Pay a visit to any typical corporate
or government office today and you are certain to see a number of
people in front of computers. Statistically, most of these computers
will be running Microsoft Windows, and I would bet you they also have a
copy of Microsoft Office installed.
With the exception of software developers, most
organization workers use Office applications several times a day. Take
Outlook, as an example; despite several rather appealing alternatives,
Microsoft Outlook is one of
the most popular business applications in use in organizations each
day. As another example, Word is the most widely used word processing
application and is the application I chose to write this book.
What are all those users doing with the files
that they create from Microsoft Office applications? Sadly, many
documents, spreadsheets, presentation decks, diagrams, etc. end up on
shared drives (on the network) or embedded in e-mail messages. A
typical Microsoft Word document ranges in size
from a few kilobytes to megabytes. Now imagine a large Word document
floating around the e-mail system—several copies in every recipient’s
e-mail box, different versions in multiple e-mail messages. Aside from
the confusion in ascertaining the most recent version, the IT
department has a hard time dealing with Exchange e-mail boxes that
continue to grow over the life of an employee at an organization.
Users can access SharePoint features from the
comfort of their Office application, and may access their Office
application from the web interface of SharePoint. Earlier versions of
SharePoint (2003/2007) and Office (2003/2007) made similar claims but,
honestly, the integration was somewhat half-baked. Since SharePoint
2010, SharePoint and Office have gone a step further and truly provide
seamless integration.
By now, I assume you are familiar with the
Windows 8 look and feel of SharePoint 2013. Users of Office 2013 also
experience a similar look and feel as part of the user interface. Figure 1 shows a screenshot from PowerPoint 2013, which has a clean crisp look to it, similar to that of SharePoint 2013.
1. The Backstage Area
All Office 2010 and 2013 applications have a File tab
in the main menu of their main screen; clicking this tab navigates you
to the backstage area. Clicking the File tab in Microsoft Word shows a
page like that in Figure 2.
On the left of the page shown in Figure 2, you can see the familiar Save, Save As, Open, and Close options—similar to what you came to expect of the File menu in pre-2010 versions of Office applications.
The middle area of the Backstage page typically displays operation and action buttons and links for the tab selected on the left. To give you a sense of capabilities of the backstage area, Table 1 lists the various actions available in Word 2013, depending on the tab selected in the left navigation. Table 1
is not exhaustive, and the actions available will likely differ between
the Office applications in the suite. The far right panel, shown in Figure 2,
also changes depending on the selected left tab; it currently shows
properties of the document, since I have the Info tab selected.
Table 1. Action Buttons in the Backstage Area of Word 2013
| Info |
Protect Document |
Allows author to add restrictions to the document to prevent
further editing, mark the document as a final version, encrypt the
document contents, and digitally sign the document. |
| Info |
Inspect Document |
Allows author to review hidden properties, check for accessibility
issues, and check for compatibility with earlier versions of Office. |
| Info |
Versions and Check Out |
Allows author to check in and check out the document via the source
document library in SharePoint, and to manage version history. |
| New |
- |
Selects a new document template to create a new document. |
| Open |
Recent Documents |
Lists recent documents edited. |
| Open |
SkyDrive |
Opens an existing document from SkyDrive. |
| Open |
Other Web Locations |
Browses HTTP/HTTPS locations, such as SharePoint, for existing documents to open. |
| Open |
Computer |
Browses the local computer for existing documents to open. |
| Open |
Add a Place |
Adds locations for easier opening of existing documents and saving, locations such as Office 365 and SkyDrive. |
| Save |
- |
Saves the current document to the last known location (otherwise same as the Save As tab). |
| Save As |
SkyDrive |
Saves the current document to a SkyDrive location. |
| Save As |
Other Web Locations |
Saves the current document to an HTTP/HTTPS web location, such as SharePoint. |
| Save As |
Computer |
Saves the current document to a folder on the local computer. |
| Save As |
Add a Place |
Adds locations for easier opening of existing documents and saving, locations such as Office 365 and SkyDrive. |
| Print |
- |
Allows author to choose a printer associated with the local computer, change print options, and print the current document. |
| Share |
Invite People |
Changes permissions of the current document in the SharePoint
document library, such that other users can read or edit the document
from SharePoint. |
| Share |
E-mail |
Allows author to convert the current document to different formats
(such as PDF) and add as an attachment to e-mail, using the default
e-mail application. |
| Share |
Present Online |
Uploads document to a temporary cloud location on Live.com and
provides author a unique URL—author can then send link to other users
for presentation purposes. After closing the presentation, Live.com
deletes the document from the cloud. |
| Share |
Post to Blog |
Allows the author to post a blog, hosted on SharePoint, Wordpress.com, Blogger, etc. |
| Export |
Create PDF/XPS Document |
Creates a PDF or XPS document version of the current document. |
| Export |
Change File Type |
Allows the author to change the file type of the current open document, such as DOC to DOCX format. |
| Close |
- |
Closes the current document; the Office application will ask you if you wish to save any unsaved changes. |
| Account |
- |
Accesses connected account information, such as Facebook, Flickr, SkyDrive, Twitter, etc. |
| Options |
- |
Accesses preferences of the Office application. |
Note If
you have opened an Office document from SharePoint, the details in the
Info tab change to those when opening a document from disk.
