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Office System - David Overton's Blog
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  • How to get rid of the installer / configuration dialog when running Office 2007 and Office 2003 on the same system - for Vista and other versions of Windows

    I have been asked this many times following up on the blog entry Installing Office 2003 and Office 2007 on the same system where once people have removed the problem with the End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) appearing every time they start Office they then get the dialogs below every time they switch between Word 2007 and Word 2003. when starting Word 2003 when starting Word 2007 The fix to the problem is very simple as it turns out - simply run the following commands (by pressing the Windows Key+R or typing it into the Start/Run command box. Use the line with Office\11.0 if you have Office 2003 installed and Office\12.0 if you have Office 2007 installed. You can use both if you have both installed : reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Options /v NoReReg /t REG_DWORD /d 1 reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Options /v NoReReg /t REG_DWORD /d 1 That is it. Office 2007 might want to have one more spin round the block with it's configuration dialog box, but that should be it. ttfn...

  • Running Office 2003 on Windows Vista and running other applications that work on Windows XP on Vista

    [updated 19th March 14:45 - added App Compat fixes KB article] I seem to be being asked this question a lot, so I thought I would blog the answer. The short answer is yes, you can run Office 2003 on Windows Vista . For that matter, you can run many other applications on Windows Vista too. For those who want details on how to do this, go to this page . Lets start from the top - most Windows applications run unmodified under Windows Vista. Some have been designed to, others have been certified to ensure they do. Details of this list can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933305 and includes products like Office 2003 (and 2007) and so on including those by Corel and so on. There is also then community maintained lists, such as http://www.iexbeta.com/wiki/index.php/Windows_Vista_Software_Compatibility_List for software that people believes does or does not work. Microsoft have released patches to Vista to increase the number of applications that run without any changes or user interaction. Details of this...

  • Installing Office 2003 and Office 2007 on the same system

    [updated 16:42 9th May 2007 with url for MS Support of this] [updated 9:45 22nd July 2007 with url to fix for install dialog coming up with word] I was recently asked in Office 2003 and Office 2007 can co-exist on the same system. The answer is yes, except for Outlook which as in previous versions get a little precious if this is attempted (it will not let you do this, btw). You can choose to have them both installed to the same drive or one to an external hard drive, it does not matter. The key option is when installing Office 2007 is to customise the options and select to NOT uninstall the previous versions. When you install both copies of Office to be installed on 1 machine that switching between Word 2003 and Word 2007 will result in an install dialog box coming up. See How to get rid of the installer / configuration dialog when running Office 2007 and Office 2003 on the same system - for Vista and other versions of Windows to fix this. For more support information, look at http://support.microsoft.com/default...

  • How to remove those spaces before, after and inbetween paragraphs in Word 2007 (Part of Office 2007)

    I got this mail on the blog today, so decided I would post a solution: 2007 Vista Student and Office Edition does not allow me to create one line spacing in Address Headings but okay within the body of the letter, is this a glitch. I have never experienced this in my former Word Programs. In the dialog box it does specify single spacing. Any advice would be appreciated I have created a simple document and you might notice that there is a big gap between each sentence. This is caused by both line spacing and space before or after the paragraphs. I will walk you through the process I went through to make things look less spaced out. To do all of this I will be using just one icon on the ribbon bar - the one circled below If I hover over this, you can see it is for line spacing. The 1st thing I did was highlight my text and try setting the line spacing to 1.0 - you can see the result is that the text is slightly closer together. Next I clicked the "Remove Space Before Paragraph" option and you will notice...

  • Loading Office 2003 into Vista and fixing the problem with the EULA always coming up

    [updated 9:50 22nd July to include link to stop install dialog coming up when installing both Office 2003 and 2007 on the same machine] Having written about application compatibility and repeatedly answered the question as to whether Vista can run Office 2003 (yes it can), I decided to do a set of pictures for every step of the way. In doing this I got to the bottom of a couple of problems - i.e. how to I get the service packs for Office and how do I stop the EULA from constantly appearing. Here is my picturesque walk through. Step 1 - Boot up Vista and insert the Office CD . Insert the CD with Office on it and it should automatically start with a dialog box askign you if you want to run setup. Step 2 - Accept the User Access Control (UAC) dialog . If the dialog does not look just like the one in the 2nd screenshot below then this is a worry! All untampered Office installs should have a "blue bar" at the top of the UAC prompt box Step 3 - Follow the normal Office install Process (Note if it is a corporate...

