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How’s the old customer service these days? Depending on which company or employee you ask, the answer is sure to be different. We all think that good customer service is vital, but we have differing opinions when it comes to what actually constitutes this. Everybody wants to be the recipient of polite and timely service. It can often be a thankless task no matter how hard you try. However, when you deal with the public for a living and depend on their tips for your rent, you don’t have to ask the silly question; why is customer service important? Believe me, you already know.

My first job was at a Chinese restaurant. The owner was my best friend’s father. When I started he asked me ‘why is customer service important? Because of his thick Chinese accent I got confused and though he said something completely different. Thankfully before I had time to answer he had become too busy. My friend told me what he had actually said and I thought it a silly question. I soon realised why good customer service was vital to success. It only took a few late deliveries to school me. When the hungry patrons got angry, I got no tip.

All of the jobs that I had after that focused on customer service, like being a barman. You will not see a whole lot of tips coming your way of your customers are unhappy. The tips that you get make up your wage in these low-paid jobs. It makes up your pay check.

Big businesses need to take the importance of customer service in to consideration as well. Business speakers can help your staff to understand how their customer service affects the profits and sales of your company. Business speakers understand the importance of good customer service as they base their own company’s success on their ability to give good service. They will also be quick to tell you that good customer service is paramount to increased sales. So you ask why is customer service important? It simply results in happy people and capital earned.

Training in all of its many forms - not to mention management training, have become truly indispensable activities for every successful business, and there isn’t anyone who can refute the amazing benefits that businesses can gain from it. Some of us might ponder on the need for investing in training our existing employees when we have the option of hiring new employees that are already highly skilled. The simplest and most obvious counter to this question is that the expense of hiring someone new is quite a bit higher than the expense of training an existing employee. So, what would you do now?

Training might be seen as a heavy investment in the beginning, but the array of benefits it brings to the organization is enormous. As any business coaching expert will say, to stay competitive, and for sustained growth in our ever-changing market, a business needs to keep its workforce trained and highly motivated. These valuable employees are usually considered to be essential assets - playing pivotal roles in the long term success of organisations around the world.

Let’s have a look at the benefits that come from training the workforce:

1. Increase Productivity - Great training will almost always lead to a massive increase in the productivity of the employees in just about any business. Trained employees can apply new techniques and methods when performing their day-to-day tasks, thereby improving their accuracy and efficiency. Increased accuracy and efficiency will - by definition, automatically increase the overall productivity of all business operations.

2. Increase Morale of Employees - Training helps with improving the attitude and morale of employees. Training will, over time, minimise the reluctance of employees towards future changes in the organisation. People will form a positive attitude towards training if they can clearly see its relevance and the benefits it brings.

3. Decrease Staff Turnover - It has been observed that trained and motivated employees are the ones that serve a business for a longer period of time - as compared to others. As a trained employee is satisfied with his work, he is far better able to coordinate his goals with that of the organisation.

4. Workforce Flexibility - Training aims at developing different sets of specific skills in employees with the goal of making them more flexible, so that they can be engaged in a wider variety of activities. The idea is not only to make the workforce effective and efficient, but also to make it multi-tasking or specialist in nature.

5. Decrease Costs - Does it really? Yes, training can definitely lead to a decrease in various business costs. Training saves money through limiting waste - whether in time or material, lowering the supervision cost and lessening the number of workplace accidents. Trained employees can perform diversified sets of activities single-handedly.

So, irrespective of what sort of business you’re in, the number of employees you have, or the size of your business - Train to Gain!

Alan Gillies is the Managing Director of the L2L Group. He specialises in delivering Executive Coaching, Training and Consultancy Services to International Businesses across the World. Want to discover more about these insightful business building success strategies? Get Alan’s essential FREE Business Pack today!

Whether training is considered to be an investment or an expense depends exclusively on someone’s perspective. However, it is generally accepted that training is an investment - which pays dividends, on a daily basis. Is this true? Let’s find out. Is this correct? Let’s take a look.

Training is an endeavour undertaken by a business to develop new skills or to enhance the existing ones in its primary staff. Training is more commonly provided to employees and managers - such as management training, but it can be extended to customers and suppliers too. The ultimate aim of training is to facilitate a better understanding of the essential concepts in the employees so that they can actively participate in conducting the various activities in extended areas of the business enterprise.

