Maximise your screen real estate in Word, Excel & other Office programs

Dennis O’Reilly says he saved himself some dough by working out ways to work in Microsoft Office apps in full screen mode, rather than shelling out for a wide screen monitor. His post runs through ways to tweak the display in Office 2003, as well as the more limited options available in Office 2007.

By default, full screen view in Office 2003 doesn’t give you menus or toolbars, but here’s how to get them:

• access standard menus (like File or Edit) in full-screen mode by pressing F10 or Alt, then pressing the
  underlined letters to access that menu’s options or simply moving the
  mouse pointer to the top of the screen.
• get access to more menus by right clicking Close Full Screen and choosing one from the pop-up menu. Press Alt to toggle between the standard toolbar and the one you chose.
• You can create a customised toolbar  by right clicking a toolbar and choosing Customize > Toolbars
  > New. Name it, select a template (choosing
  Normal.dot makes it available to all documents), and click OK. Fill
  your new toolbar by clicking the Commands tab, then select an entry in
  the Categories window, and drag your chosen command to the toolbar. Hit Close to finish.

Full screen options in 2007 are strangely more limited than in 2003. There’s a Full Screen Reading view (which you can’t edit) or  there’s the Full Screen Mode, which lacks the toolbar options from 2003- all you can do is can view standard formatting options by
right-clicking anywhere in the document. Does the Mac-clone Ribbon make up for this? If you’ve got any tips for maximising your screen real estate in Office, please share in comments.

Broaden your view in Word, Excel, other Office apps [CNET]