Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) is the custom toolbar available in Office 2007 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook – while editing mail messages)
Many of us never notice it and realize its importance.
Try this and see how it improves the way you work…
First of all, NOTICE the QAT.
Initially it is placed in a not so prominent place, just next to the File menu (Office button).
It has three buttons – Save, Undo and Redo.
What is the benefit of QAT ?
It offers single click access to these buttons (and more buttons which you can add).
Why is this important?
Because Office 2007 ribbon is based upon Tabs. Each Tab (like Home, Insert) contains various buttons within it. ONLY ONE TAB can be active at a time. Therefore, if you want to click an item in Home tab, and currently some other Tab is open, then you need TWO clicks.
In earlier version of Office, once you have a toolbar active, all buttons were always available for a single click operation. This may sound like a disadvantage of the new Ribbon. But it is not. (I wont go into details of why not. Just trust me).
Now, most of us know the keyboard shortcut keys for Save (Ctrl S) and for Undo (Ctrl Z). The third button is called Redo (Ctrl Y), but it is a rarely used functionality. You must learn to use REDO. It is like “Repeat Last Action”. Try it consciously and you will see how often we need to repeat last actions.
Now, these three buttons on the QAT are fairly useless because we use keyboard shortcuts to access them most of the time.
Then why are they given there? The answer is simple … IT IS A DEMO of what you can do with QAT.
You are not just supposed to use these three buttons, but you are supposed to add your own stuff there.
Practically any button / feature you see on the ribbon can be added here.
Which items to put on QAT? Short answer = Commonly used features which you need single click access for.
How to use QAT?
Firstly, start noticing which features you are using often. Then right click on that item and choose “Add to Quick Access Toolbar”. Now the item will be there at its original place AND on the QAT.
Which items can you add to QAT?
Here is a classic example of how we underutilize things by default.
The documentation just says, right click on any item and add it to QAT.
Most of us try it, it works and then we think we know it now.
But this is NOT all… there are some extremely useful items you desperately need, but you will never end up adding them to QAT…
Why? Not because it is technically impossible, but because you never thought of doing it!
Let me explain…
Do you remember the good old Standard toolbar in older versions of Office?
It had commonly used buttons like Print and Print Preview. All of us have used those. But in Office 2007, these buttons are not available on the Ribbon by default. We have to open the Office File menu and then choose them from Print – Quick Print / Print Preview…
Now if you need them often, what should you be doing? Adding them to QAT… sounds obvious!
But if I had not explicitly mentioned this here, you would probably never thought of right clicking on these options… Why? Because these are in a Drop Down Menu. Subconsciously our brain somehow thinks that only items which are on Ribbon (which is a broader toolbar really) are the only ones which can be added to QAT.
There are more such useful items which can be added to QAT…
Dialog Launchers
This is another tricky thing which confuses people when they move to Office 2007.
We are familiar with many common dialogs like File – Page Setup, Format – Paragraph.
Office 2007 does not have File – Page Setup dialog. This often frustrates users.
Of course, the dialog is very much there. But the way you launch it is rather cryptic.
Here is how you get the Page Setup dialog in Word and Excel 2007.
Click on that small little arrow icon in the right bottom corner of Page Setup group.
Not very intuitive I would say. But never mind, Now that you know about it, you will never forget it.
Now that you know about it, you will start noticing this icon in many other places in the Ribbon.
One very cryptic one is the Office Clipboard icon, at the corner of the Paste group in Home Tab.
Now here is the best part… you can right click on this Dialog Launcher and add it to QAT.
Bottom-line: You can and you should add your favourite dialog launchers to QAT.
Drop-Downs
There are many dropdown items in Ribbon. For example: Font, Font Size, Border, Alignment and so on.
Can you add these to QAT? Yes of course. But there is more to it.
Some Drop Down items add the full dropdown to QAT. For example, you can add the entire Font Drop Down to QAT, but you cannot add just one particular Font to QAT.
That may sound obvious. But the reverse situation is not so obvious.
For example, the Borders dropdown can be added to QAT. In addition, INDIVIDUAL type of border, which is a separate item from the drop down, can ALSO BE ADDED to QAT.
Most of us would have missed that one!
Here is how the QAT would look if you added the entire Borders dropdown and the All borders item from the drop down. It may be a good idea to add the base dropdown AND the most commonly used item from it as shown here.
Another place where this type of combination is very useful is in the Align and Distribute drop down.
There is more to QAT …
But let us leave that for the next post.
Start using this much for now…