As most business coaching experts agree, there is always a delay experienced by a business between the time of investment in training and the time when the benefits are realised. This delay varies in duration depending on the kind of investment and the actual scope of the training which has been undertaken. Training is generally considered to be a long-term investment, which very rarely pays off quickly; in most situations the real differences are seen in time. The returns which come from training aren’t realised at any single moment - they pay off every day, therefore they’re thought of as “Dividends”.

Training dividends are not directly measured in monetary terms, but can be noticed in terms of:

1. Increased Productivity - By providing appropriate training, the productivity of the workforce can be increased, empowering employees to be able to set their own targets and achieve them in a timely manner.

2. Improved Communication and Participation - Training greatly helps in the improvement of communication among the staff members of an organisation.

3. Waste Reduction - With training, the workforce is able to understand the effective ways of doing a particular task and the procedures for minimising any wasted time or materials in their activities.

4. Reduced Labour Turnover - Trained and empowered employees are satisfied with the work that they do. This in turn automatically improves the retention of the employees in the business and significantly increases the loyalty of the current ones.

5. Improved Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty - When a customer is satisfied with the products and services of a company - he becomes loyal, and for the foreseeable future he will also be a source of continuous revenue for the company.

So finally, we have found that training is definitely a dividend driving activity! If you want to ensure that healthy dividends are always realised from training, you should conduct every aspect of this training with a decisive aim in mind.

Alan Gillies is the Managing Director of the L2L Group. He specialises in delivering Executive Coaching, Training and Consultancy Services to International Businesses across the World. Want to discover more about these insightful business building success strategies? Get Alan’s essential FREE Business Pack today!

What is the most important resource for the success of any organisation? The unanimous answer, without question, is human resources. When we talk about human resources, we actually mean highly skilled, knowledgeable and consistently effective human resources. The overall quality of the individuals in the company can either drive it to the highest peaks in the mountains of success, or let it fall into the deepest canyons of failure.

At present, it’s quite rare for an organisation to be able to readily find top notch people who are already sufficiently skilled and experienced in their chosen fields. Companies often end up recruiting the wrong people or candidates with insufficient prior experience. In such cases, giving them the pink slip - firing them, might seem to be the easiest way out of such a situation, but it’s not always the right solution. Another option, and in some situations a much better way forward, can be intensive training with business coaching fundamentals. Often, this route can become a win-win solution for both the company and the employee - if it’s undertaken wisely. The primary reason for this training is to teach valuable skills and work related knowledge to the workforce utilising a positive structured method. This strategy can even change “couldn’t-be-worse” employees into invaluable long term organisational assets.

How to get the best results:

When engaged in management training, imparting specific skills and understanding to those with limited ability or those with mismatched skills, can often be a tricky issue. Also, this process can be greatly simplified if the organisation takes on a calm - well thought out, step-by-step strategy.

1. The first thing every organisation should deal with is its specific expectations with regard to the individuals they’re looking to train, as only a relatively small percentage of these individuals will have the capacity to ideally suit any particular career or position. There will be many candidates which will be unsuitable - even unstable, however if only a very few succeed, the future of these companies will be assured.

2. The existing employees can play a crucial role in this development process. They can make all the difference by assisting any new colleagues to feel comfortable in the office settings. A new recruit generally looks around for friendly faces, and a welcoming approach in such a situation can generally help a great deal in boosting everyone’s morale.

3. The employee should be slowly taken through the training process. Training assignments or modules should comprise more of on-the-job tasks rather than classroom coaching, and as with everything - practice makes perfect.

4. The entire process may take more time than expected. So, managers need to be patient with each candidate, as rushing will leave the employees feeling anxious and frustrated from not being able to meet the required standards.

5. Constant communication with the senior management is something that can work wonders for the confidence of new recruits. When they find someone who is patient with them, and ready to guide and motivate them, candidates will usually put forth their maximum effort to learn everything necessary.

6. Last but not least, an organization which invests trust in the capabilities of its people has a greater chance of survival in turbulent times, as its loyal people will give-their-all to pull it through.

Keeping the above considerations clearly in mind, any company can, with perseverance, successfully surmount every single training issue which appears. In this day and age, when educational institutes have sprung up all over the world, and are turning out professionals in swarms, finding top notch talent should be “a breeze”, but for whatever reason, finding a really good person for just about any position is downright tiresome. Successful firms deal with these issues head-on by implementing proven scouting methods and effective training methodology, so they can - “in a nutshell”, turn even common coal into sparkling diamonds.

