Office Tab 7

Introduction
Using Office Tab 7
Pricing and Support
Conclusion

Introduction

Microsoft Office applications do not use tabs like web browsers, nor do some of the Office applications benefit from a multiple document interface. A tabbed interface can therefore make it so much easier to access all open documents within the interface of a program such as PowerPoint. This is particularly true if you are working with multiple presentations, and need to frequently switch between them. Office Tab 7, the product that we are reviewing gets over this limitation by providing a tabbed interface to PowerPoint and other Office 2003, 2007, and 2010 applications. These include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Project, and Visio.

Office Tab 7 is from Detong Technology Ltd. a company based in Hainan, China, which provides various Microsoft Office add-ins. You can learn more about Office Tab 7 and download a 30 days trial version from their site.

Office Tab 7 is the newest version of their program. We have already reviewed Office Tab 6 earlier. This particular review for Office Tab 7 has done using PowerPoint 2010 in Windows 7.

My contact at Detong Technology Ltd. for this review was Lin Jie, thank you Lin.

Using Office Tab

1. Download the installer from the link given above, run the setup routine, and follow the instructions. Open PowerPoint, Excel, or Word. Figure 1 shows the new Office tab within the PowerPoint interface (highlighted in red).
2. 
   Figure 1: PowerPoint 2010 interface with tab
2. Open multiple presentations to see more tabs, as shown highlighted in red in Figure 2.
3. 
   Figure 2: Multiple presentations opened
3. To change the settings of the add-in, click the File menu, and from the Backstage View choose PPt Tab (highlighted in red in Figure 3).
4. 
   Figure 3: PPt Tab option
4. From PPt Tab section, choose Tabs for PowerPoint Options (see Figure 4).
5. 
   Figure 4: Tabs for PowerPoint Options
5. This opens the Tabs for PowerPoint Options dialog box (see Figure 5). Within the General & Position tab, you can set basic settings for the tabs, and even customize some of the shortcuts.
6. 
   Figure 5: General & Position tab
6. The next tab, Style & Color (see Figure 6) lets you choose tab styles and layouts, you can even set color and fonts for the tabs and tab text.
7. 
   Figure 6: Style & Color tab
7. Finally, About Tabs for PowerPoint is the last tab. Here, registration info for the add-in is displayed. Click OK to close the dialog box and go back to your application.
Note: You might have to restart PowerPoint (or any other open Office applications) to see the changes you made.
8. Right click on individual tabs to access the Tab menu, as shown in Figure 7. This menu shows common file options such as Save, Save as, Rename, New, Open, etc. (see Figure 7).
9. 
   Figure 7: Tab menu

Pricing and Support

Office Tab 7 costs US$35.00.

Support is through email. There is also an online FAQ and some tutorials.

Conclusion

Office Tab 7 is a great product if you need to frequently open multiple files, and copy/paste content between those files -- you'll save so much time accessing those open files.