  • Nick talks sage into posting a fix for Sage Line 50 and Office 2007

    I was browsing Nick Whittome’s blog when I came across this : Sage Line 50 Version 12 - A fix for the ACCREP32.DLL error I would like to publicly thank Sage – specifically Lydia Coakley in Sage Ireland – for listening to my whining and helping me work directly with the Line 50 Development team on getting a fix . Please note that this fix is unsupported at this time, but should be in an update to the version 12 patches soon. In the mean time, this will get your Sage Line 50 version 12 working correctly with Outlook 2007. Good to see them moving on this. Ttfn David Published with BlogMailr

  • How to get Companyweb (Windows SharePoint Services v2) to work with Office 2007

    [updated 9th August 2007 to add read/write document registry change] A few people said this was a showstopper for them in recommneding Office 2007 to their customers so I figured it had to be fixed. I nixed a huge amount of work from the right stuff blog " Office 2007 File Icons for Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 " and the script work from http://blogs.msdn.com/karstenj/archive/2006/01/03/508888.aspx . The problems were: 1) no icons for files 2) file types not recognised by companyweb 3) downloads could not be opened as the file type was said to be a compressed file 4) could not edit from companyweb OK, so here is the process. 1. Download the icons from here and put them into folder C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\IMAGES\ (read the item on the the right stuff to pick your files) 2. Update the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\XML\docicon.xml file with the information below...

  • Outlook 2007 POP3 performance issues and potential fixes - Roundtrip Solutions Blog

    I think it is credit where credit is due here. The community is slowly resolving the issues we are seeing with Office 2007. I have asked John to log a call with Microsoft so that we can track the issues internally, get bugs issued and get fixes out there. Because any fix we produce has to go through threat modeling and regression testing, we rarely release them with haste unless they are impacting a significant number of users or are a security threat. However, John has documented many of the problems and solutions, so it is worth a look Problem with Outlook 2007 - Email Receive is Broken! 19 February 2007 As people start to use Outlook 2007, there is an alarming pattern starting to emerge regarding performance issues when receiving POP3 email. Even the smallest and most trivial of emails can take ages to download and be available, ranging from 30 seconds to minutes. During this time, Outlook and Windows can become slow to respond or become completely unresponsive, usually returning to normal when the send/receive...

  • What to do when you get the error "This modification is not allowed because the selection is locked" in Word 2007

    I was contacted by Gerald who had this problem and after a bit of research I found the answer. The text explaining how to do this can be found at http://www.word07.com/locking.htm , however to explain a bit more, here are a few pictures and words. The problem arises when you "group" some text in the developer tab, so the answer is to ungroup it. 1st off, ensure the developer tab is showing by going to the file (round pearl menu button in the top left corner) and selecting the button on the bottom of the menu called "Word Options". This will bring you up a screen as below Now ensure the developer toolbar is enabled with a tick as in the picture Go to the document and find the text that you can't modify Ensure the developer toolbar is displayed and click in the document where the text is and then press the Group button in the toolbar and press the Ungroup option as below That is it - you should now be able to modify the text without any problems. If this does not solve your problem, please...

  • How to add external contacts to the GAL (global address list or the list of names found by default in Outlook) by adding them to Active Directory

    So you may remember the call for help that led to the article How to add public folders to the list of contacts in Outlook : We currently have several public folders which contain email address and contact information for people outside of our company that we want to keep up with. I would like to put these in the All Contacts list on the server, so everyone can open it and reference it when sending email. The only thing I can find it to put them in Active Directory so they can be on the list. Surely there is another way to get this done, but how. I also am not opposed to manually typing them in (and weeding out old contacts), but don't feel very comfortable putting 800 outsiders in my AD. Having proposed the solution in the above link, I then got back the following reply: Thanks David for the reply. I have some address books in the public folder that I have done that to, but was trying to move away from the public folder and have the addresses included in the "All Contacts" under the "All Addresses" section for...