Alan Gillies is the Managing Director of the L2L Group, specialising in providing Executive Coaching, Training and Consultancy Services to Businesses across the Globe. Want to learn more about these business success strategies? Get Alan’s popular FREE Business Pack today!

If you have your own business, owning, operating and running it can give you many great rewards. Of course, one of the first things that means is that you can do something you truly love, and you’ll be able to set your own hours and perhaps earn a lot of money, too (depending on how much work you want to put into your business). These considerations bring forth a very important question: how can you develop a highly successful business? What do you need to do and what factors do you need to employ so that you can have a high level of success yourself?

Many different elements need to come together in order to achieve success. There are three most common ones, though, and arguably, they’re also the most important. That is, you need to have inspiration, motivation, and facilitation come together in order to be successful. If you have these three things, you can indeed have success in your business.

Inspiration can commonly be defined as an arousal of the mind to creative thinking or enthusiasm towards a particular activity. Mostly all successful people derive inspiration from an external source in order to be a success themselves. For example, all great musicians traveled on their path to become a success thanks to the inspiration of the music and musicians they listened to during their early years. Similarly, many people will look towards many sources of inspiration prior to launching their entrepreneurial venture. Perhaps you studied the life of Bill Gates and/or Warren Buffet and opted to own your own business as a result. If this were the case, these business moguls would certainly be your prime inspiration.

But, what is it that makes you want to wake up every morning and put a great deal of effort into your business? The answer can be summed up in one word: motivation. By definition, motivation is the means and reason in which a person seeks to achieve a goal. There are many factors that can contribute to the motivation to succeed in business. Some are motivated to earn income, others are motivated by personal satisfaction, others can be motivated because they feel that they have the ability to contribute something great to society. Regardless of the origination of motivation, one needs to possess motivation in order to succeed in business. Moving forward listlessly will not yield success. There needs to be something pushing the proprietor to achieve success. When this motivation is strong, really nothing can stand in anyone’s way and succeeding becomes a foregone conclusion.

While inspiration and motivation are helpful, they cannot help a business succeed by themselves. They will need the aid of facilitation which is the actual process of achieving your objectives. In other words, you have to figure out a way to put your plan in action. Thankfully, there have been many trailblazers in the past who have put forth the common means of achieving success by presenting means of facilitating can be modeled. This does not necessarily mean it can be modeled easily as nothing of merit is ever easy to attain. However, the ability to attain success can be done because it has been many times in the past by many people. Why not take your shot at it as well?

The Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator course is a recognised route for men and women looking to get into supporting networks. So if you’re just about to get going or have previous knowledge but want a professional course with a good qualification, you can find the right training. For a newcomer to IT, it may well be necessary to have some coaching ahead of attempting to go for your four Microsoft Certified Professional exams (MCP’s) required to achieve an MCSA. Identify a training company that can create a bespoke package to suit your needs - with industry experts who will work with you to make sure that your choices are good ones.

How are we supposed to make the right choice then? With so many opportunities, we have to know where we should look - and what it is we should be looking for.

Don’t get hung-up, as a lot of students can, on the accreditation program. Training for training’s sake is generally pointless; this is about gaining commercial employment. You need to remain focused on where you want to go. Never let yourself become one of the unfortunate masses who choose a training program that sounds really ‘interesting’ and ‘fun’ - and get to the final hurdle of an accreditation for a job they hate.

Prioritise understanding what expectations industry may have of you. What qualifications you’ll be required to have and how you’ll build your experience level. It’s definitely worth spending time thinking about how far you wish to build your skill-set as it will force you to choose a particular set of certifications. Seek help from a skilled advisor who understands the sector you wish to join, and who can give you ‘A day in the life of’ understanding of what you’ll actually be doing day-to-day. It’d be sensible to understand whether or not this is right for you long before you embark on your training program. There’s little point in beginning your training only to find you’ve gone the wrong way entirely.

Often, trainers provide a big box of books. This isn’t very interesting and not really conducive to remembering. Long-term memory is enhanced with an involvement of all our senses - learning experts have been saying this for decades now.

Locate a program where you’ll receive a library of CD and DVD based materials - you’ll be learning from instructor videos and demo’s, and be able to use virtual lab’s to practice your new skills. You really need to look at courseware examples from your chosen company. Be sure that they contain video, demonstrations and various interactive elements.

