applications.

• Getting Started task pane  Most of the major Office applications now have a Getting Started task pane, which contains a basic collection of commands and features that are useful in each application. For example, the Getting Started task pane in Word lets you open an existing document, create a new document, or access Word information and resources (such as templates) on the Office Online Web site.
• Help task pane  The Help command in Office applications now opens the new Help task pane, which you can use to search for help information in local help files as well as from the Office Online Web site.
• Research task pane  In Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook you can use the new Research task pane to look up information from local and Internet information sources.
• Office Online  Office applications now provide more integrated tools for locating and using resources on the Office Web site, known as Office Online. These resources include assistance (help information), Office training, templates for Office applications, clip art and other media clips, Office updates, and services from the Office Marketplace site. Most of the tools for accessing these resources are located in Office task panes.
• Enhanced thesaurus  An enhanced online thesaurus available in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook uses the new Research task pane.
• Templates from Office Online  Office 2003 provides a larger collection of downloadable online templates and wizards for creating new Office documents—through the Office Online Web site—and it makes it easier to find, download, and use these templates.
• Information Rights Management  Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the Outlook Message form now allow you to use Information Rights Management to restrict access to a sensitive document that you distribute or message that you send. You do this using the new File, Permission menu command or the Permission toolbar button.
• My Recent Documents  The Open and Open Office Document dialog boxes now include a My Recent Documents folder that lets you quickly reopen recently opened folders or Office documents.
• Side by side document viewing  Word and Excel now let you quickly display two documents side by side and synchronize scrolling in the two documents, making it easy to scan and visually compare the documents' contents.
• Smart documents  Word and Excel now allow Office solutions developers to create documents that display custom, context-sensitive task panes. These documents are known as smart documents.
• Internet faxing  You can now send faxes from an Office application using an Outlook e-mail message and an Internet fax service.
• Simplified customization  You can use the new Rearrange Commands dialog box to customize toolbars and menus, all by issuing commands within a single dialog box.
• Windows SharePoint Services  A new SharePoint version, now known as Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), provides enhanced features that can be accessed through a browser or from Office 2003 applications, including the following:
  • Document workspaces, which are special-purpose SharePoint Web sites designed for a group of colleagues to work together on a set of documents. You can create a document workspace within a SharePoint team Web site using your browser or through an Office application.
  • Meeting workspaces, which are special-purpose SharePoint Web sites designed for a group of colleagues to plan a meeting. You can create a meeting workspace within a SharePoint team Web site using your browser or through a Meeting form in Outlook.
  • Picture libraries for sharing collections of graphics files.
  • Form libraries for creating, storing, and sharing XML-based business forms managed by InfoPath or another Windows SharePoint Services-compatible XML editor.
  • Issue tracking lists for working with issues or problems that need to be resolved.
  • Custom free-form Web pages known as Web part pages, which are built from predefined components known as Web parts.
  • Customizing a team Web site's home page using your browser.
  • Viewing the contents of a document library, list, or other information component in a datasheet format.
  • Creating subfolders within a document library, picture library, or form library.
  • Checking out a file in a document library, picture library, or form library so that only you can make changes to it.
  • Working with file versions in a document library, picture library, or form library.
  • Linking an events list to Outlook so that you can view your SharePoint events in an Outlook calendar folder.
  • Linking a contacts list to Outlook so that you can view your SharePoint contacts in an Outlook contacts folder. Also, importing contacts from Outlook to a SharePoint contacts list.
  • Exporting the list of items contained in a document library, list, or other information component to Excel.

New Word Features

• Reading Layout view  Word's new Reading Layout view displays a document in a format that's optimized for online reading. It divides the document into small pages that fit completely within the screen, and features a large, smoothed font and a simpler application interface.
• Formatting and editing restrictions  When you protect a shared Word document, you can now restrict the types of formatting and editing actions that other users can perform in the document. You can also exempt specific regions of a document from editing restrictions.
• Enhanced translation feature  Word's enhanced translation feature lets you translate a word, phrase, or sentence into a different language, using the new Research task pane together with bilingual dictionaries on your computer or on the Internet.
• General XML document editing  Word now lets you create, edit, view, or validate a custom XML document that conforms to any schema that you supply. Word also allows you to apply a custom transform to an XML document so that it can be displayed in Word using any Word formatting, text, or graphics.

