WD97: What's New in Word 97
ID: Q157478
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The information in this article applies to:
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Microsoft Word 97 for Windows
SUMMARY
The following information was taken from Word 97 online Help.
MORE INFORMATION
For your convenience, we've assembled this list of key features in Word
97, along with ideas about how you might apply them to your work. (Most of
the features listed are new in Word 97, but a few were introduced in Word
95.)
What's new with automating your tasks and getting assistance?
=============================================================
Word 97 provides an extensive set of automatic features that make everyday
tasks easier.
AutoCorrect
-----------
Word can correct the following errors automatically while you type:
- Accidental usage of the CAPS LOCK key; new in Word 95. For example, Word
replaces tHESE with These at the beginning of a sentence and then turns
off CAPS LOCK.
- Plural and possessive forms of a word; new in Word 95. For example, if
you have an AutoCorrect entry that inserts Sweet Lil whenever you type
SL, Word also automatically changes SL's to Sweet Lil's.
- Common multiple word spelling errors. For example, Word replaces "int
he" with "in the".
- Common word pairs that are spelled correctly but are grammatically
incorrect when used together. For example, Word replaces "your a" with
"you're a".
AutoFormat As You Type
----------------------
Word can format text automatically as you type:
- Word creates numbered and bulleted lists when you start a list with a
number or an asterisk; new in Word 95.
- Word creates a single or double border for you when you type three or
more consecutive hyphens (-) or equal signs (=) in a row and then press
ENTER; new in Word 95.
- Word applies built-in heading styles to text, such as Heading 1, when
you type a line of text with no ending punctuation and then press ENTER
twice; new in Word 95.
- Word formats ordinal numbers and fractions, such as changing 1st to 1st
with the "st" superscripted or 1/4 to 1/4 ; new in Word 95.
- Word formats network and Internet paths--such as \\Reports\May\Week1.doc
and http://www.microsoft.com/ - as hyperlinks. When you click an
Internet hyperlink, Word starts your Web browser and takes you to the
specified Web page. When you click a network hyperlink, Word starts the
program necessary to open the destination and opens the file specified.
- Word automates the lead-in emphasis; that is, detects the formatting
applied in the first list item and applies it to the next item. For
example:
1. Word 97 is smart! It does the work for you.
2. Word 97 is cool! It makes your document look amazing.
- When you type +----+----+, Word creates a table with a column for each
pair of + signs.
- Word detects leading spaces that correspond to the left margin of the
bulleted or numbered paragraph above and changes your left indentation
for you.
- Word formats your text as bold if you enclose the text with an asterisk
(for example, *test* will bold the word test). Word will format your
text with italics if you enclose the text with an underscore (for
example, _test_ will italizice the word test).
AutoComplete
------------
Word can automatically offer suggestions for the rest of the word or phrase
you are typing. To accept the suggestion, you press ENTER and Word
automatically replaces your partially typed word with the completed word.
Word 97 will automatically complete:
- The current date
- A day of the week
- A month other than the current one
- Your name and company name
- AutoText entries
AutoSummarize
-------------
You can use the Word AutoSummarize feature to automatically summarize the
key points in a document. Word analyzes your document statistically and
linguistically to determine the most important sentences and gives you a
custom summary based on this analysis. With AutoSummarize, you can
highlight the key points in an online document and view it at different
levels of detail. Or you can automatically create a separate summary or
abstract. You have total control of the length of the summary.
It's important that you comply with all applicable copyright laws when
using this feature. You should review the accuracy of any summary because
it is, by its nature, not the entirety of the work
Automatic style creation and style preview
------------------------------------------
Words 97 includes the following style improvements:
- It automatically creates a style for you when you apply new formatting
to your text.
- It can automatically redefine styles to reflect your recently applied
changes.
- It gives you an instant preview of each style from the Style list on the
Formatting toolbar.
