Word, Excel, and PowerPoint all have the same zoom controls, located in the bottom right corner of the application window. (There are also zoom controls on the View tab in each application.) Figure 1-15 shows the zoom controls on the status bar.
✔ Drag the slider to adjust the zoom (to the left to zoom out, and to the right to zoom in).
✔ Click the minus or plus button (at opposite ends of the slider) to slightly zoom out (minus) or in (plus).
✔ Clicking the number of the current zoom percentage opens a Zoom dialog box, which shows more zooming options.
Each Office application has a variety of viewing options available. Each view is suited for a certain type of activity in that application. For example, in Word, you can choose Draft view, which is speedy to work with and presents the text in a simple one-column layout. Or you can choose a Print Layout view, where you can see any special layout formatting you applied, such as multiple columns.
These views are available:
✔ Excel
• Normal: Displays a regular row-and-column grid.
• Page Break Preview: Shows a zoomed-out version of the worksheet with page break lines that you can drag to adjust where they fall.
• Page Layout: Displays the content as it will appear on a printed page.
✔ Word
• Read Mode: Optimizes the display for onscreen reading. You cannot edit the document in this view.
• Print Layout: Shows the document approximately as it will be printed, including any layout features, such as multiple columns.
• Web Layout: Displays the document as it will appear if saved as a Web page and published on a Web site.
• Outline: Displays the document as an outline, with headings as outline levels.
• Draft: Displays the document in simple text form, in a single column.
✔ PowerPoint
• Normal: This default view provides multiple panes for working with the content.
• Outline: The same as Normal view except instead of thumbnails of each slide you see a text outline of slide content.
• Slide Sorter: All of the slides appear as thumbnail images, which is useful for rearranging the order of slides.
• Notes Page: Each slide appears as a graphic on a page where notes are displayed.
• Reading View: Similar to Slide Show view except in a floating window rather than full screen.
• Slide Show: The presentation is shown to the audience, one slide at a time. The Slide Show view controls appear on the Slide Show tab, rather than on the View tab with the other views.
Each application has shortcut buttons to a few of the most common views. You can find these buttons to the left of the Zoom slider, as pointed out in Figure 1-15. Hover your mouse over a button to find out which view it selects.
Enjoying the tour so far? There’s lots more ahead in Chapter 2, where I continue walking you through the important features that the Office apps have in common.
Chapter 2
Exploring the Common Features of Office 2016
Get ready to.
Text handling is quite standardized in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The same commands that you use to edit and format text in one program work almost exactly the same way in another. So, after you master them in one application, you’ll be off and running in the others.
Some of these standardized features include
✔ The Clipboard, which lets you copy and move content seamlessly between applications
✔ Text formatting, which you use to format text with the same set of Font tools, no matter which application you’re in
✔ Themes, which help you apply consistent formatting to documents created in different programs
✔ The spell checker, which you use to correct your spelling and grammar in all applications, and even maintain common custom dictionaries between them
This chapter looks at each of these tools plus a few other handy standardized tools.
In Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, you just click where you want the text to go, and begin typing. (Chapter 1 covers the basics.)
The insertion point is the flashing vertical marker (cursor) that shows where the text you type will appear. You can move the insertion point with the arrow keys, or you can click where you want to place it.
When the mouse pointer is over an area where you can place text, it turns into an I-shaped pointer called an I-beam. The shape of the I-beam makes it easy for you to precisely position it, even between two tiny characters of text. Figure 2-1 shows the insertion point and the I-beam mouse pointer.
To insert new text, position the insertion point where you want to insert it, and then type the new text.
To remove text, you can use any of these methods:
✔ Backspace it. Position the insertion point and then press the Backspace key to delete text to the left of the insertion point.
✔ Delete it. Select the text and then press the Delete key, or position the insertion point and then press the Delete key to delete text to the right of the insertion point.
✔ Type over it. Select the text and then type new text to replace it. Whatever was selected is deleted.