The Pacer

Issue date: 2/13/07 Section: Technology

UTM students have become geniuses at working Microsoft Word 2003, but all that is about to change now that Microsoft has released its long-awaited Microsoft Office 2007.

The first time students opens Word 2007, they will notice that the taskbars have undergone a major overhaul. Instead of having layer after layer of formatting bars, each formatting section has its own tab. This makes Word sleeker and easier to use because users no longer have to search through four lines of formatting tools to find the button to make a word bold.

All of the features that students normally use - like inserting headers, footers and footnotes - automatically pop up when you click the insert button. Instead of having to search through every drop down menu, the options are right in front of you and easy to use.

A definite improvement that students will be ecstatic to have is the reference tab. You can make a table of contents from the many templates Microsoft provides. Also, students can automatically insert citations after they fill out the information, such as title, author, publisher and date. Users can choose from MLA, APA, Chicago and Turabian styles. Students can also automatically format their Works Cited page and Bibliography pages from templates that are provided. All the user has to do is fill out the information in the pop-up window, and Microsoft Word does all the work.

Another new feature that Microsoft Word has is the addition of a translator and research pane. This feature falls under the same heading as the spelling and grammar check. However, the only two languages a document can be translated to are Spanish and French.

At the bottom of the Word screen is a word count. This is convenient for students who have to type a 5,000 word paper and hate having to keep clicking tools and word count every time they want to see how much they lack. Now, Word automatically counts the words as you type.

The last feature is document protection. Users can make their documents read-only by clicking the protect button. This is helpful if someone is proofreading the document, but the user doesn't want to let them make changes to it.

All in all, besides a few new features, Microsoft Word 2007 is basically just more user-friendly than the 2003 version. It's also a nice powder blue color. Students who have to type research papers their entire college career will like Microsoft Office 2007, because it gives students more options with their documents. Maybe that's to calm and relax students while they're trying to write a 15 page paper in one day.

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