Take Full Advantage of the New XML Format in Word 2007
When you save a file in Word 2007’s default .docx format, you’re actually saving a compressed (or zipped) file containing several different XML documents. This XML format improves on the binary formats found in earlier versions of Word: Files may be up to 75 percent smaller. In addition, each XML component of a document is segmented into modules whose contents you can manipulate individually.
To uncover the separate components of a .docx file, open Windows Explorer, highlight the file, click File•Rename, change the ‘.docx’ extension to .zip, and press <Enter>. Always keep a copy of the original .docx file on hand, however, because any alterations you make to the .zip version are permanent.
Now double-click the renamed file to open the “package” in a new folder window. The screen shot below illustrates the components of a .docx file that has one embedded image. To send someone the document without the image, merely delete that part of the package without ever opening the file in Word. When you open a .docx file that has been renamed from .zip with one of its components (such as an image) deleted, Word may try to “repair” the file, putting a placeholder where the deleted image was, for example. To delete the placeholder, just double-click it.
Similarly, if you want to revise the text, open only the document.xml component and make your changes there. If the file contains comments that you want to remove, strip them out by deleting the comments.xml component. Other elements are styles.xml, which holds the document’s style definitions; headers.xml, which has section heads (listed as Header 1, Header 2, and so on); and theme1.xml, which hosts any templates used to style the document. Note that document.xml.rels has the instructions for reassembling the components into the complete document, which could include the sources of inserts.
Scroll the Ribbons
In Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, you can quickly move through the ribbons by placing your pointer anywhere in a ribbon and turning the scroll wheel on your mouse forward or backward. As you are scrolling, the program’s available ribbons appear on the screen. Of course, you can always click the menu tabs atop a ribbon, too.
Reclaim Your Screen
Office 2007’s ribbon uses much more screen space than did the toolbars of previous versions. If you want to devote more space to your document, spreadsheet, or presentation, you can hide the ribbon by pressing <Ctrl>-<F1>. Want to bring the ribbon back? Press <Ctrl>-<F1> again. To perform the same disappearing act using your mouse, double-click any ribbon tab.
