The Microsoft Office Word Team's Blog

Jonathon,

Have a great time during the holidays. I find the information here very useful.

One thing I am interested in exploring is programatically creating Word documents using the new file format and Windows Workflow. Any examples of this type of Word solution would be great.

Thanks

I would like to read more about the new content controls, building blocks, themes and style sets and how to best you these features in custom templates.

Happy Holidays to you all too.

I'd like to see more about the use of themes, custom styles, and document formatting in general.

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to you all.

I'm wondering how someone can customize the Shortcut Menus in Word 2007?

In the old Word it's clear - you open the Shortcut Menu Toolbar an then just drag and drop items on it - http://www.worldstart.com/tips/tips.php/2403.

But in Word 2007 ???

Regards,

Ivan.

Happy Holidays from Germany as well!

Currently I'm mostly interested in deployment and corporate wide customization, so I would like to read:

1) As well more on Office themes, style sets, building blocks, etc. Especially how to distribute those corporate identity elements to all users as a default one (even after roll-out). Or using other words: Where is which element and the default stored? (I found out most of that in the meantime but it definitely was kind of detective's work ;) ). Are there registry keys to change their location, i.e. from a user profiles folder to a home directory?

2) Advanced information on the QAT, i.e.:

- Can the administrator stop the users from removing some important buttons like "Undo" in the QAT? I know there are checkboxes to get buttons again but doing this makes "Undo" the last button which makes the QAT look disturbed.

- Can the non-roaming QAT be made roaming? The word.qat file is stored in %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Office which does not roam when the user logs on to another machine. Is there a reason for this?

3) If you want to roll out Office to company users without internet access what do you have to do to hide features requiring internet access from users? I.e. in the

Online help, Templates only accessible online, Internet Fax, etc.

4) The Office Transfer Settings Tool does not exist any more. I read about the Userstate Migration Wizard as a successor. Is there already some documentation for use with Office 2007 or can you blog on it?

PS: My issue with the write-protected templates in the start-folder occurs only if the file is located on a network folder so this might simply be a server virus scanner issue.

I couldn't find anything on the following bug (Word 2007 RTM German) in the MS Knowledgebase, so I'll post it here:

1. Create a some small logo "c:\test.png", i.e. 32x32 pixels using mspaint.exe

2. Rename your normal.dotm, then open Word 2007 to get an out-of-the-box empty document

3. Insert => Footer => "Empty" to create a footer and close the footer again

4. Press Alt+F11, then STRG+G and execute the following code to insert a picture in the FOOTER and select it:

ActiveDocument.StoryRanges(wdprimaryFooterStory).InlineShapes.AddPicture("C:\test.png", LinkToFile:=False, SaveWithDocument:=True).Range.Select

5. As you will see the shape is NOT inserted in the footer but on the HEADER for even pages. Depending on the document (more sections/different footers for first page) the picture even may be inserted at a footNOTE instead of the footer

6 If you repeat the command from step 4 it works fine

The placement in the wrong storyrange also occurs if you try to insert the picture at a pre-definded bookmark in a footer using this line of code:

ActiveDocument.StoryRanges(wdPrimaryFooterStory).Bookmarks("FooterLogo").Range.InlineShapes.AddPicture("C:\test.png", LinkToFile:=False, SaveWithDocument:=True).Range.Select

Since there have to be different pictures in the footer in my solution they need to be inserted dynamically. This worked fine with Word 2000. I'm sorry I don't know if the bug was introduced in Word 2007 or before.

Can you please pass this on to the test team?

It doesnt looks quite logical to post here- but I really exhausted to find where to get help... I am currently investigating the possibility of getting docx to do something like a label merge with custom xml parts. Does Word 07 finally supports repeated content controls base on iterating the xml tree? Any workaround available? The constraint for me is I need to keep this docx template being editable by the users and then able to produce docx on asp.net server without the need to open word there (which is obviously not a good choice to run word OM)

Thank you for the new Word this year. I really start to like and get used to the ribbon, you know.

The only sad thing for me, is that my worst enemy of Word still is not fixed. It's mentioned in the very first comment of "Getting Control of Your Numbering". I'm waiting for it through 5 versions already to be addressed since Word 97!

It just should NOT go with a style, it should be a Formatting Exception or something like that!

