Office X for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

introduction 1

A New Day at the Office

To say that Microsoft Office is the world’s most frequently-used software applica-

tion is the understatement of the century. In most Mac- or Windows-based corpo-

rations, anyone not using Office is considered a weirdo.

So when Apple announced Mac OS X, Microsoft began rewriting the four big, at-

tractive, sophisticated computer programs that make up Microsoft Office for the

Macintosh: Word (a word processor), Excel (a spreadsheet application), PowerPoint

(a slide-show program), and Entourage (a calendar/email/address book program).

These Office programs were some of the first major ones to appear in Carbonized

form (that is, adapted for Mac OS X), making it possible for millions of Mac users to

start spending most of their time in Mac OS X.

Microsoft Scores a X

So why is Office considered a Mac OS X program? Here are some of the ways that

Carbonization makes itself known in Office X:

• Office X looks like the rest of Mac OS X. Scroll bars and other controls appear in

that soothing, shimmering blue color. The Formatting Palette (page 109) “ge-

nies” its way out of the Standard toolbar when you click its button. Furthermore,

when you’ve minimized an Office document to the Dock, choosing it from the

Window menu genies it back out again.

• As in most Mac OS X programs, Office’s Open dialog boxes and Save dialog boxes

(now called sheets) have a new column view, similar to Mac OS X Finder win-

dows (see Figure I-1). They also offer options that let you convert documents in

other formats from other programs.

Introduction