More Stuff When Using MS Office Starter

This is the last of the MS office starter tip, hope they have helped. :)





Microsoft Office Starter 2010 Tips and Tricks 7: Word Starter, Beyond Basics

In our final Tips and Tricks, we will dig a bit deeper into Word Starter, and highlight some useful features that will help improve your productivity. This edition will go beyond the basics, covering the built-in PDF creator, customizable styles, and interchangeable themes.




Creating a PDF in Word Starter

PDF files are often requested in many sharing scenarios such as résumés. Office 2010 now comes with a built-in converter. No longer is there a need for you to go and download a pesky converter, when you can save it to a .pdf format straight from Word Starter!
After writing up the document that you would like to convert into a PDF, go to the Backstage by clicking the File tab above the Ribbon. Select Share in the left panel. Here you will see many options for you to share this document, as well as different options to save. Let’s choose Create PDF/XPS Document. Finally, select the button Create a PDF/XPS.

The window pictured above will appear. Selecting Options you will see several additional features that you can add into your PDF right from Word, such as adding bookmarks, selecting specific pages, or saving markups.
Customizing Styles

Having to set fonts, sizes, and colors each time you write a header, paragraph, title, subtitle, etc. in a document can prove to be rather tiresome. Luckily, styles can make writing any type of document really easy to format and really easy to modify. Styles can be found on the Home tab of Word Starter.
Let’s start by writing a new document with a title. Below we’ve written “Chapter 1: Word Starter”. In the Styles box, you’ll see that Normal is selected by default. Choose Title to show this text as a title. You may have to scroll through the styles, as there are plenty of styles to choose from. Notice how the style instantly changes.
Press enter to create a new line and write a catchy subtitle. We’ve written “Word Starter is great for writing documents!”. Select Subtitle as a style. Next, create a new line and write a second title and second subtitle with the appropriate styles.
If you want to customize styles, it’s very easy to create and apply them. Highlight the first title you’ve written and change its color, font, and anything else you’d like.

Right click over the Title style, and select Update Title to Match Selection. You’ll notice that all other text with the same style will instantly apply this new formatting!

If you’d like to save this style as a completely new style, press the button shown above and select Save Selection as a New Quick Style. Fill out the dialog that appears to title the style, and this style will be saved and accessible anytime you use Word Starter!
Themes

If you’re having difficulty finding a good color scheme for your next family newsletter, try the Themes selection in the Page Layout tab. You can choose from a multitude of themes that have pre-set fonts, colors, and sizes for all of the Styles listed above.
Simply roll over each theme and instantly preview what that theme would look like if applied to your document! If you create your own set of Styles as described above, you can save the entire set as a theme for later use and easy application. You can even choose more themes from Office.com.

For those who are looking for a free version of Windows and Excel this is it. Microsoft is going to be discontinuing Microsoft Works and replacing it with Office Starter. You will have to buy a new store computer to get Office Starter though. It is not totally free, you will have to deal with the adds (this is what makes it free). The adds really aren't that notice able; they sit in the lower right had corner of the screen in a preview window which cannot be closed.

With Windows Live you get most of the other offerings that normally come with Works. For those who use the data base feature in Works that will be gone (unless you keep a copy of Works around).

These will not be full blown Word and Excel. The idea behind the free offering is that once someone starts to use these applications they will find a need to move up to the full applications, hence fork out the money for something like the Home and Student Edition.

In my testing I fine that the average home user will find the Office Starter perfect for just doing letters, budget work ups, etc.

Not sure at this point when it will start showing up on new Windows Machines, albeit has more information is available I'll post back. :)