Startup and Help

• When you first open Word, Excel or PowerPoint, it will have a task pane in addition to the areas for putting in your text, images or data. The task pane will display links you can click to do common things. If you close the task pane to make more room in your work window, you can get it back by going to the "View" menu, then selecting "Toolbars." Click "Task Pane."
  
  As you learn Office, you have some help options that are specific to Microsoft. All Office applications have the option of using office assistant (the little paperclip). The option to show or hide it is under the help menu. The "What's This" option gives you useful information about an object in your documents and explains what various icons and toolbars do. The "Help" menu option opens your browser to Microsoft's on line help, support and tutorials.
  
  

Content and Appearance

• MS Office treats all documents as objects, no matter what application you create them in. Under the Insert menu, you have an "Object" option. Clicking it opens a dialog box that lets you insert documents from other applications into the document you're working on. The Object dialog box lets you insert documents created by a number of non-Microsoft applications. You can put an Excel spreadsheet or a PowerPoint slide right into the middle of a Word document.
  
  The Format menu's Styles option allows you to change things like fonts, headings, bullet points and borders so that you have a consistent appearance throughout your document. If you decide you want a change, you can change the whole document at once. PowerPoint and Word have "Themes," also located under the Format menu. Themes can change the color and texture of your background and as well as colors of headings, titles, and a wide variety of bullet point styles.
  
  

Customizing Your Experience

• The Tools menu has an option for on line collaboration in all three applications. This menu gives you application-specific security options for your documents. In Word and Excel, you can control changes. Word also lets you track changes; if you have several users editing one document, you can keep track of who changed what. All three applications have an Options choice that will let you control document security and make other advanced customizations. Some of these are document specific, and some will change the way that application works every time you use it. For example, you can tell Word, Excel, or PowerPoint not to show the task pane on start up.