Letter Wizard
-------------
The Letter Wizard in Word 97 can help you write a new letter quickly and
easily, or it can help you change and add to elements in your existing
letter. It includes:
- Letter Wizard dialog box. Accessible from the Tools menu, this dialog
box provides letter element choices you can make to easily build your
letter. If you've already started a letter, this dialog box displays the
appropriate information from your letter, so you can get an instant
snapshot of what you have and what you need. In addition, Word remembers
whom you've sent letters to and stores all related information, such as
contact names, addresses, and titles, in a list. When you send a letter
to a previous recipient, all you have to do is select that person's name
from a list, and Word automatically fills in the rest of the information
for you.
- Step-by-step help through the Office Assistant. When you type in a
common letter opening, such as "Dear Joe," Word recognizes it as a
letter opening and immediately offers to step you through the letter
creation process using the Office Assistant. The Office Assistant is
fully integrated with the Letter Wizard dialog box and provides hints
and details on all the letter elements.
- Easy text reuse. Once you use the Letter Wizard, Word automatically adds
structure and styles to your letter by converting letter elements into
AutoText List fields. For example, the closing text "Sincerely" is
converted to a Closing field. When you right-click the word "Sincerely,"
a menu appears that offers alternative closings, such as "Best regards"
and "Cordially." You can easily replace "Sincerely" with any of these
closings just by clicking it.
Office Assistant
----------------
The Office Assistant, which replaces the Word 95 Answer Wizard, uses
IntelliSense natural-language technology. The Assistant anticipates the
kind of help you need and suggests Help topics based on the work you're
doing. You can also type a Help request in your own words and get the
answer you need. You can have the Assistant offer to start a wizard when
you begin certain tasks, such as creating a letter. The new Office
Assistant character in Word 97 is a central place for you to get tips on
how to use Word features more efficiently and find visual examples and
step-by-step instructions for specific tasks.
What's new with editing and proofing tools?
===========================================
Word 97 provides the following key features that make it faster and easier
to proofread and edit documents.
Check spelling as you type
Checks for spelling errors as you type, and marks possible errors
directly in your document; new in Word 95.
Check grammar as you type
Checks for grammar errors as you type, and marks possible errors
directly in your document. Like the automatic spelling checker, the
automatic grammar checker offers suggestions for corrections in-place
when you right-click the marked text.
Smart spelling
- Recognizes your name, your organization's name, personal names of
varying ethnicity, commonly used company names from the Fortune 1000
list, all country names, names of U.S. cities with a population of
30,000 or more, and current terminology.
- Recognizes your typing patterns and does not mark certain patterns as
errors in your document; for example, words in uppercase letters and
words containing numbers are no longer marked as misspellings.
- Ignores Internet and file addresses.
Natural-language grammar checker
Flags mistakes accurately, gives you in-place, effective suggestions,
and reduces your proofing time. It offers improved syntactic analysis,
better rewrite suggestions, and more user friendly grammar styles.
Spelling/grammar checking combination
Eliminates separate dialog boxes and provides an interface that lets you
proofread online exactly as you do on paper. You can now check your
spelling and grammar mistakes in one pass, in one place.
Find (and replace) all word forms
Finds and replaces all grammatically inflected forms of a word; new in
Word 95. For example, if you want to replace the word "saw" with the
word "hammer" throughout a document, Word intelligently changes not only
"saw" to "hammer," but also "sawing" to "hammering" and "sawed" to
"hammered.". Word can also intelligently replace the right word forms;
in this example, Word would not replace the verb "seen" with "hammer"
although it is a word form of "saw" because "seen" is unrelated to
"hammer." In addition, Word 97 provides alternative word forms, giving
you choices for possible replacements in case the default choice is not
ideal. You can select the replacement from a list rather than having to
type it.
What's new with tables, borders, and shading tools?
===================================================
Word 97 provides the following new features to make it faster and easier to
work with tables, borders, and shading.
Table tools
-----------
Draw Table tool
Lets you create and customize tables. You use this intuitive
drawing tool much the same way you use a pen to draw a table;
just click and drag to draw the table boundaries and cell
partitions. You can now make individual cells any height and
width you want.
Eraser tool
Lets you easily remove any cell, row, or column partition to
achieve the same effect as merging two cells. In earlier versions
of Word, you could only merge cells if they were in the same row.
