Tricks of the Microsoft Office Gurus

IN THIS CHAPTER

In the old days, collaborating on a document often meant stuffing the hard copy into an interoffice envelope and routing it to another person. That person would remove the document, make notes on the page or edit the text with proofreader's marks, and then send the document back to the originator or on to the next person in the collaboration chain.

Although this red-pencil-and-paper method has largely been superseded by the electronic comments and annotations that we looked at in Chapter 7 "Working as a Team: Collaborating with Other Users," there are some businesses and even entire industriesnotably trade publishingwhere hard-copy collaboration is still the norm. Depending on your personality (and, likely, your age) the staying power of paper-based commenting and editing is either an inexplicable mystery or the most natural thing in the world. Those of us who incline toward the latter often see electronic documents as being decidedly less "real" than their hard-copy equivalents, so there's something that just feels "right" about reading and editing text on paper.

Unfortunately, for all but the most trivial applications, annotating on paper is inefficient because you either have to put the annotations in electronic form (by entering the annotation text itself or by performing the requested edits) or you have to scan the annotated document (to send the document as an email attachment, for example).

What the world has needed for a long time is a way to bridge the gap between purely digital and purely analog collaboration. We've needed a way to combine the convenience of the electronic format with the attraction of pen-based annotating and commenting. After several aborted attempts (think: the Apple Newton), that bridge was built in recent years: the Tablet PC and its unique operating system, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. At first glance, the Tablet PC looks like a small notebook computer, and it certainly can be used like any notebook. However, a Tablet PC boasts three hardware innovations that make it unique:

• A pressure-sensitive touch screen that replaces the usual notebook LCD screen.

• A digital pen that acts as an all-purpose input device: You can use the pen to click, double-click, click and drag, as well as tap out individual characters using an onscreen keyboard. In certain applications, you can also use the pen to "write" directly on the screenas though the screen is a piece of paperthus enabling you to jot notes, sketch diagrams, add proofreader marks, or just doodle your way through a boring meeting. (And, as a bonus, many applications can also convert your handwriting into digital text.)

• The capability to physically reorient the screen so that it lies flat on top of the keyboard, thus making the machine appear like a tablet or pad of paper.

This chapter shows you how to take advantage of this unique hardware configuration by using it within Office 2003 to collaborate with other users in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, as well as Outlook email messages. You'll also learn how to use OneNote, Microsoft's digital pen-based note-taking software.