Microsoft® Word 2007: take a tour of the Ribbon

Microsoft Word 2007 lets you create documents such as letters, brochures, newsletters, and Web pages. The new version has an improved navigation system that is easier to use than ever before.

In this demonstration, you'll take a tour of the Ribbon in Word 2007. As you'll see, the Ribbon is a set of tools and commands across the top of the screen. The tab system makes frequently used commands easy to locate and use. Let's start with the Home tab.

The Home tab is at the far left and contains the text-formatting commands. The Clipboard group on the Home tab lets you copy and paste text; you can also find the Format Painter here.

To the right of the Clipboard is the Font group. These commands let you change the font, font size and color, and much more. The next two groups are Paragraph and Styles, which include more formatting options.

In the Paragraph group, you can adjust indents or create lists. The Styles lets you quickly choose and apply a style. The final group is Editing, which lets you select, find, and replace text.

Let's move on to the Insert tab, which is to the right of the Home tab. It includes options for adding pages, tables, and images. This is also where you can add symbols and special text as well as insert links, headers, and footers. You can also use the Equations section to build an equation in your Word document.

Next up is the Page Layout tab. Here you can apply themes, change the page layout and line spacing, and set up indents. You can also adjust the background by creating borders or changing the page color.

Let's look at the References tab next. This is where you'll find commands for adding references of all kinds to your document. As you can see, your options include a table of contents, footnotes, captions, and citations. You can even create an index.

Then we have the Mailings tab. Click here if you need to create envelopes or labels or you need to do a mail merge. You can also format business letters by inserting the available fields.

Now, let's explore the Review tab. Need to correct your document? Here's where you'll go to run Spelling and Grammar Checker or to turn on Track Changes. You can also insert Comments here or compare two documents.

The last tab is View, which lets you change the way you view you document. Here's where you can zoom, change the document view, or switch document view windows. You can also create and run macros from this tab..

Now that we've reviewed each of the tabs, let's see a command in action. For example, if you wanted to insert a picture in your document, you'd first select the Insert tab.

Once the commands of the Insert tab are on display, you'd click Picture.

Now you could choose between stock pictures or navigate to your own folder of images. Let's choose from the sample pictures and select the Tree picture.

Once you click Insert, the tree image appears in your document.

In this demonstration, you toured Word 2007's new Ribbon feature. We reviewed the tabs and learned about some of the commands available in each. Now you have the knowledge to start creating sharp-looking documents.