Seek out actual CD or DVD ROM’s if possible. Thus avoiding all the issues associated with internet connection failure and issues with signal quality.

Training support for students is an absolute must - ensure you track down something that provides 24×7 direct access, as anything less will not satisfy and will also impede your ability to learn. Avoid, like the plague, any organisations which use ‘out-of-hours’ messaging systems - with the call-back coming in during office hours. It’s not a lot of help when you’ve got study issues and want support there and then.

Be on the lookout for training schools that utilise many support facilities around the globe in several time-zones. Every one of them needs to be seamlessly combined to offer a simple interface and 24 hours-a-day access, when it’s convenient for you, with no fuss. Always pick a training provider that offers this level of study support. As only 24×7 round-the-clock live support delivers what is required.

If you’re considering a certification company who is still pushing ‘in-centre workshop days’ as a feature of their programme, then consider these hassles met by almost all students:

* Many back and forth visits - normally hundreds of miles at a time.

* If you work for a living, then weekday only workshops cause problems at work. More than likely you will be contending with several days in a row too.

* Annual leave lost - most students get just four weeks holiday each year. If half or more of that is used up by training events, you haven’t got a great deal of holiday time remaining for the family as a whole.

* Classes can ’sell out’ fast and can sometimes be too big - so they’re not personal enough.

* Workshop pace - centre-days can consist of students of varying abilities, so there is often tension between students that want a quicker pace to the ones who need a little longer.

* Don’t ignore the extra expense of driving or taking public transport or accommodation for the duration either. Don’t be surprised to find this become many hundreds of pounds more - sometimes thousands. Take some time to add it all up - you may be surprised.

* Training privacy will be of paramount importance to a lot of attendees. Why would you want to lose potential advancement, pay-rises or success at work while you’re training. If your work discovers you’re putting yourself through accreditation in another sector, what are they going to be thinking?

* How many of us have avoided asking a question, because we wanted to maintain the illusion that we did, in fact, understand?

* Working away from home - a minority of students need to live or work away for certain parts of the programme. Workshops become problematic to attend, but the money has already changed hands with your initial fees.

It would be better to just watch and study with industry specialists one-on-one via filmed lessons, doing them when it suits you - not somebody else. Training can take place wherever it suits you. If your PC is a laptop, take in a little sunshine in your garden as you work. Any problems and get onto the live 24×7 support. It’s never going to matter how regularly you would like to re-take a quiz or test, video instructors can never get frustrated with you! Plus, as an added bonus, there’s no need to take notes. Everything is already there for you. The result: Reduced stress and hassle, less cost, and absolutely no travelling.

Being at the forefront of the leading edge of new technology is as thrilling as it comes. You’re involved with shaping the next few decades. We’re only just starting to get to grips with what this change will mean to us. How we correlate with the world as a whole will be profoundly affected by technology and the internet.

And don’t forget that income in the world of IT throughout this country is a lot higher than in the rest of the economy, therefore you’ll most likely gain much more as a trained IT professional, than you’d get in most other industries. It seems there’s not a hint of a downturn for IT industry increases in Great Britain as a whole. The market continues to grow hugely, and as we have a significant shortage of skilled professionals, it’s most unlikely that there’ll be any kind of easing off for years to come.

Ok, one of the most common question we get is how do I upgrade the IOS on my Cisco 2501 router? I can refer you to the documentation on Cisco’s site on how to do this, but it seems as though for the new CCNA student that this just does not give you all the information you need to successfully upgrade your IOS. I completely understand this as their instructions are written for someone who is already familiar with Cisco routers and switches and who is probably already a Cisco CCNA. Now I might also suggest to you that it is not imperative that you upgrade the IOS on your Cisco router as soon as you get it. You see, the commands that reside in version 11.x are 95% the same as in 12.x.

The Cisco CCNA exam really focuses on the core commands that have been there for years. So again, there is no need for an immediate upgrade day one when you get your Cisco router from 11.x to 12.x IOS. Take your time and become comfortable with the router and the commands. Otherwise you may mess up the upgrade and sit there cursing at the router as you try to figure out how to get IOS back on the router that you deleted by mistake. But don’t worry; you will be able to recover if you deleted the IOS by mistake too. It is just a little different of a process. Now when you feel you are pretty comfortable with the IOS commands, then perform the Cisco router IOS upgrade. After all, you will need to be able to complete such as exercise to pass the Cisco CCNA exam.

