Road-tested: how Word 2003 caters to mobile users
It's the little things about Microsoft Word 2003 that make sales executive Phillip McCollough's time spent out of the office more manageable.
Such as the templates that help the business pro from Austin, Texas, write quick "thank-you" notes while he's traveling. Or the program's ability to print out mailing labels and postage without having to visit a post office.
But the little things add up. "Word is my diary and my canvas," McCollough says.
That's how Word 2003 is. There are a lot of little features that can make a big difference if you're out of the office or on the road.
Mobile users like McCollough and Chuck Monroe, a management consultant in Scottsdale, Ariz., are discovering them as they go about untethering their technology from wires. Monroe, for example, uses the international spell-checking functions in Word on his laptop PC while he's in transit.
Here are some of the things Word 2003, included in Microsoft Office Small Business Edition 2003, has for you if you're on the go.
1. No more wild Web searches. The Research Task Pane (ALT + click on a word — or press the "research" icon in the toolbar) offers a new way to access information, data and images. Just type in a term and it acts like a mini search tool, culling sites such as Factiva for results. There's also a translator (remember to install it before you take that overseas trip, though). The only downside, as far as I can tell, is that you have to be connected to the Internet in order for some of the research functions to work. Fortunately, there are so many wireless options — at the airport, and even on the plane — that it has become less of an issue.
2. Throw away that fax machine forever. If you're like me, you think of the fax machine as all but obsolete. But if your business takes you anywhere outside the United States, you know that faxes are still essential. Word 2003 makes it easier to send and manage faxes, allowing you to create faxes offline and then, when you're ready to go, broadcasting multiple documents directly from the mail merge wizard. (On the File menu, point to Send To, and then select Recipient using a Fax Modem. Then follow the steps in the Fax Wizard to send your fax.)
3. Think ink! Attention Tablet PC users: Word 2003 enables you to access more functions with ink (for those of you who don't Tablet, "ink" is the catch-all term for using a digital pen, or stylus, to talk to your PC instead of a mouse). Simply put, Word lets you use more ink — it allows you to annotate and draw within documents, and there's more support for ink within the toolbars. That means that when you're away from the office, you can more effectively use your Tablet PC to take handwritten notes or create sketches (see this related article).
4. Look Ma, no more scrolling. One of the most agonizing exercises for a business traveler has got to be trying to use a tiny keyboard pointer to page down within text while trying to joust with your seatmate for scarce armrest space. If you don't devote your full attention to scrolling while you're in a document, you can easily lose your spot. But the new Reading Layout (go to View and scroll down to Reading Layout) allows you to see a document as if it were a book It even uses larger, clearer text so that you don't have to strain your eyes. This was one of the first features I discovered in Word 2003, and it's by far my favorite.
Word to the wiseWord 2003 isn't packed with one or two big surprise features for mobile users — instead, it's full of lots of little ones that are easy to miss if you don't pay attention. Even more significant than these nifty new tools I've described is how the entire user experience is now more mobile-friendly, which is something that's difficult to quantify. If I had to, I'd probably describe it as a combination of the improved ink and fax functions.
But it's just the feel of the program, and the way it plays with other applications within the Microsoft Office System, such as Outlook and PowerPoint, that make it a more appealing product if you're a road warrior.