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Microsoft has an interesting program starting up headed “Wanted: Your Microsoft Office Story”.
They are making up a group of people (from a broad cross-section of users) and giving each person the loan of a laptop for six months with Office 2010 plus support and training for the Office suite.
In exchange you use the laptop daily for personal and work tasks, use the web-based training and talk to MS staff about your experience with Office 2010. You agree to ‘share your experience’ through video, media interview, case studies and quotes.
At the end you get a copy of Office 2010 Professional to keep.
It’s hard to tell but this seems to be mostly a marketing exercise though hopefully there’s a research component of gathering more information about how people use Office 2010 in the real world, the training they need and problems they have.
This is a US based program only and as Microsoft says “If you are not comfortable in front of a camera or don’t want to be featured in case studies or video testimonials, this program may not be for you.”.
To apply go to http://connect.microsoft.com/officecustomerstories and fill out the application form.
Most of the questions are standard but there are a few interesting ones:
Google’s Gmail service continues to innovate with the addition of a Priority Inbox feature. This feature (being gradually deployed to all Gmail users) puts ‘important’ emails into a special view above the standard Inbox.
What is deemed ‘important’ changes over time as Gmail watches your email behavior and you mark messages as important or not. One starting assumption is that people you regularly email with are more important than occasional correspondents. The system also looks at terms included in important messages as well as other indicators like replying, ‘stars’, archiving etc.
Microsoft Outlook doesn’t have such a ‘learning’ system though the company has been working on it for many years. Way back in 2004 we saw a staffer at Redmond with Outlook enhanced with an Inbox organizer that arranged and prioritized emails according to the users actions and preferences. Nothing from this in-house trial ever made it into Outlook.
These automatic and learning systems are necessarily incomplete. They work best for people with a lot of email use with common behavior patterns. High frequency correspondence doesn’t always mean high importance. For example you might not often exchange emails with a General Manager or Auditor but those few messages are certainly important.
In this article we’ll look at some options for highlighting emails from important people in Outlook.
You have to decide who is important – Outlook doesn’t have the smarts to work that out for itself.
But once you’ve decided who is important, Outlook has many different ways to highlight them using Rules to tag or mark incoming messages.
Outlook has rules which are checked against incoming message. If a message matches the rule the actions are taken.
Bespite some cosmetic changes in Outlook, the basics haven’t changed for years. Delayed sending is setup in the email rules.
... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...Jo J. writes with frustration at trying to link a Window Mobile device to a Windows computer:
“I go buy three products and I real love using office 2010, a breath of fresh air. But I cannot get it to work(sync) with my mobile. It’s like getting a GM car and getting them to install a GM steering wheel and then saying sorry pal won’t work. Have the car and now wait for it; you can’t steer it.
Microsoft you need to use the KISS principle that will beat Apple and Google(cause they are already using it). Alternative, be an ostrich and keep making computers with the mindset of circa 1985. Its now 2010, a sync should do what they are meant to do share and reshare information. ”
I'm afraid you're not telling us anything we and many Office-Watch.com readers don't already know. The connection between a Windows PC and a Windows Mobile phone has been unreliable for years. We've heard complaints about it for a long time and experienced the problems for ourselves.
You should be able to plug in a Windows Mobile phone, have it reliably detected by Windows and sync with Outlook. Alas that's often not the case -- all too often you can get the link setup and working only to find it break down for no apparent reason. Sometimes these 'voodoo' tricks work:
None of these tips is guaranteed to work – but it’s all you have.
Microsoft is little help – in all the years that there have been Windows based mobile devices, they’ve managed to be in almost complete denial about the reliability of the USB connection to their own desktop operating system. They’ve told us it’s not a problem at all, or if it is a problem it must be the customers fault, or the device makers or the relative position of the sun and moon <g> – anyone’s fault but Microsoft.
... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...The usual ‘Technology Guarantee’ for Office 2010, where recent purchasers of Office 2007 get a free upgrade, is closing soon.
To qualify you must buy Office 2007, install and activate it before Thursday 30 September 2010
That's not a lot of time if you allow time to find and ship an Office 2007 version upgrade to you.
As we’ve mentioned before, there’s an opportunity to save on buying the premium Office 2010 bundles by getting a qualifying copy of Office 2007 version upgrade and invoking the Technology Guarantee.
This works best with Office 2010 Professional where buying Office 2007, Ultimate, Professional or Small Business upgrade bundles will qualify. For example you can buy Office 2007 Small Business upgrade for US$232 and qualify for Office 2010 Professional instead of paying $409 or more buying Office 2010 Professional directly – saving $177 for exactly the same software and licenses.
You might need to hunt around for copies of Office 2007 since many stores have cleared their shelves and put in Office 2010 boxes instead. Generally speaking the reputable online retailers offer the best prices.
Amazon.com has Office 2007 with their ‘free super-saver shipping’. Office 2007 Small Business upgrade pack is the cheapest (retail price $280, street $232) with Office 2007 Ultimate upgrade for $320 (retail $540). It’s worth checking all prices before buying since there can be pricing anomalies, for example the Professional bundle costing more than the Ultimate edition.
... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...Microsoft’s online version of Office – Office Web Apps has been revised with some extra features including printing.
A major difference between the traditional Office software and the online service is how they are updated. Software is updated with a rush of new features, mostly when you buy and install a new version. Online services can be updated in a more gradual way with new and updated features coming every few months.
So back in June 2010 Office Web Apps went fully public and only three months later there are new features being added.
The Print item has been added to the File menu, but in the Word Web App only – not in Excel, Powerpoint or OneNote.
Print was already available, but only in the separate Reading view.
Insert Charts is now available on the Insert tab
Column, Line, Pie, Bar, Area, Scatter, Doughnut and Radar charts are available.
Once inserted you have some options for tweaking the chart. Click on the chart and a Chart Tools tab will appear.
Don’t expect all the choices you have in Excel software.
Now you can put a formula into one cell, then copy it to adjacent cells by dragging the source cell down or across. This is one of those features that most Excel users take for granted these days, until they find it didn’t work in the browser based version.
Click on the source cell with the formula to be copied then place the mouse pointer over the bottom left corner so the cursor changes to a cross:
Sequential autofill also works. Select cells with the numbers 1 and 2 then drag to other cells which will be populated with 3, 4, 5 etc. The increment is set by the difference between the two source cells eg cells 2 and 4 will extend to 6, 8, 10 etc.
The Word Web App could already access the Office Clipart library, now a Clipart button has been added to the Insert tab. Microsoft boasts that this lets you choose from over 200,000 royalty free images and drawings.
... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...
