Freeform Dynamics is in the process of adopting Microsoft Office 2007. One of the challenges we have found is that as power users, most of us have Office 2003 menu structures and shortcuts embedded in our brains. When faced with the new Ribbon layout in Office 2007, it is therefore very easy to get lost and not able to find what you are looking for. This can be extremely frustrating.

Fortunately, Microsoft has a set of online utilities to help with this problem. There is one for each of the products that includes the new Ribbon command layout. The way it works is you click through to what you are after using an emulation of the old familiar Office 2003 menu structure, then the utility shows you where to find the equivalent command in the 2007 version of the product.

These command finders work very well but they are not particularly obvious on the Microsoft website, so here are some direct links which take you straight to them:

Find commands in Word 2007
Find commands in PowerPoint 2007
Find commands in Excel2007

From our experience so far, there isn’t really a problem with Outlook.

If you want to navigate to the above through the "front door", go to the Products section of the Office Online website, click on the relevant product name from the list that appears down the left hand side, look for the "Quick Start" box part way down the page for the product (centre right) and select the link "Find commmands in ...".

Thanks to Darren Strange for giving us a steer on this stuff.