In Word 97, you can merge any adjacent cells; vertically or
horizontally.
Vertical alignment
Lets you align cell contents at the top, center, or bottom of the
cell, using the convenient alignment toolbar buttons. If your text
is oriented vertically, the buttons automatically adjust to give
you left, center, and right alignment. Vertical text direction
Makes your text flow vertically (rotated 90 degrees) in table
cells, text boxes, and frames. This is a useful feature for
creating labels and also for publishing oriented documents where
credits or copyrights are printed sideways.
In-table row resizer
Lets you adjust any row's height directly in your table by
dragging the row border up or down, just as you adjust column
widths. If you hold down ALT while you drag, the new vertical
ruler shows you the exact row height.
Border and shading tools
------------------------
New border styles
Gives you more than 150 border styles to customize the look of
your documents. This includes 3-D styles and several publishing
oriented styles that allow multiple line borders, which are
especially popular in professional documents.
Page borders
Lets you put a border around each page. In addition to the 150
new border line styles, Word provides Publisher's fun Border
Art for page borders, which includes more than 160 art styles.
Page borders are also highly customizable. For example, you can
have:
- Unique border style for each page edge.
- Headers and footers in the border area.
- A different first page.
Text borders
Lets you apply borders to words or characters within a paragraph.
You can literally "block out" pieces of text by applying any of
the available border styles. Text borders also make it easier to
put borders around headings.
Text shading
Lets you call out parts of your document for other users. Just as
you apply shading to paragraphs, now you can apply it to selected
words or characters within a paragraph. Choose any shading color
or gradation.
What's New with Drawing Tools?
==============================
Word 97 provides a new set of drawing and graphics capabilities that you
can use to easily embellish your text and graphics with 3-D effects, shadow
effects, textured and transparent fills, and AutoShapes.
Office Art
Gives you many new drawing tools and capabilities that can be easily
accessed through the new Drawing toolbar. You can easily embellish your
text and graphics using the 100 adjustable AutoShapes, 4 types of fill
effects (multicolored gradient, textured, transparent, and picture),
right-shadow effects, and 3-D effects. Office Art is a rich and
sophisticated drawing layer that replaces the Word drawing layer and is
shared by all Microsoft Office applications.
Office Art picture objects
Gives you all the flexibility required for picture manipulation. For
example:
- You can easily place pictures anywhere in your document, including
inline with text, simply by dragging them.
- You can modify the Z order and use Send Behind Text to create a
background graphic or watermark effect.
Text boxes
Replaces frames and offers the full set of Office Art capabilities, such
as 3-D effects, fills, backgrounds, rotation, sizing, and cropping.
Linked text boxes
Gives you the ability to link text boxes for desktop publishing use; for
example, you can flow an article from page 1 to page 4 in a newsletter.
Once two text boxes are linked, text that overflows from the first text
box appears at the top of the second one. Any number of text boxes can
be linked in any direction.
Wrapping around irregular objects
Lets you wrap text around objects of any shape and size. You can wrap
text straight to the edge of an irregular object.
What's new with Web tools?
==========================
Word 97 provides an extensive set of features that you can use to take
advantage of the World Wide Web and the Internet.
Active Web
----------
You can use the Active Web, which is shared by all Microsoft Office
programs, to author and browse through rich webs of documents on an
intranet or on the Web.
Hyperlinks
Link to any Microsoft Office, HTML, or other file on any internal
or external Web site or any file server. To jump to the new
destinations, you simply click the hyperlinks. Word can
automatically recognize and format e-mail addresses, URLs, and UNC
path names as hyperlinks.
The Web toolbar
Quickly open, search, and browse through any document, including
Web documents or pages. You can jump from one document or site to
another, jump forward or backward among the documents you've
opened, and add interesting documents you find on the Web to the
Favorites folder to quickly return to them later.
Compressed graphics
Compress pictures or graphics inserted in documents
automatically. Word natively stores JPEG images and converts all
raster formats to PNG, a new compressed format.