  • How to enable cached mode for Outlook when used inside Terminal Server (which means that BCM can work too)

    OK, this is in response to the people who have posted on this subject. Someone was kind enough to give me the exact details, but I shall protect my sources except to say they know the insides of MS tools well. The warning here is that this is unsupported and could completely destroy your users profiles, so only do this is you are comfortable editing the registry The short description: Open up Regedit navigate to [HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\<ProfileName>\13dbb0c8aa05101a9bb000aa002fc45a] Find the key 00036601 (REG_BINARY) - note the number in it now so you can undo the changes if needed Change the value to one of the following enabled value; 84 01 00 00 - note that on my desktop system the enabled value is 84 19 00 00, so play around with this a little enabled with Public Folders/Favorites: 84 05 00 00 disabled value; 04 00 00 00 FYI - you will need to search for "00036601" and adjust ALL of them since each key is for a different user on...

  • Loading Windows SharePoint Services V3 (WSSv3) onto SBS 2003

    WSS V3 has many new refinements, but putting it on SBS 2003 is something that has to be considered due to the impact. From the documentation, this is what it says: This is Version 1 of this document. To download the latest updated version, visit the Microsoft Web site ( http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=77404 ). The update might contain critical information that was not available when this document was published. The Microsoft® Windows® Small Business Server 2003 server software (Windows SBS) deeply integrates key Microsoft business productivity server products, including Microsoft Windows SharePoint® Services 2.0. A new version of the Windows SharePoint technology, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, is now available, and it provides enhanced features for your Windows SBS network. However, some of the differences between Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 break the integration between Windows SBS and Windows SharePoint Services. For this reason, if you want to install Windows...

  • How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)

    As you know I have been away on holiday and I fly away again tomorrow. While I was traveling I asked my dad to send me a recipe for some scones. He was unable to find the OCR tool in Office 2007, but with the help of OneNote 2007 it was very easy. Paste the image you wish to OCR into OneNote and let it do the rest. I found the answer at OneNote 2007: OCR Rocks this researcher's world | Techwillow where there is more information, but in summary: This is how it works: Take any image of text, paste it into OneNote, right-click on it and select Copy Text from Picture . That's it, you can then paste it anywhere as text. What's more OneNote will automatically OCR and index all your images (if you enable this in the settings) so you can search through your clippings. Now, of course you might not have OneNote, but that does not mean you don't get scanning. As the project at http://www.codeproject.com/office/modi.asp points out, you can use their code and the Office 2007 scanning tools to make it work too...

  • Microsoft Office Small Business 2007 60 day trial (download)

    Microsoft Office system - Office Small Business 2007 English 60 Day trial (Not to US - [ed - makes a change for it to be excluding US rather than only US]) (download it) Source: Microsoft Office Online Technorati tags: Office 2007 , Office Small Business , Office Live , Trial

  • Latest news, events and downloads in the Security world from Microsoft - Windows Server 2008, Mobile, employee habits, Antigen, IPSEC, ForeFront, NAP, XP Firewall, System Center

    Each month the TRM blog product this great summary of the Microsoft world in various product areas. The blog can be found here http://blogs.technet.com/trm/ News Help your customers securely deploy Windows Server 2008 with the Windows Server 2008 Security Guide! http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=92550 Every day, adversaries attempt to invade your customers’ networks and access their servers—to bring them down, infect them with viruses, or steal information about customers or employees. Your customers are looking to Microsoft and Windows Server® 2008 to help them address these threats. To assist customers in taking full advantage of the rich security features in Windows Server 2008, Microsoft has developed the Windows Server 2008 Security Guide. The Windows Server 2008 Security Guide provides IT professionals with best practices, predefined security templates, and an automated deployment tool to help strengthen the security of servers running Windows Server 2008. Supporting Your Family, Friends, and Neighbours...