Now in this article, I am going to make an assumption that you have our study CD which has some of these files on it. If you don’t have our CD, you can purchase it or search the web for stuff like the SolarWinds TFTP server. Ok, here we go!

Here are the steps to start….

1) On the CD, follow the link to install the trial version of the SolarWinds TFTP server. You can access this by inserting the CD in your computer, auto-running the CD and you should see the CiscoKits splash screen. On the splash screen you should see a link for “Handy Programs”. Click that link and then follow the link for the install of the SolarWinds TFTP Server.

2) After you install the TFTP server, you will copy the 2500 IOS file that you want to upgrade the router with to the c:tftproot folder if you followed the default install directories for the TFTP server. This file is a .bin(binary) file so you will not be able to open. Many people will tell us that there is a problem with the file as they can’t open it. You are not supposed to be able to open and launch it as it is not an .exe file.

3) Launch the TFTP server.

4) Once in the TFTP server application, go under File, click Configure and click the Start services button. Click Ok. You should see in the bottom of the TFTP server application box that it says service status is “Started” and you should see the IP address(ex. 192.168.1.100) of the TFTP server to the left of that along with the c:tftproot folder as the default folder to the left of that(again, that is where the TFTP server will look for the .bin IOS file). If you do not see all that, you have missed a step somewhere so please go back and verify your steps.

5) This step could go a few different ways. 5a will be the steps if you already have a good version of IOS on the router. 5b will be if you accidentally deleted the IOS from the router. Now in my example here I am going to assume you have some sort of switch or hub that you have the Cisco router and your PC connected into. I will also assume you are using an internal IP address scheme of 192.168.1.x. The address for the router will be 192.168.1.80 and the IP address of the TFTP server will be 192.168.1.100. If you are not using that IP schema, then you will need to modify these instructions accordingly to fit your IP schema.

5a) Boot the unit normally. You should be brought to a normal user mode. In step 7, we will get you into privileged mode.

5b) Boot the unit and if you have no IOS on the flash, it will boot using the boot image from ROM. You will know this as your prompt will look like this: Router(boot)

6) Put a transceiver on the AUI port. Hook an Ethernet patch cable to the transceiver and the other end to the hub or switch your computer is connected to.

7) The next set of commands we are doing to setup an IP address on the Cisco router. We have to have an IP address assigned to the Ethernet interface or we will not be able to communicate via IP with the TFTP server. Do the following commands: En Config t Int E0 Ip address 192.168.1.80 255.255.255.0 No shut Exit Exit Copy tftp flash
It will ask you the name of the remote host. Address or name of remote host []? 192.168.1.100 Put the IP address of your TFTP server.

9) Next it will as you the Source file name. Source filename []? c2500-is-l.123.24.bin It is the name of the IOS file you copied over to the c:tftproot folder.

10) Next it will as you the Destination file name. Destination filename [c2500-is-l.123.24.bin]?y Hit y for yes to use the current file name. It may ask you to confirm. Enter y for yes.

11) It will then ask you if you want to erase the current flash file system. Enter y for yes. It may ask you to confirm a second time, if it does, enter y for yes again. Erase flash: before copying? [confirm]y

12) Next is should start the flash erase as seen below and you will see the file copy process as noted by the exclamation points. Erasing device… eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeee …erased Erase of flash: complete Loading c2500-is-l.123.24.bin from 192.168.1.100 (via Ethernet0): !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

13) If you start to see a bunch of periods, then that means you have some sort of connectivity issue. Here are the things I suggest you look at: A) Is the link light on the hub or switch for both the PC connection and the Cisco router connection? B) From a command prompt on the PC, can you ping the IP address of the PC? C) From a command prompt on the PC, can you ping the IP address of the Cisco router? D) From hyperterminal on the router, can you ping the IP address of the Cisco router? E) From hyperterminal on the router, can you ping the IP address of the PC? F) Is the service still started on the TFTP server and is the IP address still 192.168.1.100? These things should start to give you an idea of where the problem may be.

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He has conducted several LCD Monitor courses and he understands the problems faced by students so he has created a special guide on how you can repair LCD Monitors quickly and easily yourself. You could be repairing LCD Monitors sooner than you ever thought possible. This amazing guide is unlike anything else out there, in fact, it’s more like a step-by-step blueprint for guiding you how to easily repair LCD Monitors!

