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Office System - David Overton's Blog
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  • Vista and Office 2007 for Small Business (responding to more comments) - and the EVO Tour and more learnings (updated with links)

    Well, the EVO Tour is underway, with some initial bad feedback, we have taken that on board and now the feedback is MUCH better from all partners, including SBSC members, so the inital concerns appear have been answered - which is well done to the team for such a quick turnaround. When I answered the previous complaints " here ", I wanted to respond more fully to Martin's comments, so I will do that here. This is what Martin said that I will respond to now: "because this customer has temps that may or may not work on these platforms[David: Vista machines], the changes in UI between XP and Vista are significant that this solution[David: Using Vista on some machine] will not work. They believe (and so do I knowing the workforce) they are going to have to upgrade all of their Computers all 35 Desktops. On top of this, they are then going to have to ensure that all of the other LOB Apps run, and then train all users on the diverencies. That will cost the IT budget for the next 12 months so just isn't going to happen...

  • Office 2007, XML and standards

    Well, the day has finally arrived, the XML file formats used in Office 2007 are now ECMA standards. This is something that can be used to extract data from office files without having to write your own document decoders (something I used to do for a living waaay back when). XML file formats is not a new thing - Office 2003 XML formats are available, like the 2007 ones, royalty free, but this time a standards body has approved the standard. For reading I would suggest http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/HA102058151033.aspx followed by the ones below. 2007 Office System: XML Schema Reference This download contains reference documentation for the 2007 Microsoft Office system XML schemas. 2007 Office System Sample: Manipulating Office Open XML Formats Files This is a set of sample files and Visual Studio project files that illustrate how to manipulate Office Open XML format documents programmatically. ttfn David
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  • Can't wait for Office 2007 - get the full product trial

    If you are wanting to play with Office, you can now get a trial from here . You can play with this until you get your full version. Yes, this is RTM code and yes, this is a DOWNLOAD. That's it David
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  • Are you near Exeter, then sign up quickly for the Small Business Ignite Tour as it is coming to you on the 29th August from 6pm

    Once again the Small Business Ignite Tour is coming out and this time it is Exeter. You need to sign-up quickly, so go to http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/training/ignite/default.aspx?id=Exeter and sign up for the Small Business Tour (as opposed to the tour with a date in the past). If you do not know about the Small Business Ignite Tour, then this is the rough agenda: Introduce just how big the business opportunity is in the land of small business Introduce the topics of Flexible Working and Collaborative Business as these will be the basis of marketing campaigns this year from Microsoft into small business customers Demonstrate technologies that you can deliver to give your customers the benefits they demand - such as : working from home or on the road, using the tools in SBS, Windows XP or Windows Mobile Sharing files between workers, customers and suppliers in a natural and secure way using WSS and Office When to consider a hosted solution and when to consider SBS How to stop searching and start finding...

  • Office Rocker! : Coping with change

    This is definitely a great blog entry - about how organisations and people manage change. Some things change I have a lot of debates at the moment about how hard it will be for people and companies to adjust to the new release of Office. The first discussion usually surrounds the new user interface and how different it is. I'm not going to go over all the reasons behind the contextual approach again. The research in our labs, and this matches what I observe with the people I know who start using 2007, is that it takes between 2 days and a couple of weeks to feel at home in the new user interface. Now this is NOT how much downtime each user suffers making the transition, it is the time it takes for them to feel as confident with the new release and to take advantage of the new usability. <snip> If it all goes wrong and you really can't find your favourite feature the Office online animations are fab. These give you a mock up of 2003 UI, you click on your beloved feature and it switches to show you where it...
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  • Upgrade Toolkit for Windows SharePoint Services Sites and Templates

    BIG REMINDER - DO NOT DO THIS TO COMPANYWEB ON SBS Upgrade Toolkit for Windows SharePoint Services Sites and Templates Find guidance and tools to successfully upgrade your Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 custom sites and templates. The result: A set of custom sites and templates that will operate in a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 environment. This toolkit also includes a set of upgraded Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 application templates.

  • So you don't get Exchange 2007 in the Action Pack, but want to evaluate it

    Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Now Available for Evaluation Make your evaluation period as efficient as possible: Downloading the software automatically registers you to receive relevant resources for the discovery, assessment and deployment stages. You'll receive links to webcasts, e-learning, virtual labs and more.