A primer on keyboard shortcuts that are not duplicated in the ribbon might be good in the blog. Too many users try to select to the start of the document wit the mouse (instead of CTRL+SHIFT+HOME), delete a paragraph by pressing BACKSPACE alone (instead of with extend selection or triple-clicking), and hunt around for the last insertion point (instead of pressing SHIFT+F5.) This leads to wasted time, frustration, and mangled documents. In my experience, these users are also unable to dig this information out of the help system, so publishing it here, too, might be helpful.

Incidentally, is there any reason why many ribbon buttons that do have keyboard shortcuts do not list them in the tooltips (e.g. on the Home tab alone: clear formatting, highlight, bulleted and numbered lists, decrease and increase indent, line spacing, normal, heading 1, heading 2; and on the status bar: word count, print layout, outline, draft?) This reminds me a lot of Jensen's post at http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/03/06/544499.aspx One could ask "which keyboard shortcuts get tooltips?"

Finally, two more issues I have identified:

1. Word gives me the error, “This operation has been canceled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator” when I try to CTRL+click to follow links in TOC fields. This occurs though the links only refer to H1/H2/H3 fields within the same document, even when I am logged in with administrator privileges. See http://www.francispickering.com/toclinks.png

2. Word’s XPS, PDF, and print output have some problems with complex layouts: http://www.francispickering.com/pdf_xps.png

The screenshot depicts Word in print preview mode and the PDF and XPS output of that same document. Here are the problems I see: in PDF, page borders are not miter joined (they overshoot); in XPS, the paisley watermark is totally absent; and in both formats, the colors are washed out. Lastly, though it is probably the fault of the viewer, horizontal and vertical lines of the XPS document are anti-aliased (this is unnecessary and makes them look blurry.)

The document prints out even worse from Word (on Windows XP.) The header background prints out as simple gradient that runs horizontally from red to white. The blue part and the watermark do not appear in the printed copy at all. I have tried this on both laser and inkjet printers. I have not been able to test this on Vista; however, as I imagine that at least the problems shown by the XPS output will also be reflected in printed output when XPS printer drivers are used.

[The word “Conclusion” is a Heading 1 paragraph located in the main body. It lies above three layered text boxes that have been sent behind the text. The bottom text box is filled solid (opaque blue in this case.) The middle text box is filled with a custom texture (paisley) and set to 90% transparent. The top text box is filled with a horizontal gradient (that runs from red to white, from left to right) with a transparency gradient in the same direction (from 0% to 100%.)]

Happy New Year!

Hi Jonathan :-)

Of course I've tried adding commands to the Quick Access Toolbar! But this doesn't help me too much.

I need to customize the Shortcut Menus in Word 2007, like I do in any prior version of Word.

At 'Developer Overview of the User Interface for the 2007 Microsoft Office System' (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms406052.aspx) under 'Detailed Design of the New UI System' see the paragraph 'Context Menus and Shortcut Menus'. In the end of this paragraph is written:

"Because, like the Ribbon, the shortcut menus can also host galleries, people can learn to use a feature once and use it the same way everywhere. Context menus no longer represent the "advanced" way of doing something. THE SAME VISUAL DESIGN LANGUAGE IS SUPPORTED IN THE SHORTCUT MENUS AS IN THE RIBBON."

I understand the last sentence as I can customize the Ribbon UI through a combination of the XML markup and any Microsoft .NET Framework–based language that is supported in Microsoft Visual Studio as stated here for the Ribbon UI:

'Customizing the Office (2007) Ribbon User Interface for Developers (Part 1 of 3)'

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms406046.aspx

Unfortunately I can't find any XML example of Shortcut Menus Customization!

For the Ribbon UI customization I'm using 'Custom UI Editor Tool', which can be found here:

http://openxmldeveloper.org/articles/customuieditor.aspx

But and there I can't find any XML example of Shortcut Menus Customization :-(

So my request is for a Post covering this issue of UI Customization!

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Ivan.

OK, thanks Jonathan.

I'll try to get answer of my question at Jensen’s blog as you suggested me.

Regards,

Ivan.

I'd like to see more on voice recognition.

Last year around this time I asked you what you'd like to see covered on the Word Team Blog in 2007 .

Last year around this time I asked you what you'd like to see covered on the Word Team Blog in 2007