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Images: Office 12's makeover

The update to Microsoft's office tools is designed to help people make better use of its features.
By Bill Detwiler, Contributor
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Bill Gates

In Office 12, Word replaces the standard toolbar with a "ribbon" of choices that display options directly related to editing text, while hiding unrelated options.

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Galleries in Office 12

With Office 12, Microsoft will offers up "galleries," which are essentially templates of changes that a user might want to make. The idea is to allow people to make common changes, say, narrowing a document's margins, with a single click.

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Sync Center

In addition to the generic ribbons in Office 12, Microsoft also has a series of contextual menus that come up only when doing a specific task, in this case building a graphic from within Word.

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Word in Office 12

Microsoft plans to change the user interface to better fit the task a person is performing. The new look will apply to Word (shown here), PowerPoint, Excel, Access and parts of Outlook.

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Office 12 PowerPoint

In the Office 12 version of PowerPoint, Microsoft is promising that users will see contextual tabs that present specialized features as needed.

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Office 12 Excel

The first test version of Office 12 is due in fall 2005, and the finished product in the second half of 2006.

At right is a screen shot of the Excel program in Office 12.

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Office 12 Access

At right is a screen shot of the Access program in Office 12.

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