Interactive Guides to Help Transition to the Office 2010 Ribbon

If you are having trouble transitioning to the ribbon interface in Office 2010, have no fear, the interactive guides are here.

One of the biggest pieces of feedback when moving to the new ribbon style interface in Office 2010 from previous versions (anything Office 2003 or prior so include Office XP, Office 2000, etc.) for all versions of the product (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook primarily) is that it looks so new and what used to be in the same place version after version on the menus and toolbars is now somewhere different.

There were good reasons as to why the redesign took place but before going into them, if you are using Office 2010 and the new ribbon interface for the first time, please bear with it.  Within a week I found I was just as productive after moving to the ribbon and since I first used it in Office 2007, I have found some great features that were hidden away in previous versions.  Also, I found that the new features and functions that were added to the 2010 version were much more easily discoverable.  I now consider myself a power user, particularly with Excel 2010, as opposed to a regular “I just use it to do what I have to get done” type of a user back in Office 2003.

The thing that I really love about these guides is that you can hover over the option and get a quick description of where the command is now located (as above) but if you click in exactly the same place that you would have in previous Office versions on the mock up of the menu/toolbar then the guide takes over and shows you exactly where to click (as below) on the Office 2010 version of the ribbon.  Fantastic!!!

There are versions of the guide for:

• Access 2010
• Excel 2010
• InfoPath 2010
• OneNote 2010
• Outlook 2010
• PowerPoint 2010
• Project 2010
• Publisher 2010
• Visio 2010
• Word 2010

There is also a downloadable installation package for each for distribution across multiple PCs or for use offline.

Hope you like!

Chris Parkes