Word 97—Ease of Use

Structuring Your Document

While Word’s automation and proofing efforts are aimed at making basic tasks and operations easier, there is a large population of users that creates highly structured documents like forms and invests significant time in making their documents look professional. Our goal was to provide these users with functionality that would enable them to create professional documents easily.

Tables and Borders Toolbar

Based on Microsoft’s usability testing we found that most users think of tables and borders in conjunction - especially since we added the table drawing tool. Now there’s an even closer relationship between tables and line styles since you can draw out tables right on your document. When you draw a table using the table drawing tool, you can easily change the attributes of the table from the same toolbar. Microsoft usability-tested the combined Table and Borders toolbar that provided all the tables and borders tools in one place, and it was a hit!

Integrated Tables and Borders toolbar

Table Drawing Tool

Tables are a great tool for building structured documents. Starting a table has always been easy in Word, but they found that users needed a flexible tool to reshape their tables. In Word 97, they have made it incredibly easy for you to create customized tables. Word now has an intuitive drawing tool for creating and customizing tables. This tool is accessible both from the Tables and Borders toolbar, as well as the Table menu. Using this tool you now draw your table right in your document. And using the same drawing tool, you can just as easily add new cells, rows and columns as you go. Now you can seamlessly create tables with varying row heights and column widths. You never need to go to a dialog to control the look and size of a table - you can fully alter your table in place.

Draw a table of any shape or size using the Table Drawing tool

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