This page is meant to help you if you find the Office 2007 interface a little creepy and want some guidance on tackling it, or some tools to make it a bit easier.
To anyone despairing of ever making sense of the new interface, I have a message of hope. Your old keystrokes will more than likely work in the new version. The ribbon thing that has the menu items may look like it was designed by a committee of bandits, but there is plenty of help in the system.
If you're a mouse-hater or a screen reader user, just hold down the Alt key when you go into an Office 2007 program. This will activate the ribbon thing at the top of the screen where the new menus live. Tab repeatedly to get their titles, and then press enter to explore the menu you want. Tabbing through the options will then clue you in to what's there. Either in text on the screen or via speech, there are plenty of help messages to help you as you go. This is a very tedious approach, though, and you'll soon want to get into the new key strokes. If you get stuck, try one of the old ones!
Another message of hope is that once you've used these programs for 4 years, they won't get any worse.
Interactive: Word 2003 to Word 2007 command reference guide Microsoft's very visual conversion guide to doing in Word 2007 what you did in Word 2003. Not a lot of use too blind people, I surmise, as it's a Flash animation and relies on clicking the old menus to get the demo of the 2007 equivalent. But you can tell all your sighted friends about it. I'm not aware of an equivalent keystroke converter. Microsoft ask on this page what you think of this demo - well, let's tell 'em!
Microsoft is Dead - this article claims that no-one's afraid of the Evil Empire these days
Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats - users of Office 2000, 2003 and XP can now open, edit and save files in Office 2007 formats. Might help keep the peace with friends and colleagues! I understand that service packs for these older Office versions will enable them to read and write in the new formats
Classic Menus - bring back the 2003 menus. The add-on puts an extra tab on the Word 2007 ribbon called Menu, and you can then get something like the old menus. 15-day trial.
Save as DAISY - Microsoft - add-in for MS Word that lets you save documents as DAISY books. Download v2.1.1 (March 2009) and listen to an mp3 tutorial on installing the add-in and producing DAISY books with it. Works with Word XP, 2003 and 2007.
Servii add-on is an interface into Microsoft's Word that allows the user to type into Word, using their own words, what they would like. Rather than learning and memorizing Word's intricate menus and dialogs, Natural Word attempts to understand you, the user, and translates your requests into actions Word can understand.
UBitMenu is an add-in for Office 2007 that brings back the Office 2003 menus in Word, Excel and powerpoint. Free for non-commercial use.
Keystroke Heaven - a Yahoo! group for those interested in keyboard shortcuts.
Optimus keyboard - this keyboard has a display on every key that says what function it's performing. Ideal for blind people with a keyboard reader! Oh, hang on, there isn't such a thing as a keyboard reader. Damn!
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