Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Office 2003 in 24 Hours

By Greg Perry

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • We Want to Hear from You!
  • Introduction
  • Who Should Read This Book?
  • What This Book Does for You
  • Can This Book Really Teach Office 2003 in 24 Hours?
  • Conventions Used in This Book
  • Part I. Working with Office 2003
  • Hour 1. Getting Acquainted with Office 2003
    • What's in Office 2003?
    • Starting Microsoft Office
    • The Office Assistant
    • Typing Your Question
    • Making Office Easier to Use
    • Get Ready for the Internet and Office
    • Summary
    • Q&A
  • Part II. Processing with Word 2003
  • Hour 2. Welcome to Word 2003
  • Hour 3. Formatting with Word 2003
  • Hour 4. Managing Documents and Customizing Word 2003
  • Hour 5. Advanced Word 2003
  • Part III. Computing with Excel 2003
  • Hour 6. Understanding Excel 2003 Workbooks
  • Hour 7. Restructuring and Editing Excel 2003 Worksheets
  • Hour 8. Using Excel 2003
  • Hour 9. Formatting Worksheets to Look Great
  • Hour 10. Charting with Excel 2003
  • Part IV. Presenting with Flair
  • Hour 11. PowerPoint 2003 Presentations
  • Hour 12. Editing and Arranging Your Presentations
  • Hour 13. PowerPoint 2003 Advanced Features
  • Hour 14. Animating Your Presentations
  • Part V. Organizing with Outlook 2003
  • Hour 15. Communicating with Outlook 2003
  • Hour 16. Planning and Scheduling with Outlook 2003
  • Part VI. Tracking with Access 2003
  • Hour 17. Access 2003 Basics
  • Hour 18. Entering and Displaying Access 2003 Data
  • Hour 19. Retrieving Your Data
  • Hour 20. Reporting with Access 2003
  • Part VII. Combining Office 2003 and the Internet
  • Hour 21. Office 2003 and the Internet
  • Hour 22. Creating Web Content with Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint
  • Part VIII. Publishing Eye-Catching Documents
  • Hour 23. Publishing with Flair Using Publisher 2003
  • Hour 24. Adding Art to Your Publications
  • Part IX. Appendixes
  • Appendix B. Business Contact Manager and Office Extras
  • Part X. Bonus Hours
  • Hour 25. Using FrontPage 2003 for Web Page Design and Creation
  • Hour 26. Managing Your Web with FrontPage

The Office Assistant

When you start any Office program, one of the first features you notice is the Office Assistant, an online cartoon character that hangs around as you work. Figure 1.10 shows the default Office Assistant (named Clippit), who appears when you start an Office product.

Figure 1.10 Clippit, a helpful assistant, remains faithful as you use Office.

Keep your eyes on the Office Assistant as you work because you will be amused at the contortions it goes through as it provides advice. If you have your speakers turned on, the Office Assistant makes noises to draw your attention.

Move the Office Assistant to a different screen location by dragging the character. If the Office Assistant is covering an area in which you are about to type, it automatically moves out of the way.

Suppose that you want help italicizing Word text. You can search through the online help system (via the Help menu), or you can click the Office Assistant, type a question, such as "How do I italicize text?," and press Enter. The Office Assistant analyzes your question and displays a list of related topics (as shown in Figure 1.11). Click the topic that best fits your needs, and the Office Assistant locates that help topic and displays the Help dialog box.

Figure 1.11 The Office Assistant offers a lot of advice.

If you do something and the Office Assistant sees a better method, you see a yellow light bulb that you can click for shortcut information. If you begin to create a numbered list using menus, for example, the Office Assistant might display the light bulb to let you know that you can create a numbered list by clicking a button on the toolbar.

Customizing the Office Assistant

If you work on a slow computer, you might want to disable the Office Assistant to keep things moving a little faster. Also, many (most?) Office users like the Office Assistant when they first start using Office but then tire of the assistant always moving around the screen.

When you right-click the Office Assistant, a pop-up menu appears with these options:

• Hide— Gets rid of the Office Assistant. Display the Office Assistant again by clicking the toolbar's Office Assistant button.
• Options— Displays an Office Assistant dialog box, from which you can control the behavior of the Office Assistant (such as the Office Assistant's response to pressing the F1 key).
• Choose Assistant— Enables you to change to a different animated Office Assistant character from the dialog box shown in Figure 1.12.
  

  Figure 1.12 Select a new Office Assistant.

• Animate!— Causes the Office Assistant to dance around its window; the Office Assistant likes to show off. Select Animate a few times to see the Office Assistant's contortions.

By default, the Office Assistant does not appear until you activate him. If you don't see an Office Assistant when you start an Office program, select Help, Show Office Assistant, and the Office Assistant appears. In reality, you might grow tired of this fun guy rather quickly. The Office Assistant is cute at first and then becomes a nuisance in many people's opinions. (Those people turn him off right after he turns them off.) Do what you want; Office 2003 is designed to provide what you need and hide what you don't want to see or use.

Figure 1.13 Office products provide a two-pane help view.

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