Earlier in this chapter, we mentioned that you can change settings in the Options dialog box for each program to customize the program environment in various ways. After you work with a program for a while, you might want to refine more settings to tailor the program to the way you work. Knowing your way around the Options dialog box makes the customizing process more efficient.
In this exercise, you’ll open the Word Options dialog box and explore several of the available pages. You don’t need any practice files to complete this exercise. Open a blank document if necessary, and then follow the steps.
1. On the Home tab, in the Font group, point to the Bold button. Word displays a ScreenTip that includes the button name, its keyboard shortcut, and a description of its purpose.
2. Display the Backstage view, and click Options. The Word Options dialog box opens, displaying the General page.
3. Under User Interface options, display the Color scheme list, and click Black.
4. Display the ScreenTip style list, and click Don’t show feature descriptions in ScreenTips.
5. Under Personalize your copy of Microsoft Office, verify that the User Name and Initials are correct, or change them to the way you want them to appear.
6. Click OK to close the Word Options dialog box. The program window elements are now black and shades of gray.
7. In the Font group, point to the Bold button. The ScreenTip now includes only the button name and its keyboard shortcut.
8. Open the Word Options dialog box, and in the left pane, click Display. On this page, you can adjust how documents look on the screen and when printed.
9. In the left pane, click Proofing. This page provides options for adjusting the AutoCorrect settings and for refining the spelling-checking and grammar-checking processes.
10. Display the Save page. On this page, you can change the default document format; the location and save frequency of the Auto Recover file (a backup file created by Word while you’re working in the file); the default location to which Word saves files you create; and the default location for files you check out from document management servers (such as Microsoft SharePoint) and drafts of those files saved while you are working offline.
The Save page also has options for specifying whether you want the fonts used within the current document to be embedded in the document, in the event that someone who opens the document doesn’t have those fonts on his or her computer.
11. Under Save documents, display the Save files in this format list. Notice the many formats in which you can save files. One of these is the Word 97‑2003 Document format that creates .doc files compatible with earlier versions of Word. If you upgraded to Word 2010 but your colleagues are still working in an earlier version of the program, you might want to select this option so that they will be able to view and work with any document you create.
12. Click away from the list to close it, and then display the Language page. If you create documents for international audiences, you can make additional editing languages available on this page. You can also specify the display, Help, and ScreenTip languages.
13. Display the Advanced page. This page includes options related to editing document content; displaying documents on-screen; printing, saving, and sharing documents; and a variety of other options. Although these options are labeled Advanced, they are the ones you’re most likely to want to adjust to suit the way you work.
14. Take a few minutes to explore all the options on this page. In the General area at the bottom of the page are two buttons:
* File Locations: You click this button to change the default locations of various types of files associated with Word and its documents.
* Web Options: You click this button to adjust settings for converting a document to a Web page.
15. Skipping over the Customize Ribbon and Quick Access Toolbar pages, which we discuss in later topics in this chapter, click Add-Ins. This page displays all the active and inactive add-ins and enables you to add and remove them. (Add-ins are utility programs that provide additional functionality to an Office program.)
16. Display the Trust Center page. This page provides links to information about privacy and security. It also provides access to the Trust Center settings that control the actions Word takes in response to documents that are provided by certain people or companies, that are saved in certain locations, or that contain potentially harmful elements such as ActiveX controls or macros.
17. Under Microsoft Office Word Trust Center, click Trust Center Settings, and then in the left pane of the Trust Center dialog box, click Trusted Locations. On this page, you can specify the locations from which Word will not block content.
Close the Trust Center dialog box. Reverse any changes you don’t want to keep before moving on. Then close the Word Options dialog box.