  • Microsoft Office 2007 and Windows Vista for Microsoft (UK) Partners' Friends and Family

    [updated 18th March 08:44am] - The links are working now - hurray Now before someone goes and shoots this down, we have managed a small discount for Microsoft UK Partners' friends and family. It is not a half price discount or anything close, but if you know someone who was going to buy our software or wanted too, it is now a more attractive price :-) Microsoft Office 2007 and Windows Vista for your Friends and Family Are you experiencing the 'WOW' of the new Microsoft Office system and Windows Vista yet? If you are you'll probably want your friends and family to feel it too! To help you spread the WOW factor Microsoft Partner DABS is offering a special price to Microsoft Partners' friends and family on the home-use versions of these exciting new releases*. Product Special Friends and Family Price** Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student £85.00 Vista Home Premium £185.00 Vista Home Premium Upgrade £123.50 *Please note: These products are not discounted. The products on offer are legitimate software applications...

  • Collaboration (working together) using Infopath and SharePoint - Job Aids (tools to help you do your job) from Microsoft

    Collaboration Discover tools for managing information and collaborating with others. · Collaboration Selection Guide SharePoint · Collaborating with SharePoint Server 2007 Overview · SharePoint Server 2007 Sites & Workspaces Selection Guide · SharePoint Server 2007 Document Collaboration Get Started · SharePoint Server 2007 Team Sites Get Started · Customizing a SharePoint Server 2007 Site Get Started · SharePoint Server 2007 Web Parts Learn More · SharePoint Server 2007 Meeting Workspaces Get Started · SharePoint Server 2007 My Sites Get Started · SharePoint Server 2007 Site Access and Storage Learn More · SharePoint Server 2007 Surveys Get Started · Outlook 2007 and SharePoint Server 2007 Integration Overview · Outlook 2007 and SharePoint Server 2007 Integration Get Started · Using InfoPath 2007 Forms on a SharePoint Server 2007 Site ttfn David Technorati tags: Office 2007 , Collaboration , Job Aids

  • Office XP, 2003, 2007 feature comparison for small businesses

    I saw this on the Small Business site in the US and thought it was an excellent tool as to what has changed between the versions of Office from XP through to Office 2007. Simply go to http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/products/wowpc/CompareOffice.aspx and click out the tabs to get the details. Ttfn David Technorati Tags: Office System , Office 2007 , Office 2003 , Office XP , Comparison , Small Business

  • 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...

  • Simple overview of what is in Windows SharePoint Services 2007 & MOSS 2007 and how to develop on them

    For those who wish to expand into SharePoint enhancements (remember that you can enhance the site without any dev tools using the browser features) I found this simple blog entry ( Know your options for developing with SharePoint 2007 - Program - .Net - Builder AU ) and it is quite nice. Read the whole blog, but here is a snippet. The editions of SharePoint One of the more confusing aspects of SharePoint is that there are two versions available: Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. Developers follow the same basic steps to get started with SharePoint regardless of the version. Here's an overview of both offerings. |> WSS: This is the so-called "free" version, as there are no additional licensing issues. It is included with the Windows Server 2003 operating system (version 2.0). The current 3.0 version is available via download. It provides core document management, collaboration, and search functions, which include blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, e...

  • Application news for developers - x64 support, application people ready assessments, Vista Gadget security inspection and SharePoint development

    While I am on holiday I thought I would forward these items for the developers out there. The http://blogs.iis.net blog looks awesome for IIS7 information, including videos and the other MSDN information demonstrates how to develop SharePoint tools. Application support Is Your Application Platform People-Ready? Complete the Self-Assessment and Find Out Take the Application Platform Infrastructure Optimisation assessment to measure the effectiveness of your current infrastructure in platform-agnostic terms, and compare your application platform infrastructure against industry best practices and the latest IT research. http://www.microsoft.com/business/peopleready/appplat/ac/apio.mspx Inspect Your Gadget http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bb498012.aspx Today, the Windows Vista Sidebar hosts Gadgets built from HTML, JavaScript, and potentially ActiveX controls. Because Gadgets are HTML, they are subject to Cross-site Scripting style bugs. These bugs are extremely serious because script in the Sidebar is capable...

  • Spreadsheets and documents based on standards - OpenXML and ODF, ODF and Excel or all 3

    I have been using and referencing standards for a long time. They are great. C# is an ECMA standard for example as are parts of .Net which is how project Mono has managed to come great strides in delivering part of the .Net experience on non-Microsoft platforms. Also my 1st job out after University was writing document converters. So there are two things here - one, what is wrong with more than 1 standard - we have several for networks, several for character sets. Often one standard will work where another will not. Nearly always one standard is driven by an interested party. Open Office is very keen to see greater adoption of ODF. Microsoft is very keen to seen greater adoption of OpenXML. OpenXML is already a European standard (ECMA) and one of the nice things about that is the stability you are offered if you are developing against it. There is no requirement to have Office to use this file format. OK, so we could say "lets not use the European standard and create a similar one, but not quite the same"...