  • Chris Parkes talkes about BI which he says is "all employees within an organisation being able to access the right information in the right format in the the right time to better enable them to make sound decisions in order to do their job"

    Chris is a great guy at making difficult things sound simple. Besides getting his 5 year award at Microsoft, he talks about how he got into BI and then how he likes to help others through the use of BI. His blog is also very worth having a read at http://blogs.msdn.com/bidirectional/ . One of the things he gets very excited about is business scorecard manager too :-) ttfn David
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  • Windows Vista, Windows XP, Office 2003, Exchange 2007 and Office 2007 Action Pack Update - my FAQ

    [last updated 8th Mar 2008 Please read http://uksbsguy.com/blogs/doverton/archive/2008/03/08/action-pack-subscribers-get-full-windows-vista-dvds-not-upgrades-and-they-also-get-a-copy-of-ultimate-too-plus-a-stack-of-materials-to-sell-the-product.aspx to read about how full Vista SP1 will be shipped in the Action Pack ] Inside Microsoft we have been toiling very hard to provide solutions that answer the most common feedback. To this end, perhaps slightly before all the legal stuff gets finalised, here is my FAQ on the subject, however the headlines are: You can continue to use the Windows XP and Office 2003 CDs that were supplied in your Action Pack subscription You can Upgrade from Windows Vista Business to Windows Vista Ultimate. This is not a free upgrade, however you get the benefits of this being thought of as a Not for Resale FPP copy AND it does not expire should you stop using Action Pack* (please see legal statements below) Personally I think this is an amazing offer and I am very grateful to the Windows...

  • Help to make the Office 2007 document type a standard (Open XML) - click the link

    I love standards - they make life easier. TCP is one, ODF is one, SNA is one, ASCII and EBDIC are. Even PDF is one. It just makes life easier. In this connected world standards are a good thing and sometimes more than one standard is very good. Microsoft has offered the Open XML (Office 2007 document format) as a standard too. We can have it as a standard in a short time frame or a long time frame. I want you to sign the petition to help it happen in the short time frame. Even Novell are supporting this as they see it as just making their customers lives easier. Go here and sign the petition to help move things forward in the short time frame. If you want to see how developers could use the standard have a look at http://openxmldeveloper.org/posts.aspx . You might wonder why I am asking you to do this. Well I've read the text at the microsoft.com site on Open XML and I like the idea of this being a public standard that people can write to without having to pay for the right to do so and the knowledge that...

  • Office Communicator 2007 - What's new, trial downloads, speech server

    Office Communicator 2007 What's New Guide This document covers the new features introduced in Office Communicator 2007 since the Office Communicator 2005 release. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/info.aspx?na=22&p=5&SrcDisplayLang=en&SrcCategoryId=&SrcFamilyId=&u=%2fdownloads%2fdetails.aspx%3fFamilyID%3d39b9a6d4-5862-4a01-a2a6-ac193e77aed7%26DisplayLang%3den Momentum Webcast: A Sneak Peek at Microsoft Unified Communications (Level 100) Organizations today have multiple communications systems like e-mail, telephony, and instant messaging (IM). However, these communication systems often exist in silos and are rarely integrated into business processes and applications. As a result, these communication systems are ineffective and costly to deploy and manage. Microsoft Unified Communications (UC) technologies use the power of software to help streamline communications between people and organizations, regardless of the medium, platform, device, or location. Join us for this webcast and see...

  • Microsoft Office Outlook Connector Beta (how to connect Office Live Basics or Windows Live Hotmail to Outlook)

    Don't you love the way the title of a product described what it is? While this product does what it says on the tin, it misses out the most important thing - what can you connect Outlook to. The answer is e-mail and contacts based on our Hotmail service, so this includes OfficeLive. If you sign up to one of the subscription OfficeLive services (i.e. you pay us to use it) then you get a connector which can do all this AND synchronise your calendar items too. Once in Outlook you can do all the searching, filing and manipulation you want to do. Today you can now download the beta of the next version of the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector. Download: Microsoft Office Outlook Connector (Beta) The Microsoft Office Outlook Connector is designed to let you access your Windows Live Hotmail account through Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007. You will be able to download and install the Connector to sync up your email and contacts in Windows Live Hotmail for free. However, if you are a paid subscriber of MSN Premium, Office...

