Introduction

The Microsoft Office suite is all about communication. Whether you are typing a letter in Word, preparing a presentation in PowerPoint, or completing a report in Excel, you are trying to communicate some information to another person.

For the first time in a decade, Microsoft customers have amazing new features available to them in Microsoft Office 2007. The programs have been completely rewritten from the ground up. Among the new features, they share a new common charting engine, replacing the ancient-looking charts that the Microsoft Graph engine provided. In addition, people using Word, PowerPoint, or Excel have access to a fantastic new diagramming technology that Microsoft dubs SmartArt Graphics.

SmartArt Graphics—or something like it—has been around for a decade. Hiding in the Drawing toolbar, one little icon—three arrows connecting three spheres—offered people the ability to create organization charts or diagrams. I’ve met a lot of people using Microsoft Office, and except for the occasional organization chart, I hardly ever see anyone making use of the diagramming tools in Office.

You might know me because I write books about Microsoft Excel and I run a website dubbed MrExcel.com. About three years ago, one of the website readers wrote and asked why no one ever talks about the Drawing toolbar. “Why do books overlook the commands on this toolbar?” I had to admit that I rarely thought about the Drawing toolbar. I might occasionally use an AutoShape, but I rarely looked at the options available there.

In one of my other books, Learn Excel from MrExcel, published in 2005, I tried to go through every single option in the Drawing toolbar. Although I knew this would make the one reader happy, I was somewhat embarrassed to be taking up 150 pages talking about drawing tools instead of Excel’s real power. However, in the process of writing that section, I was amazed at the depth of drawing tools that have been at our fingertips for a decade.

With Office 2007, the options will astound you!

The diagrams icon has been renamed SmartArt Graphics and promoted to a prominent place on the Insert ribbon in all three programs. After you insert a SmartArt diagram, two entire ribbons become devoted to the design and format of the SmartArt graphics. Instead of six styles, you have 84 built-in styles, with 10,640 permutations, all at the click of a few buttons on the SmartArt Tools Design ribbon. If you venture over to the SmartArt Tools Format ribbon, the number of permutations is practically infinite. (Actually, somewhere around 3.3 × 10^48 combinations exist.)

You can apply glow effects, shadow, and even metallic with a few mouse clicks.

If all these built-in styles are not enough for you, you can use SmartArt Extensibility to add new styles. Turn to Chapter 9, “Adding New SmartArt Graphics Layouts,” to learn how.

I was in the middle of writing the 1,000+ page Special Edition Using Excel 2007 when my acquisitions editor, Loretta Yates, called to talk about the new concept called Short Cuts. They were to be short 100-page titles covering some niche area. I was pretty happy to hear about a 100-page title after slogging through 1,000+ pages of Special Edition Using Excel. I immediately suggested that a book about SmartArt Graphics and the Drawing toolbar would be perfect for this form factor. Because Short Cuts use the e-book format, the color and effects appear in all their glory, instead of in the grayscale offered in a traditional computer book.

What Is in This Short Cut?

This short cut is organized into the following chapters:

• Chapter 1 gives you an overview of creating SmartArt graphics in PowerPoint, Excel, and Word. After this chapter, you can quickly create any of the 84 basic SmartArt styles.
• Chapter 2 guides you through customizing SmartArt graphics with the Design and Format ribbons. Change colors, add 3-D effects, and more with a few clicks.
• Chapters 3 through 8 provide a gallery of the 84 SmartArt styles. Each style has some unique properties. Some are better with just Level 1 text, some are better with both Level 1 and Level 2 text, and some are just downright strange. The gallery shows you at least one image of all 84 styles—I hope to show you a version that looks good. Smaller images point out what can go wrong; these are things that you should not try. As I go through the gallery, I rotate among the 20 themes, 14 styles, and 38 color variations. Each figure in this section identifies the exact settings used to create that particular SmartArt graphic. In case one of the 84 combinations that I selected looks appealing to you, you can follow the settings under the image to re-create the style on your computer.
• Chapter 9 talks about the extensibility of SmartArt graphics. If the 84 built-in styles are not enough for you, Chapter 9 shows you how to add more styles to your SmartArt graphics gallery. During the Office 2007 beta, extensibility was a moving target because Microsoft repeatedly gave out-of-date instructions. As beta testers peppered the beta newsgroups with requests for clarifications, I turned to my friend and co-worker Suat Ozgur, who puzzled out methods for creating new SmartArt layouts. Using Suat’s instructions, I’ve had success in creating fun new layouts.
• Chapter 10 covers WordArt. Although WordArt has been fairly simplistic for the past 10 years, it also gets a makeover in Excel 2007, so a tutorial of the new features is worth the space.
• Chapter 11 covers Shapes and the Drawing Tools, Format tab. You might have known these features formerly as AutoShapes. They are still there, with easier-to-use effects.

Conventions Used in This Short Cut

The special conventions used throughout this short cut are designed to help you get the most from the short cut as well as Excel 2007.

Text Conventions

Different typefaces are used to convey various things throughout the short cut. They include the following:

• Monospace—Screen messages and web addresses appear in this typeface.
• Italic—New terminology appears in this typeface.
• Bold Monospace—References to text you should type appear in bold, monospace font.
• Initial caps—Ribbon names, dialog box names, and dialog box elements are presented this way for easy identification.

In this short cut, key combinations are represented with a plus sign. If the action you need to take is to press the Ctrl key and the T key simultaneously, the text tells you to press Ctrl+T.

Special Elements

Throughout this short cut, you’ll find tips, notes, cautions, cross-references, case studies, sidebars, and troubleshooting tips. These elements provide a variety of information, ranging from warnings you shouldn’t miss to ancillary information that will enrich your experience but isn’t required reading.

Tip

Tips point out special features, quirks, or software tricks that help you increase your productivity with Excel 2007.

Note

Notes contain extra information or alternative techniques for performing tasks.

Caution

If a feature has a potential gotcha, it is called out in a caution.

Sidebars, troubleshooting tips, and case studies look like this:

CASE STUDY: OTHER ELEMENTS

Sections such as case studies and troubleshooting tips are set off in a box such as this one.

Case studies walk you through the steps to complete a task.

Troubleshooting tips walk you through steps to avoid certain problems or explain how to react when certain problems occur.

Figures on the Next Page

I have a pet peeve about computer books. When you are reading the last few paragraphs on an odd-numbered page, the text often refers to a figure that is on the following page. This layout forces you to flip back and forth between pages to understand the text. Que has decided to limit the number of times this happens. If there is room for one paragraph at the bottom of a right-side page but the figure cannot appear until the top of the next page, the layout department will leave white space at the bottom of the right page and part the paragraph and related figure on the next page. This is not an effort to pad the page count. It is specifically designed to increase your enjoyment.