  • Darren Strange of Office 2007 / 12 fame talks about Max Office document converters and the the role of beta software

    I saw this and thought those of you with Mac customers might find this useful if Office 2007 is around or potentially around in their businesses. Also of note is the fact that beta, trial and RTM seems to be very blurred today. Do you ever deploy beta code? I do, often in small environments with big warning labels, but I do do it. Following on from some of your less than exuberant feedback about the new Mac converters, I looked into it. To summarise, the Mac BU have released the beta 1 of the file format converters of Office for Mac. You can download the converter for Word documents here . More info is at the ever useful macmojo blog First thing to point out is that this is a BETA and also that it is a BETA 1. There is a bug-ette in that apparently it doesn't handle some reserved characters from non-english languages or some special Unicode characters such as ™. Any docs that have these characters seem to screw up or don't convert at all. Apparently the issues with Unicode was documented in the help with...

  • Show Classic Menus and Toolbars on Ribbon of Office 2007 - two product choices

    I saw a blog entry at Susan Bradley's blog about her now deploying Office 2007 with a classic menu . It was worth of a blog link for all those who want to stick to the old, old ways where you search for items over multiple menus (especially if you turn on personalised menus which hide all the things you don't use regularly). The tool looks slick, but then I found a 2nd one are realised that some cunning ISVs had seen this as their great opportunity to fill a gap that is very unlikely to be filled by Microsoft. The Two solutions are shown below and can be linked to from pschmid.net - RibbonCustomizer™ Feature Tour - Part 3: Classic UI Tabs and Show Classic Menus and Toolbars on Ribbon of Office 2007 : V1.1 Feature Tour - Part 3: Classic UI Tabs RibbonCustomizer™ V1.1 ships with a set of Classic UI tabs for Excel, PowerPoint and Word 2007. Those tabs emulate the Office 2003 menus and toolbars in Office 2007. We provide these tabs to help you familiarize yourself faster with the new Ribbon User Interface...

  • Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express is available as a release candidate and will be free when it releases. This is all the power of SharePoint search engine integrated into 1 web page

    I have only just been able to start playing with this, but it is looking good. I'm told that it does NOT YET load on SBS, but that the issue is being looked at (the auto config tools that make it so easy clash with the pre-defined IIS settings for SBS) and the plan is to support SBS too. I will look at how to hack it on SBS yet :-) More info can be found at Enterprise Search from Microsoft . So what is it? (basically, web, share and application search capability with lots of abilities, but some important ones picked out below). Familiar Search Experience Empower your users to quickly find the information they need through a familiar Search Center interface Pinpoint the most relevant information you need with recommended best bets , authoritative sources , term definitions , hit highlighting , and query correction . Retrieve concise and clear search results with duplicate collapsing , allowing you to quickly review a wide variety of relevant information. Stay on top of new information relevant to your work...

  • Fixing the last 2 problems with my Search Server Express - DCOM error 10016 (application settings do not grant Activation Permission form COM) and Gather warning 2436 for Search Services on my home server

    Obviously when I wrote the last blog entry on installing search server , not quite everything was working, although I did not realise it until a few errors appeared in the event log. The errors appear below - one is a DCOM permissions error and the other is a Gather error. The DCOM error Event Type: Error Event Source: DCOM Event Category: None Event ID: 10016 Date: 09/11/2007 Time: 06:35:26 User: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE Computer: HOMESERVER Description: The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID {61738644-F196-11D0-9953-00C04FD919C1} to the user NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE SID (S-1-5-20). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool. For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp. Fixing the DCOM error is all about setting permissions in the DCOM system. The magical application was IIS WAMREG admin Service. I worked this out by...

  • Want Office 2007 with a 50% discount? You have until Christmas to upgrade and get a 50% discount with Open Value Subscription

    Again, browsing the small business blog and I thought this was very interesting: Why wait? Upgrade now to 2007 Office and save 50% Until 31 December 2007 you can get a 50% discount off the 2007 Microsoft Office system when you upgrade through the Microsoft Open Value subscription programme. Why do it this way? Because you get a huge discount, you can manage your payments over three years to help your cash flow, you’ll receive a single agreement for all your software licences, and get the benefit of Microsoft Software Assurance, which offers version upgrades and training and partner services. Learn more about the benefits of upgrading here . Microsoft's Small Business Blog : Why wait? Upgrade now to 2007 Office and save 50% ttfn David Technorati Tags: Office 2007 , UK , Discounts

  • How to turn on e-mail logging in Office 2007 and ensure that your ports are open

    I was asked about this a while back and thought I would share. This person has e-mail receiving problems, so I wanted to turn on logging and check that the network ports were really open on his PC: To get a mail log for more details – go to Tools/Options – then the advanced tab/Other button/Enable logging. (mine is not checked – put a tick in yours). The location of the log file can be found at: MAPI (Exchange), POP3, and SMTP transports - The log file has the name OPMLog.log and is located in one of the following locations: c:\Users\ user name \AppData\Local\Temp\Outlook Logging - note this is the location on Windows VISTA You might also want to look at http://www.webpipe.net/howto/Outlook_0x800CCC0E . You will need to install at telnet, but this is documented as: By default, Telnet is not installed with Windows, but you can install it by following the steps below. To install Telnet Client 1. Click the Start button , click Control Panel, click Programs, and then click Turn Windows features on or off. If you are...