New Excel Features

• Enhanced List commands  Excel 2003 provides a set of new commands for working with a List, most notably the ability to publish a List on a SharePoint team Web site.
• Enhanced XML support  You can now import, view, analyze, modify, and export XML data that conforms to any XML schema that you provide. You can import XML data from a variety of sources, including XML documents, Web services, or databases that can return data in XML format. You can now also work directly with the XML elements within the worksheet.

New PowerPoint Features

• Smart tag recognizers  PowerPoint now lets you use smart tag recognizers to convert specific types of data in your presentations—such as dates, financial symbols, and names—to smart tags that you can use to perform useful actions on the data—such as looking up a stock quote for a financial symbol.
• Package for CD  The new Package for CD feature replaces the Pack and Go feature in previous versions of PowerPoint and lets you copy your presentation to a CD or other portable medium. You can have Package for CD copy all linked files and include a complete PowerPoint viewer program that you can use to run a slide show on a computer that doesn't have PowerPoint itself installed.

New Outlook Features

• Navigation pane  The new Navigation pane replaces the former Outlook Bar. The lower portion of the Navigation pane contains a set of buttons you can click to select a particular type of information (e-mail messages, calendar items, contacts, and so on), and the upper portion of the Navigation pane displays folder lists and tools for working with the selected information type.
• Search folders  You can use Outlook's new search folders to selectively view e-mail messages or other items that meet specified criteria—for example, to view unread e-mail messages, large messages, or messages flagged for follow-up.
• Reading pane  You can now display the new Reading pane, which replaces the former Preview pane, either at the right of the Outlook window or at the bottom of the window.
• Arranging items  You can use the commands on the new View, Arrange By submenu to quickly sort or group Outlook items that are displayed in a table view. The commands on this submenu sort or group the items using a set of 13 standard categories, such as Date, Conversation, From, and To.
• Enhanced junk e-mail filter  Outlook now includes an enhanced filter that gives you more control over the management of unwanted e-mail messages.
• HTML message security  You can now have Outlook block all external content contained in incoming HTML messages to avoid signaling junk e-mailers that you have received their messages. Also, you can now opt to view all HTML messages in plain text to prevent scripts from running.
• Shared Attachments  You can now send an Office document in an e-mail message as a shared attachment. Sending a shared attachment creates a shared copy of the document in a SharePoint document workspace, which provides an environment where the message recipients can collaborate on developing the document.
• Faxing  You can now send and receive faxes in Outlook using an Internet fax service.
• Side-by-side calendars  If you have more than one calendar folder available in Outlook 2003, you can now open several of these folders at the same time and view them side by side in the Outlook window.
• Viewing SharePoint events lists  You can now open and view a SharePoint events list in Outlook as a calendar folder. This feature allows you to view and work with a shared calendar belonging to your SharePoint team within the Outlook environment.
• SharePoint meeting workspaces  In Outlook you can now create a meeting workspace on a SharePoint team Web site and link it to an Outlook Meeting form to help organize the meeting that you're planning.
• Viewing SharePoint contacts lists  You can now open and view a SharePoint contacts list in Outlook as a contacts folder. This feature allows you to view and work with a shared list of contacts belonging to your SharePoint team within the Outlook environment.
• Name smart tag button  When you view an incoming or outgoing message in the Preview pane or open it in a Message form, Outlook now displays a smart tag button next to any name or e-mail address that appears in the message header. You can click this button to schedule a meeting with the person, contact the person using instant messaging, add the person to your Contacts folder, or perform other tasks.
• Quick flags  You can now quickly add a flag to an e-mail message displayed in the Outlook window by simply clicking the Flag Status button at the right end of the message.