Web page authoring
------------------
Web Page Wizard
Start creating a Web page for you. The wizard provides customized
Web templates that you can easily modify to meet your needs. You
can choose from a variety of content templates that address the
common types of Web pages, such as a sample personal home page.
You can also choose predefined visual themes for these pages; each
theme contains fitting background colors, bullets, horizontal
lines, and other elements.
Sound
Incorporate background sound seamlessly on Web pages if your Web
browser supports it. You can specify the location of the sound
file to be played and the number of times to play it.
Video
Choose a video clip to play, specify playback options (such as "on
open" or "on mouse-over" or both) and, as in the case of sound,
specify how often to play the clip. You can specify alternative
images and text for browsers that don't support video.
Picture
Add a picture to a Web page, just as you do with a Word document.
Scrolling text
Add scrolling text to your Web pages. Type in the text you want in
this style, and you have full control over the animation type,
direction, speed, background color, and size.
Bullets
Make your online Web pages graphically rich. Word provides a
collection of colorful, graphical images that can be used as
bullets on your Web pages.
Horizontal lines
Add HTML-specific horizontal lines that can be colorful and
graphical additions to your Web pages. These lines are an
extension of the built in borders and shading functionality in
Word.
HTML forms
Produce consistent results with both HTML and non-HTML forms. All
interface elements are similar, except where they are extended for
HTML-tag-specific controls.
HTML tags
Simplify authoring your Web pages. Word provides WYSIWYG ("what
you see is what you get") support for authoring Web pages with
commonly used tags, such as tables, fonts, and background sound.
There are more than 80 HTML tags supported in Word.
Online contents
---------------
Word 97 provides a large collection of Web authoring items on the Word Web
site, which will be updated regularly to reflect the latest technology and
stylistic trends.
ClipArt Collection Online
Obtain the latest, coolest graphical elements for your Web pages.
Clip Gallery Live, the online clip art collection in Word, will
include a sampling of the following page elements that can be
easily downloaded: backgrounds, bullets, buttons, icons,
horizontal lines, video files, and sounds.
Templates Online
Obtain new templates for creating Web pages with common Web page
themes.
AutoUpdate Web Tools
Manually or automatically update your system to include the latest
Word Web authoring tools from the Word Web site.
What's new with reading online documents?
=========================================
Word 97 provides a rich set of new tools to enhance the way you read and
move through online documents.
Online layout view
Achieve the best screen appearance for your online documents. Text
appears larger and wraps to fit the window.
Document Map
Gain instant access to any part of your document. Word splits the
window into two panes (a Document Map in the left pane and the
document content in the right pane). The heading-based outline of
the document in the Document Map lets you quickly scan the
document structure, gives you one click access to the point of
interest, and serves as a "You are here" road map by highlighting
your current location in the document.
Hyperlinks
Link to any Microsoft Office, HTML, or other file on any internal
or external Web site or any file server. To jump to the new
destinations, you simply click the hyperlinks. Word can
automatically recognize and format e-mail addresses, URLs, and UNC
path names as hyperlinks.
Hyperlinked cross-references
Create "live" cross-references in documents that others will read
online by inserting the cross-references as hyperlinks. Instead of
scrolling through the document to find the referenced text, now
you can just click the cross-reference and use the Web
navigational toolbar to jump back and forth between related
paragraphs.
Document background
Make your document more visually appealing to read online by
adding background colors and textures. You can see these
backgrounds only in online layout view, and you can't print them.
Animated text
Add animated effects that make the text appear to move or flash.
Navigation tools
Browse through a document directly from the scroll bar. The
browser lets you choose an element to browse by; for example, to
review all the tables or pictures in a document, you click Browse
by Table in the browser. You can use the browser to browse through
a document by page, section, comment, footnote, endnote, field,
table, graphic, heading, or editing change.
Microsoft IntelliMouse pointing device
Directly control scrolling, panning, and zooming. You can also use
this mouse to control the amount of detail displayed on your
screen in outline or AutoSummarize view.
What's new with WordMail?