  • Do you want a Microsoft Architecture Poster?

    I saw this at Chris's site and thought I would share: Chris Bowen's Blog : Got Tech Posters? There are plenty of technology posters and charts for developers available on MSDN. I didn't realize just how many until I searched for "poster" on MSDN downloads . Here's a list of the more recent ones: [Edited list by David - more on Chris's blog] .NET 3.5 Namespaces Poster The .NET Framework 3.5 Common Namespaces and Types Poster Exchange Component Architecture Poster This poster highlights the architecture and feature set of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Visual Basic 2008 Keybinding Poster Printable wall poster containing list of useful keyboard shortcuts for Visual Basic 2008 developers Visual C++ 2008 Keybinding Poster List of keybindings for Visual C++ language within Visual Studio and Visual C++ Express 2008 Visual C# 2008 Poster Wall chart showing useful keyboard shortcuts for Visual C# programming language 2007 Office System: Developer Posters Download these posters to learn more...

  • Business Contact Manager Team Blog - good information, including SQL and VBA tools, Smartphone and product information

    I was hunting for an answer to a questions someone asked me and I came across this the BCM Team Blog. Below are some of the recent posts. It is worth adding to your RSS feed list. Troubleshooting BCM for Pocket PC/Smartphone Get Business Contact Manager with Outlook Standalone How to Change BCM Polling Interval? Happy Holidays Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2007 SP1 is Live Business Contact Manager Team Blog ttfn David Technorati Tags: Microsoft , BCM , Business Contact Manager , Office 2007 , Office System , CRM , Small Business

  • Import and export business data in Business Contact Manager 2007 - Outlook with Business Contact Manager - Microsoft Office Online

    Again, something I have been asked before - how to get data into and out of BCM - have a look at Import and export business data in Business Contact Manager 2007 - Outlook with Business Contact Manager - Microsoft Office Online Import and export business data in Business Contact Manager 2007 You can use the Business Data Import and Export wizard to import (import: To bring information from one system or program into another. The system or program receiving the data must somehow support the internal format or structure of the data.) data into or export (export: To copy your Business Contact Manager for Outlook business data to a file of a different format for use in a database, a spreadsheet, or another program.) data from Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2007. What do you want to do? Import data Export data Use the wizard to update an existing database with information from another database ttfn David Technorati Tags: Microsoft , BCM , Business Contact Manager , Office 2007 , Office System , CRM , Small Business

  • Office from the past, ODF and OOXML (Office of today and tomorrow) and why is organic growth nearly always bad for software and why re-writing is not good either

    As I have said many times in the past I used to write document conversation tools. I believe this gives me a valid reason to be able to pass comment on the ODF/OOMXL debate that is raging at the moment. If these types of questions interest you, have a look at the book I talk about later ( In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters (UK) or here for US link ) Lets start with some history about the Office 97-2003 file formats. Joel was writing about this today ( Why are the Microsoft Office file formats so complicated? (And some workarounds) - Joel on Software ). Note that part of what he has commented on is the fact that the documentation for the binary file format is now available from Microsoft: Why are the Microsoft Office file formats so complicated? (And some workarounds) This item ran on the Joel on Software homepage on Tuesday, February 19, 2008 Last week, Microsoft published the binary file formats for Office . These formats appear to be almost completely insane. The Excel 97...

  • Office Live Workspace Update for Windows Vista to enable "Open From" and "Save to" menu items in Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint

    One little feature that others might have missed with the new release of Office Live Workspace is the two nifty buttons for Office to enable direct access from the Office Live Workspace Update for Windows Vista The Office Live Workspace Update installs three Windows Vista updates (KB945435, KB945145, KB933860) and one Office 2007 update to ensure optimal performance on Windows Vista when using Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint with Office Live Workspace. The update improves the performance of opening and saving Workspace documents from these Office programs. In some cases, the update also resolves problems with "Open from Office Live" and "Save to Office Live" functions of the Office Live Add-in . This update is only needed for computers running Windows Vista. Download details: Office Live Workspace Update for Windows Vista ttfn David Technorati Tags: Live , Office Live Small Business , Office Live , Office Live Workspace , Vista , Windows Vista , Save to , Open From
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(c)David Overton 2006-23