What's new in Microsoft Office 2004

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac gives you a host of ground-breaking new features to help you work smarter, get more impact from your information, and seamlessly share your ideas with anyone on a Macintosh or Windows-based computer. To completely transform the way you create, share, and manage ideas and information, use:

• Microsoft Entourage to communicate and manage personal information.
• Microsoft PowerPoint to design compelling presentations.
• Microsoft Word to create rich documents.
• Microsoft Excel to develop useful spreadsheets.
• MSN Messenger to integrate instant messaging into other tasks.

To learn more about a specific Microsoft Office 2004 feature, search for the feature in the Help for your program.

You can find more information about what's new on the Microsoft Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/mac/. For free downloads, go to the Downloads area.

Project Center

Office 2004 introduces the Project Center, which provides:

• A single, consolidated view of all information related to a project.
• An at-a-glance view of all the e-mail messages, contacts, Calendar events, notes, tasks, documents, and Scrapbook clips associated with a project.
• The ability to share the project with others, so they have full access to the same set of project information.

To open a project in Entourage 2004, click the Project Center icon. 

Office Toolbox

New to Office 2004, the Office Toolbox provides easy access to some key tools in Office, including:

• Scrapbook, for storing text, objects, and images.
• Compatibility Report, for verifying correct document display.
• Project Palette, for quick access to project information.
• Reference Tools (Microsoft Word only), for looking up words and doing research.

To access the Toolbox from PowerPoint, Word, and Excel, on the View menu, click Toolbox.

Office Toolbox: Scrapbook

For Office 2004, the Office Clipboard has been improved and expanded to become the Office Scrapbook. Use it to store, organize, and search through copies of text, objects, and images that you want to use in other documents later.

You can use the Scrapbook from any Office 2004 program. On the Tools menu, click Scrapbook.

Office Toolbox: Compatibility Report

Compatibility Report makes it easier for you to ensure that your document looks the way you want when it is opened on another computer. Compatibility Report identifies and helps you fix items in a document that might not be displayed or print correctly in earlier program versions or in Windows.

To open Compatibility Report from PowerPoint, Word, and Excel, on the Tools menu, click Compatibility Report.

Office Toolbox: Project Palette

In Office 2004, the Project Palette is your primary access point to key project information when you are working in PowerPoint, Word, or Excel. At a glance, the Project Palette provides you with all the information related to your project, all without your having to open the Project Center in Entourage. When you need more detailed project information, you can open the Project Center in Entourage.

You must use Entourage 2004 to create a project, but you can connect to the Project Center from PowerPoint, Word, or Excel by using the Project Palette. On the Tools menu, click Project Palette, and then click Go to Project Center.

Project Gallery

The Office Project Gallery is the universal entry point into Office, a single location from which to open Office documents and templates and to learn more about Office. In the Office 2004 Project Gallery, you can now:

• Open documents you used recently.
• Find sample documents and helpful information on the new Learn tab.
• Create and open project documents for use with the Project Center.

By default, the Project Gallery appears each time you open an Office program. You can also access the Project Gallery from within any Office program. On the File menu, click Project Gallery.

File Recovery

With Office 2004, losing data is a thing of the past. The new file recovery feature saves a copy of the document you are working on every 10 minutes by default, so that if you happen to lose power or an Office program stops responding, a previously saved or recovered version of your file is available the next time you open the program.

Improved multilingual features and Unicode support

In Office 2004, you can now use a wider range of languages. Enhanced Unicode character support means you can use more non-roman characters. Office displays, prints, and accepts input of a wide variety of Unicode characters, both from the Basic Multilingual Plane and the Supplementary Unicode Planes. In addition, Office now fully supports 255-character long file names, which can also include Unicode characters.

Formatting Palette

Office 2004 makes the Formatting Palette even more useful with the addition of:

• New palette sections, such as Add Objects, which you can use to easily insert shapes, tables, pictures, and text.
• New properties, which give you greater control over the Formatting Palette; for example, you can now set the Formatting Palette to be transparent when it's not in use.

By default, the Formatting Palette appears each time you open an Office program. You can also access the Formatting Palette from within any Office program. On the View menu, click Formatting Palette.

Soft shadows

In Office 2004, you now have greater control over how the shadows on your objects appear. Shadows are now softer and look more realistic. You can also change the color, transparency, and degree of softness of a shadow; rotate its angle; and change how much it blends into the background.

You can apply these soft shadows to any drawing object in Office 2004. To do so, click the object, and then, on the Formatting Palette under Shadow, choose the options you want.

AutoUpdate

Keep your Office program up to date easily by using AutoUpdate. AutoUpdate automatically searches Microsoft servers for the latest version of Office 2004. You choose whether to install the update now, install it later, or ignore it.

Error Reporting

Office 2004 introduces Error Reporting, a new way for you to let Microsoft know about potential program problems. If an Office program stops responding, a report is generated that details the circumstances. You can choose whether you want to send this report to Microsoft. You can also choose to restart the program automatically, making it easier for you to get back to work.

Improved AppleScript support

Office 2004 now supports a full, native AppleScript dictionary, enabling AppleScript developers to write scripts that can control Office programs without the additional use of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).

Save as Picture

Save any embedded graphic to its own separate file. That way, if you receive an Office document with graphics that you want to use in another document, you can save the graphic on your local disk and then insert the saved graphic file wherever you want to use it.

To save a graphic that has been pasted into any Office 2004 document, hold down CONTROL, click the graphic, and then on the contextual menu, click Save as Picture.

Sample documents

Office 2004 comes with a set of sample documents that show what can be accomplished with some of the new features in PowerPoint, Word, and Excel — and describe exactly how to do it.

To see these new sample documents, on the File menu, click Project Gallery, and then click the Learn tab.

Quick Preview

The redesigned Print dialog box includes a miniature print preview image called Quick Preview. Use Quick Preview to scroll through the pages in your document and quickly verify that you are printing the content and pages you want.

To see Quick Preview, on the File menu, click Print.