Search Commands For Office

The Internet and blogging are wonderful things. Yesterday I blogged about a set of tools for helping people find the Office 2007 location for commands based on where they were in Office 2003. And then later in the day several people who read that post sent me links to the Search Commands add-on from Microsoft Office Labs. And someone else left a comment as well. Amazing how helpful people are. I learn a lot from the people who read my blog and comment.

These tools are a little different. The first tool is basically a sort of translator. in other words someone clicks on an item on the “old” menu setup and the tool explains where to find it on the new “ribbon” interface. This, I think, is ideal for someone who wants to learn the new locations in an organized way. For a teacher or other trainer who is about to teach people from scratch (or close to it) this works great.

The Search Command tool is sort of an additional built-in help. Selecting the tab for Search Commands opens a new ribbon strip with a search box. Enter a search string (in the example below I was looking for font related options) and the tool provides a set of relevant icons.

These icons are “live” and can be used right there. Of course now that you know what you are looking for finding them again will probably be a lot easier. I expect to use this feature a lot for a while.