20. PERSONALIZING FILE SAVE LOCATIONS Word 2003 File Locations Excel 2003 General PowerPoint 2003 Save Publisher 2003 General Access 2003 General Application Tab in Options Dialog Box
This chapter covers installation of Microsoft Office applications such as Microsoft Office Word 2003 and Microsoft Excel 2003. We present tasks to be performed prior to installation, performing the installation using the CD-ROM, and postinstallation configuration tasks to perform.
Before installing Office on a computer or on many computers, a few tasks should be performed to set the stage for a successful implementation. This section discusses some of these steps and provides best practices for ensuring you are prepared for a successful installation.
The most critical element of system compatibility is determining if your computer meets the minimum system requirements for running the Office applications. These requirements are printed on the product box, and are listed on the Microsoft Office Web site. Ensure that your computer meets at least the minimum requirements, and preferably the requirements for optimal performance (also listed on the Microsoft Web site). If possible, browse these requirements with your students and discuss how the classroom computers meet these requirements.
Before you install an application, you should ensure that you have correctly licensed it. If it is a retail version, it will be either a full version or an upgrade. Upgrade versions require you to already own certain versions of a product before they are considered a legal license. The required versions should be listed on the packaging. Corporations can purchase volume licenses for Microsoft applications. Check with your volume license administrator prior to installing such an application. Beginning with Microsoft Office XP, Office applications must be activated to prevent them from becoming unusable.
Your students would not fly an airplane without first seeing that it passed some form of testing. Although the consequences might be less dire, this formula holds true for computer applications. Testing the application on the available hardware and with the other applications likely to be found on the target PCs will help ensure there are no surprises at installation time. The textbook has a more detailed checklist to use when testing an application.
When assessing the compatibility of an application, you must consider two different areas of compatibility. The application must be compatible with the operating system. The textbook deals with this by discussing program compatibility settings in Windows XP. The application must also be compatible with other versions of the application in use in your organization.
The textbook covers operating system application compatibility very well. You might want to demonstrate the Program Compatibility Wizard, however. In addition to the directions used to locate it in the textbook, you can open it with the following URL: hcp://system/compatctr/compatmode.htm
For compatibility with other versions of Office applications, each Office application has a Compatibility tab in the Options dialog box accessed from the Tools menu. Here you can define the lowest common denominator for your organization to ensure you don’t have users creating documents that cannot be read or edited in a down-level version of that application. Demonstrate the Compatibility tab in Word or Excel for your students. Show them some of the settings that appear and disappear when you select different versions of the application.
Some organizations allow users to install their own applications. When this is the case, try to ensure that users are aware of any requirements or prerequisites before they install their applications. Additionally, the users should be able to demonstrate compliant licenses for any application they have installed. If this is not the case, ask them to procure compliant licenses. To install applications on Windows XP computers, users must belong to the Power Users or Administrators groups on their computers.
This slide outlines the tasks involved when installing Office. If possible, conduct an installation on a classroom computer so your students can observe the steps and discuss the decision points.
The EULA is a document you must agree with before being allowed to install a Microsoft application. Each Microsoft application includes one, and installation is canceled if you do not indicate your agreement.
This slide depicts the flow of installation. Each installation option is depicted and students can view the descriptions on the screen. Use this mini-slide show if you are unable to demonstrate an installation in class. If you are able to demonstrate an installation you can forego the slide show on this slide in favor of a direct presentation. Explain to your students that if they choose not to install all elements of the Office System—and must add one in the future—they can add additional features by using Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel or by rerunning the CD setup program and choosing to add components.
The Office System installation prompts the user to check for application updates immediately following installation. This is an important security addition to the installation routine. Earlier versions of Office did not prompt users and, subsequently, many went without being patched. Any security vulnerabilities found in these applications went unaddressed, potentially compromising the security of the systems on which they were installed. Stress to your students the importance of immediately patching any known vulnerability. Internet-connected systems receive many access attempts each hour, and the “black hats” know where all the holes are.
Use Table 6-2 in the textbook to discuss common problems experienced when installing and activating Office applications.
This section of the chapter discusses ways to customize the Office applications to suit personal preferences. The text focuses on Word 2003, but makes it clear that each application has its own options for personalization. Some options follow a common thread: file locations, autosave options, language options. Other options are specific to the application in question. For instance, Excel has an Options tab dedicated to calculations. If time permits, display the Options menu for each application and discuss the options in each. The “?” icon on the toolbar of the Options dialog box helps explain what each option is meant to configure.
This slide depicts adding a button to the Standard toolbar in Excel 2003. You can demonstrate this drag-and-drop process in any Office application. Also, use this opportunity to demonstrate how to add any of the several available toolbars to the view with the Toolbars option from the View menu.
Adding buttons to menus is done in exactly the same way as for toolbars. Just drag the button and drop it in the appropriate place on the menu you wish to use it with. You can even build new menus using the Customize dialog box. This slide shows the Tools menu before and after adding a button.
The Options dialog box in each application exposes application-specific and general options for user configuration. Although your students will need to be familiar with these for their jobs and for certification, we simply do not have enough time to cover all the possible options. Encourage your students to explore these options on their own, and demonstrate how to use the “?” icon on the toolbar to present context-specific help on each option.
Each application saves its files to a default location (usually the user’s designated documents folder). You can override this setting to place the files in the location of your choosing. The tab used to configure the save location differs from application to application. The table on this slide indicates the tab used to configure file location for each major Office application. Many organizations override these settings with group policy. If these settings are unavailable, the setting has been configured administratively.
This section discusses the proofing tools included with Office. We begin by configuring available proofing languages and finish with customizing the dictionary to prevent false hits for commonly used technical words and acronyms.
You can enable multiple languages in the Office System. These are selected in the Microsoft Office 2003 Language Settings application located on the Start menu. This enables any special commands or features using these languages to be available to Office. The default language chosen there is used for spelling and grammar checks. To spell-check in another language, you can select it during the spell-check process. The image on the next slide depicts that selection process. Note that the only way to display this selection is to actually begin a spelling check.
You can enable multiple languages in the Office System. These are selected in the Microsoft Office 2003 Language Settings application located on the Start menu. This enables any special commands or features using these languages to be available to Office. The default language chosen there is used for spelling and grammar checks. To spell-check in another language, you can select it during the spell-check process. The image on the next slide depicts that selection process. Note that the only way to display this selection is to actually begin a spelling check.
Most Office applications can create documents from a standard or user-defined template. Some templates work more like wizards, formatting documents and even entering default text. Demonstrate creating a document from a template. Show how the template presets many of the attributes of the document. If possible, demonstrate the Office Online template gallery.
Pressing F7 in a document launches the Spelling and Grammar check utility. This tool can be configured on the fly to choose alternate dictionaries or grammar options. To configure default spelling and grammar options, you can use the Spelling & Grammar tab in the Options dialog box (the Spelling tab in Excel). When Word is set to automatically detect the language in use, it selects the appropriate dictionary from among the list of languages defined in the Microsoft Office 2003 Language Settings application. Demonstrate adding a word to the dictionary. Type a word or acronym like MCDST and spell-check it. When spell-check offers to correct it, select Add To Dictionary to add the word to the custom dictionary. In the future, that word will be ignored when spell-check is run.
Reference the Summary discussion in the textbook. It presents a synopsis of the major elements of this chapter and can be used to expand on this review discussion. Also, be sure to stress the importance of security in all aspects of operation. Applying updates is a critical element of any support endeavor, and will often be the step necessary to return an application to operation.