Mouse Pointers and Microsoft Office

The mouse pointer takes on different shapes as it performs different tasks within the Microsoft Office Suite. To give you an idea of these changes, I have listed a few common tasks with Microsoft Office Word 2003, Excel 2003, and PowerPoint 2003. The mouse pointer changes its shape when

In Word,  the mouse pointer is:

• The I-beam when it is inside the document
• An arrow pointing to the left:
  • outside the left or right sides of a page in the Print Layout View
  • on selected text
  • when the Header and Footer toolbar is displayed
• An arrow pointing to the right in the left margin of a page

In Excel,  the mouse pointer:

• over a cell becomes a fat plus symbol
• over a cell border is a 4-headed arrow
• over the bottom-right corner of a cell is a black ‘cross hair’
• over a column heading (letter) and row heading (number) are arrows point down in columns and to the right in row
• over a column and row border are double-headed arrows pointing up and down on the top or bottom of a row, and left or right on either side of a column

In PowerPoint,  the mouse pointer:

• points to the left outside of a placeholder
• is an I-beam over a placeholder
• is a four-headed arrow inside a placeholder
• is a two-headed arrow on a sizing handle (small circles on the placeholder border
• four-headed arrow on an object
• is a cross-hair as text box is put on a slide; drawing a line, drawing an arrow

Pay close attention to the cursor and the mouse pointer. The cursor will indicate the spot inside a file where text, numbers, or other information will be added, changed, or removed, and is always blinking. The mouse pointer also changes its shape as soon as it is over a border, margin, table, column, row, etc.

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