Helpful New Word Ribbon Tab

I just discovered a very cool resource to further ease the transition to Word 2007. It’s a small (622KB) free download that adds a “Get Started” tab to the Ribbon in Word 2007.

The “Get Started” tab is a relatively comprehensive set of redirects to Word 2007 resources on Office Online.

Specifically: 

•  “Interactive Guide”: Takes you to the Word 2003 to 2007 guide we talked about in this post 
• “Up to Speed with Word 2007”: Directs you to an Office Online demo showing you the best ways to use the Ribbon, get a handle on finding popular commands, and what the new file format (.docx) is.
• “Word 2007 Overview”: Provides a high-level demo that shows you how Word 2007 helps you create 21^st Century Documents & makes it easier to integrate Word documents with business processes.

There are also “Getting Started” tabs for Excel 2007 & PowerPoint 2007.

In an effort to reduce the number of “support calls” I get every day, I will be sending all three to my mother, father, and brother—who all recently made the switch to Office 2007—later tonight. J I highly recommend the new tabs for anyone making the transition to Word 2007/Office 2007.

Finally, you can download a printable mapping of what appears to be just about every command from the Word 2003 UI to the Word 2007 UI. These mappings are available for Access, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint as well.

Let us know what you think.

-Jonathan