New Access Features

• Database backups  Access provides a new command for backing up a database to a series of backup files.
• Enhanced XML support  You can now create a table by importing any XML document or schema, optionally converting the format of the data according to a transform file that you supply. You can also export a table to an XML document or schema, optionally generating a Web page and transform for viewing the table data in a browser.
• Smart Tags property  You can use the new Smart Tags property to add a smart tag recognizer to a field, which displays a button and allows you to perform actions on recognized data (such as looking up a stock quote for a financial symbol).

New FrontPage Features

• Revamped interface  The FrontPage Views bar has been replaced by the new Web Site tab. You now access the specific tools you want by first clicking a tab—the Web Site tab to access the Web site management tools or a file tab to edit an open Web page or source code file. You then select a view for that tab by clicking a view button at the bottom of the window. The new Split view of a Web page displays two panes—you can work on the page's design in one and on its HTML source code in the other.
• Dynamic templates  You can now attach to a Web page a dynamic template, which provides content and formatting, restricts the areas where the page can be modified, and keeps the page up-to-date with template modifications.
• Layout tables and cells  You can use FrontPage's new layout tables and cells to quickly arrange and format the content on your pages. You can choose from a variety of predefined layout tables or draw your own.
• Enhanced find and replace  You can now search for and replace specific HTML elements, you can save and reuse your search criteria, and you can employ several new search options (such as using regular expressions in your search text).
• Enhanced preview  You can now preview your Web pages in several browsers simultaneously, and you can simulate different browser resolutions when designing or previewing a page.
• Enhanced publishing  The new Remote Web Site view has replaced the former Publish Web dialog box, and allows you to exchange and synchronize files between the opened FrontPage Web site and a remote Web site. You can now publish to FTP (File Transfer Protocol) servers and DAV (Distributed Authoring and Versioning) servers, as well as to servers with Microsoft extensions or to disk locations.
• New reports  Reports view now includes a set of reports that show the status of shared Web site content—dynamic templates, shared borders, style sheet links, or themes.
• Quick Tag Selector  You can use the new Quick Tag Selector to work directly with a page's HTML tags while you work in Design view.
• Enhanced source code editor  You can now use FrontPage's source code editor to edit any type of source code file or other plain text file. The editor also provides new tools for working with code—for example, an IntelliSense feature that assists you in inserting HTML tags, code snippet commands for storing and inserting frequently used blocks of code, and an XML View toolbar for working on XML documents.
• Packages  You can now create specialized SharePoint Web sites using Web site templates known as packages—for example, an issue tracking site for a workgroup, a news and review site for an organization, or a Web log.
• Web part pages  If you are creating or customizing a SharePoint team Web site in FrontPage, you can now use FrontPage to create a Web part page, which is a free-form Web page that you can quickly build by adding and customizing predefined components known Web parts.

New Application: InfoPath

• Design  Create or customize flexible and dynamic electronic forms based on XML.
• Fill out  Complete forms using editing tools similar to those provided by other Office applications.
• Deliver  Send forms to the next destination in your organization's workflow by printing them, forwarding them using e-mail, saving them on a shared network or Internet location, or submitting them directly to a data source.

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Contents

Introduction

Part 1: Getting Going with Office 2003

Part 2: Using Shared Office 2003 Application Features

Part 3: Word

Part 4: Excel

Part 5: PowerPoint

Part 6: Outlook

Part 7: Access

Part 8: FrontPage

Part 9: InfoPath

Part 10: Customizing Office 2003 Using VBA

Companion CD

• A complete searchable electronic version of the book in PDF format
• The Insider's Guide to Microsoft Office OneNote 2003 e-book
• An electronic version of the Microsoft Computer Dictionary
• An electronic version of the Microsoft Encyclopedia of Networking
• Example Office documents, databases, Web pages, macros, templates, graphics files, forms, and other files
• Detailed information on many Microsoft Office 2003 resources
• A comprehensive set of descriptions and links for third-party software products that enhance or extend Office 2003