=========================
Word97 integrates seamlessly with Exchange and Outlook to become your
standard e-mail editor.
Automatic creation of hyperlinks
Format network addresses, e-mail addresses, and Internet
addresses; for example, http://www.microsoft.com/ automatically as
hyperlinks as you type them. By clicking a hyperlink, you jump to
that location; in this example, to the Microsoft home page on the
World Wide Web.
Message Authors in Document Map
Detect automatically whether an incoming message contains a long
conversation and list the author of each part of the conversation
in the Document Map. By clicking an author's name, you can
instantly jump to that part of the message.
Address book information access for names in messages
Find address book information on any sender or recipient while you
read or write a message. Just right-click the name, and then click
Who Is on the shortcut menu.
Automatic formatting of plain text WordMail messages
Format your incoming plain text e-mail messages automatically the
first time you open them. It makes following message conversations
easier by stylizing headers, indenting conversations, and adding
colors so you can differentiate message flow easily.
WordMail templates
Compose e-mail quickly. Use any of the ten e-mail templates that
represent various themes. For example, you can use the urgent-theme
template to compose an urgent e-mail message.
What's new with collaboration with others?
------------------------------------------
Word 97 offers new features that reflect the work style of teams and gives
you tools that increase efficiency and productivity.
Versioning
Maintain a working history of a document. With this feature you can
see exactly who did what on a document and when. You can also enter
descriptive text about the changes made in each version. All the
versioning information is stored within the document, so you don't
need to maintain and track multiple copies of the document. In
addition, you can have Word automatically save a version at the end
of every session, so you can see who changed what in each version.
Merging documents
Consolidate all changes and comments from different reviewers in one
easy step. Multiple reviewers can modify separate copies of the same
document, and then you can merge all their changes into the original.
Or, for example, you can take a document away overnight and
automatically merge your changes back into the original document when
you return.
Comments and ScreenTips
Easily review someone else's comments online without opening a
separate pane. You can see at a glance where comments were inserted;
the affected text appears to be shaded with light yellow. When you
rest the pointer over this text, a ScreenTip that includes the
comment and the name of the reviewer appears above the text. You can
now read each comment in context.
Reviewing toolbar
Quickly gain access to all the common reviewing tools you need on one
toolbar; track and review changes, insert and review comments,
highlight text, save versions, and send the document in an e-mail
message.
What's new with multilingual support?
=====================================
Word 95 introduced a feature that implemented automatic font and language
switching when the keyboard changed, allowing multilingual text in your
document and in several dialog boxes. Word 97 makes it even easier to
create and display documents that contain text in a variety of Pan European
languages. You can also view documents in U.S. Word that were created in
Far Eastern versions of Word.
Keyboard switching
Automatically switch the fonts in your document to appropriate fonts
based on the language you are using when you switch your keyboard.
Keyboard switching also triggers language property switching in Word
and, therefore, ensures that a certain language text, such as Greek,
is proofed by the proofing tools of that language only.
Multilingual text support in dialog boxes
Enable Word to edit and display multilingual text across localized
versions of Word. For example, you can search by a Greek author's
name in the Find File dialog box in Word.
Open multilingual documents in localized Word
Correctly display text created in localized versions of Word if you
have the appropriate fonts on your system. For example, you can open
and view a Japanese Word document in U.S. Word. Note that this
applies to all localized versions except bi- directional versions,
such as Hebrew and Arabic.
Copying and pasting Unicode text
Copy Greek, Cyrillic, or any Pan European text from U.S. Word and
paste it onto a Microsoft Excel worksheet. Also, you can use the
feature to copy and paste Unicode text into edit controls in dialog
boxes such as Find and Replace.
Sorting
Specify a language on which to base the sorting order of text in your
document. For example, a Hungarian double letter such as "cz" sorts
correctly in U.S. Word when you set the sorting language to
Hungarian.
Insert symbols
Gain access to language-specific symbols and letters easily by
changing the font subset in the Symbol dialog box (Insert menu). For
example, switching the subset to Cyrillic gives you all the Russian
characters available.
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