  • David Overton moving on to pastures new

    With a tear in my eye the time has come for me to move my stick hut somewhere new. I have loved working in and with the small business community and with a set of awesome partners who can complain and nag, but normally with good cause and that are more willing to say thank-you and "good job" when the time is right. To you all I take my hat off for making me feel so welcome. As a legacy we now have SBSC up and running, partner groups that support themselves, a voice into Microsoft from the smaller end of the partner community and a better understanding of the motivations of both Microsoft and our partners. We also have a new level of engagement with customers. I wish I could take credit for all of this, but I am just a figurehead for a great team of people inside Microsoft. A nice chap called Mark in the OEM team will be helping to drive Cougar knowledge through the community when the time comes (no, this is not the time yet, trust me), SBSC has been supported by Jen as many of you would have seen from...

  • What to use to replace FrontPage (Expression Web or SharePoint Design) and get a free trial

    I asked my mate James Akrigg what to do for all those people who use FrontPage 2003 today to edit web pages and wish to progress - here is his response: If I am not modifying SharePoint sites then I would suggest Expression Web .. I have been using this for creating simple sites and creating Vista gadgets. It’s bang up-to-date with all things webified And so if you do have SharePoint then use SharePoint Designer .. without a doubt... At first glance Expression Web and SharePoint Designer look very similar.. but there are some subtle differences, the good news is that it is very easy to use both applications. For more information on SharePoint Designer go to http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/FX100487631033.aspx . You can get a free trial at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=BAA3AD86-BFC1-4BD4-9812-D9E710D44F42&displaylang=en For more information on Expression Web go to http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/expression-web/default.mspx . You can get a free trial...

  • Customizing companyweb WSS (Windows SharePoint Services) site

    While I was writting up my demos from the SB Ignite show I found ths site that has two great hands on labs: Learn How to Customize Windows SharePoint Services These training courses are Hands-On Labs Online (HOLO) and use live software. Each course provides a student manual that you can download and print: Windows Small Business Server 2003 - Customizing Windows SharePoint Services—Part 1 This course covers the following: Using the Small Business Server Company Web site Working with Lists and Document Libraries Windows Small Business Server 2003 - Customizing Windows SharePoint Services—Part 2 This course covers the following: Adding Functionality by Using Web Parts Using Dynamic Web Templates to Create a New SharePoint Site ttfn David

  • How to copy or archive files by year using the command line and robocopy

    I got this question via e-mail and decided I would post the answer here in a blog. (Updated 16th Feb 2017 with a typo correction) I want transfer all files created in Office Word 2003 by year (annual batchs - ex: 2005, 2006, etc.) to external HD. How can to do this? I will appreciate your answer. Edgar To do this via the command line you can use Robocopy which is present in Windows Vista and Windows 7. If you have Windows XP download the Server 2003 Resource Toolkit and install it. Robocopy will be part of the install and found in the install directory. The actual command would look like this and would need to be entered into a command prompt: for /L %x in (2009,-1,2000) do robocopy source destination \%x *.doc? /maxage:%x0101 /minage:%x1231 /s To break it down a bit.. for /L %x in (2009,-1,2000) do This creates a counter from 2009 up in steps of -1 (or down in steps of 1) until 2000 is reached. Each time the counter changes it is set into %x, so %x will become 2009, 2008 and so on. It then executes the command...

  • Office Live Workspace is now available (in beta) for all - aka Windows SharePoint Services for all small businesses

    According to the site Workspaces (WSS for Office Live users) is now not quite out of beta, but still has a lot to offer: Anywhere Access Save 1000+ Microsoft Office documents in one place Access them from almost any computer with a Web browser No more flash drives or sending yourself documents via e-mail Learn more Share with Others Invite people to your workspace You control who can view, comment, and edit your documents Stop manually merging versions from multiple people Learn more Extend the Microsoft Office Experience Open and save files directly from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Synchronize contact, task, and event lists with Outlook No need to learn a new program Learn more In terms of what is actually new: Public availability of Office Live Workspace beta at http://workspace.officelive.com with immediate access and no waitlist (English language version only) The easy way to save Office documents to/from the web Organise documents and projects online and work on them from almost any computer (full Firefox...
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