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One of the most recognisable elements within the interface of Microsoft Word 2003 was the toolbars. There were an awful lot of them, each offering a series of features on a related topic. With the launch of Word 2007, toolbars are no more. To some extent, their place has been taken by the Ribbon. However, there is another element in the Word 2007 interface which perhaps resembles toolbars even more: the Quick Access Toolbar.

The Quick Access Toolbar is normally displayed in the top left of the Microsoft Word 2007 application window. When the program is first installed, it contains just three icons: Save, Undo and Redo. To the right of these icons is a drop-down menu which allows you to customise the commands shown Quick Access Toolbar. It contains a selection of frequently used commands, such as a New, Open, Quick, Print etc. To add a command to the Quick Access Toolbar, simply choose its name from the drop-down menu.

As well as these frequently used commands, the drop-down menu also offers an option labelled “More Commands”. This displays the Word Options dialog with the Customise category selected. Here, all the various commands built into Microsoft Word are available and this includes commands not normally displayed on the Ribbon.

If you’re an existing Microsoft Word user who has recently upgraded to Microsoft Word 2007, you may find it useful to add some of the commands which you’ve used in previous versions. For example, if you normally use the icon which enables you to draw tables rather than insert them, simply scroll down to Draw Table, highlight the command and click on the Add button. When you click the OK button, you’ll see that this command has been added to the toolbar.

Another simple way of customising the Quick Access Toolbar is to add Ribbon commands. If there are commands you find yourself using frequently, you may find it convenient to add them to the Quick Access Toolbar. Simply click on any command and choose Add to Quick Access Toolbar from the drop-down menu.

When you have finished customizing the Quick Access Toolbar in this way, you may find that you start using it more and more frequently. If that’s the case you may also find it convenient to place the Quick Access Toolbar below the Ribbon. To do this, in the Customize drop-down menu, simply choose Show Below the Ribbon.

As well as this, if you find yourself relying more on the Quick Access Toolbar than the Ribbon itself, you can also minimise the Ribbon by choosing Minimize Ribbon from the drop-down menu on the right of the Quick Access Toolbar. When minimized, the Ribbon remains active: simply click on any tab to bring up the options. However, once you’ve used a command in that tab, the Ribbon will be minimized once more.

Finally, if you want to remove items from the Quick Access Toolbar, simply right-click on the item in question and choose Remove From Quick Access Toolbar.

There are basically three types of control found on the Microsoft Word ribbon: buttons, drop-down menus and launchers. The Bold control, found on the Home tab, is an example of a simple button. When you click the Bold button, highlighted text becomes bold. If you click the same button again, the highlighted text reverts to normal.

The Change Case control is an example of a drop-down menu control. Clicking the control shows you a series of options. For example, if you choose Other Case, the highlighted text becomes capitalised if it lowercase and vice versa. If you choose Capitalise Each Word, only the first letter in each word is capitalised, and so forth.

Some controls are a combination of simple buttons and drop-down menus. An example of this type is Underline, which consists of two sections: a button on the left and a drop-down menu on the right. Each time you click on the button, the default underline is applied; usually the underline style which was last used. If you click on the drop-down menu, you are given a series of options for customising the underline. You have a choice of styles: solid, dotted, double, and so forth. You can also change the underline colour. As with the Bold button, if you click the Underline button a second time, the underline is removed. Also, any line style that you chose from the drop-down menu will become the default.

The dialog boxes and task pane options found in previous versions are still present in Word 2007. They are accessed via launcher buttons. Launcher buttons are displayed in the bottom right of certain ribbon tab groups. Clicking on the launcher button displays a series of options either in a task pane or a dialog box. For example, in the Home tab, the Clipboard launcher button displays its options in a task pane. In the case of the Font group launcher button, the options are displayed in a dialog box.

The Microsoft Word 2007 ribbon takes up quite a lot of screen space; approximately 20% of the average screen. If this becomes inconvenient, you can minimise the ribbon at any time by simply double-clicking on the name of any tab. When the ribbon is minimised, it can still be used. Simply click on the name of a tab and the options will appear once more. Once you have chosen an option the ribbon will be minimised again. To revert the ribbon to its normal behaviour, simply-double click on any tab. A second way of minimising the ribbon is to go to the Quick Access Toolbar and choose Minimise the Ribbon. To revert the ribbon to its normal size, choose the same option once more.