Much like new OS and browser releases, I like to keep tabs on the features available in the latest versions of Microsoft Office. So when Office 2010 was officially released earlier this week, I took a look at the new features available. Overall, there is nothing I see which makes me want to upgrade from 2007. Currently 2007 natively supports the XML document...

If you want the best to two worlds: the power and features of Microsoft Office and the collaboration tools of Google Docs, then bind them together with OffiSync. OffiSync Supercharges Microsoft Office, enabling users to significantly improve the way they create, collaborate and share their documents by integrating Microsoft Office with Google Docs, and Google...

If you are not aware, Microsoft is now offering their Office online via the Office Live Workspace. The intent is to allow you to have most of the functionality available on the traditional desktop installation, but with the convenience of an online application. If this sounds like something you could use, check out this in-depth look at Microsoft Office...

One thing people always seem to complain about when using Word is that it is very hard to format documents because font sizes and emphasis “seem to change randomly”. While this may have been true with some of the older versions of Word, the newer versions (2003/2007 at least) offer a robust solution: styles. The linked article gives a very...

If you utilize an Exchange environment in your office, a very seldom used feature is the ability to hyperlink to shared objects. What can end up happening is users just email documents back in forth or other chaotic methods which just lead to clutter more than anything. So to get started with hyperlinks the easy way, check out the free utility, Linker. Linker...

An interesting tidbit I came across the other day when I was comparing Office 2007 versions was the the Home and Student release can be installed on multiple machines without having a separate license for each. For my own curiosity I looked this up and sure enough, according to the license agreement, 1.2.a reads: Licensed Device. You may install one copy of the...

Users of Microsoft Office 2007 should really take a look at some of the improvements made in SP2. While there are lots of improvements, the most notable include:Support for Open Document Format (ODF). This is OpenOffice’s native format and you can now read and write using Office. Native support for exporting to PDF and XPS. Previously this required an...

For most of us, Excel is one of those programs where you use 10% of the functionality and only even know of 50% of it. Regardless of whether or not you fall into this category, an brief article you might want to take a look at is “Hidden gems in Excel 2007“. This points out and walks you through 3 functions which most of us would probably find very...

Whenever you install Microsoft Office, you may notice a startup item is added: the Office Startup Assistant. If you have ever wondered what this does, take a look at this Microsoft KB article: The Osa.exe file does the following:Initializes automation. Initializes some of the common fonts installed by Office. Handles certain commands (New Office Document, Open...

The most noticeable change in Office 2007 from the previous releases of Office is without a doubt the use of the command ribbon instead of traditional menus. This change does take some getting used to which can lead to a bit of frustration finding the command you need. To remedy this, bring back the classic/traditional menu system using the freeware tool,...

If you have ever created documents using Microsoft Office which you would like to distribute to via the Internet (Excel/Word templates, legal documents, presentations, etc.) it is a good idea to add a terms of use license to it. One of the more popular licensing verbiage tools (for lack of a better description) for these types of work is Creative Commons which...

One really nice feature which was added in Office 2007 is the ability to make certain files in your recently opened document list ‘sticky’ so that they always appear in the list. This is really easy to do:In the respective application (Word, Excel, etc.), click on the Office icon in the upper left. In the ‘Recent Documents’ listing,...

As work I make fairly extensive use of the excellent Microsoft Visio to create database ER diagrams and network topology markups, however a need came up recently where I had to provide someone who did not have Visio an editable copy of a file. Of course, the simple solution is to just go get a copy of Visio, but for those of you looking for a more...

I made an interesting discovery today when I was exporting some Word Documents to PDF. I had previously been using the PDF printer installed on my machine (CutePDF), but this time I used the Microsoft Save add-in to save the document as a PDF. I found the Microsoft add-in worked much better. Not only was the file saved to PDF faster, but the file size was...

At home I use Google Docs for everything, but at work Microsoft Office is king. One resource I just recently found out about is Microsoft Office Online. Here you can find downloads for any Office version categorized by product (Excel, Word, Access, etc.) as well as access lots of free stuff such as:Clip art Fonts Templates Detailed how-to write upsThe site...