Learning Office 2007

I’m always learning when it comes to the office suite. I consider myself a bit of an office power user but i’m always picking up new things it can do.

The single phrase i hear time and time again when i’m doing something in office and someone is watching is

“I didn’t know you could do that”

It’s usually just little things like being able to hide the ribbon (Ctrl+F1 helps here) or customising the quick access toolbar

So i noticed a couple of office demos appearing on the microsoft download site recently. Only a few to start with then a couple of days a go it threw up a ton of them. They are a series of videos that walk you through how to do specific tasks in Office 2007. Nothing too complex but knowledge is power and once users become more confident they’ll use more of the software

The links are below and i’ve categorised them to make it easier.

If you have a customer who is getting to grips with office you could download them all and stick them in a file share or on a sharepoint site 

If you’ve never used OneNote i’d recommened watching those

Note. The downloads are .exe files which you have to extract to get at the videos. Not a big deal but just an extra step you have to deal with

Office

Office 2007 Demo: Spice Up Your Text With SmartArt Graphics

2007 Office System Demo: Enable blocked macros

2007 Office System Demo: Apply Your Brand to Office Documents with Themes

Windows Vista and the 2007 Office System Demo: Better Together

Excel

Excel 2007 Demo: Analyze product sales with a PivotTable report

Excel 2007 Demo: Freeze or unfreeze rows and columns

Excel 2007 Demo: Hide or unhide rows and columns

Excel 2007 Demo: Data Takes Shape with Conditional Formatting

Excel 2007 Demo: Create Charts in Excel 2007

Word

Word 2007 Demo: Word 2007 — Work with Documents Created in Earlier Versions

Word 2007 Demo: Make Documents Look Great

Word 2007 Demo: Up to Speed with Word 2007

Word 2007 Demo (set of 2): Let Word manage your table of contents

Word 2007 Demo (set of 4): Create a set of labels with mail merge

Outlook 

Outlook 2007 Demo: Create and use an e-mail signature

Outlook 2007 Demo: Customize your calendar

OneNote

OneNote 2007 Demo: What is OneNote?

OneNote 2007 Demo: Organize, Search, and Find Information in a OneNote Notebook

OneNote 2007 Demo: Keep It Together with OneNote 2007

InfoPath

InfoPath 2007 Demo: View the Business Logic in an InfoPath 2007 Form Template

InfoPath 2007 Demo: Create reusable template parts

Sharepoint

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Demo: Tour a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Site

Forms Server 2007 Demo: Deploy an Administrator-Approved Form Template

SharePoint Server 2007 Demo: Add a Library to a Records Center Site

Powerpoint

PowerPoint 2007 Demo: Up to Speed with PowerPoint 2007

PowerPoint 2007 Demo: Add animation and sound to text and objects

Project 2007 Demo: Add, hide, and show columns

Project

Publisher

Publisher 2007 Demo: Personalize Newsletters with E-Mail Merge

Visio

Visio 2007 Demo: Get a New Perspective on Data with PivotDiagrams

Visio 2007 Demo: Give Your Diagram a Makeover by Applying a Theme

Visio 2007 Demo: Build Your Visio Flowchart in No Time with AutoConnect

Visio 2007 Demo: Let Data Tell Its Story with Data Graphics

Access

Access 2007 Demo: Meet the Navigation Pane

Open Office 2007 on Apple Mac

One of our clients recently made the move to Office 2007. While they have been getting on with it ok i was asked a question the other day i couldn’t immediately answer

They have a subcontractor who uses Office 2004 on their Mac and wanted to be able to open documents.

I asked what they had been doing when they were on Office 2003, as they could just save as an older version if needed?

Anyway after a little more research i found the “Microsoft Office Open XML File Format Converter for Mac 0.2 (Beta)” on the Microsoft Mac downloads page

It is a Beta so use at your own risk and also note that it expires on 31st Decemeber so keep checking back for a newer version

Error when clicking an email link

Got a call from a client today

He was making some changes to the contact details on his website and when clicked on one of the email addresses in the page he got the following error message

“Could not perform this operation because the default mail client is not properly installed”

Bit odd. He is using Outlook 2003 and that appeared to working ok

A quick google search came up a with knowledge base article that says if your using Outlook Express as your mail client and you click a mailto link that contains more than 456 characters you will get this error.

Neither of these things were true though

I had another look around a notice that when he clicked on his start menu the usual Outlook 2003 orange icon was missing and had been replaced with an email envelope icon. When i clicked it the “Internet Properties” dialog box was displayed

I checked Outlook was set as the default program in Internet Explorer and via the options in Outlook. I also checked in “set program access and defaults” and Outlook Express wasn’t selected

I switched the defaults between Outlook and Outlook Express (and back again) and the error message went away. However, the new email was created in Outlook express and i couldn’t get it to do it Outlook

I decided the best thing to do was a “Detect and repair” in Outlook

This sorted out the icon problem but i still couldn’t get Outlook to open the mailto link

So,off to the registry!

Located the following

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\mailto\shell\open\command

It was pointing at outlook express!

I changed it to this: (which i double checked against my laptop)

“%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office\Office11\outlook.exe” -c IPM.Note /m “%1%”

Notice the quote locations…they are important!

Restarted Outlook and all was well

Infopath form template not upgrading after changes?

An Infopath solution wasn’t quite behaving as expected.

I wanted to make some changes and try some things out so i copied some of their XML files into my sharepoint document library so i’d be able to test against real data

I made the changes to the template but when i tried to edit one of the existing forms the new changes weren’t displayed. New forms were fine though

I went back into design mode and checked that the “automatically upgrade” option was selected.

I manually changed the form version number in case it hadn’t be incremented. No difference

The answer came from the newsgroups! (Thanks Scott L. Heim!)

If you open the XML file in notepad at the top of the file is a HREF entry that points to the XSN file. The entry was invalid as the files were now in a different document library (mine!)

I manually changed the entry so that it reflected my setup and all was well and i resumed testing without issue

Outlook Connector Fixed

After my post last week about problems with the Outlook Connector it appears to have all been fixed!

I checked my mail this morning and it had sync’d correctly. I took another look at the Outlook blog and there are lots of reports of the issue now being resolved
The comment from the Outlook Program Manager (Jared Brown) reads 

Hi Everyone,

We have fixed the issue that was causing sync errors with custom domain accounts. You may need to reboot Outlook for our fix to take effect.

Thanks for your patience,

Jared Brown, Outlook Program Manager

I haven’t made any changes to the software so the problem must have been “in the cloud”

Just glad it’s sorted now!

Wish i’d kept the beta!

I posted a little while back about the very cool Outlook Connector that lets you access a hotmail account within Outlook

All in all i’ve been pretty pleased with it. I read somewhere recently it was no longer a beta so planned to upgrade to the “proper” version

A couple of days ago i opened Outlook and was prompted to upgrade the outlook connector. So i allowed the installer to do it’s thing but since then the connector hasn’t worked at all and from the comments on the Outlook team blog i’m not alone

The error i initally had told me it was unable to sign in and in the log it simply said “Network operation failed”

I thought it wouldn’t hurt to remove the account from Outlook and re-add it. Still doesn’t work but now i’m getting an extra message

A pop-up told me that the feature was only available to subscribers (and even asked me if i’d like to subscribe now) and the log pretty much says the same thing

Outlook Connector Version 12.0.4518.1063

Account: ******YEAH RIGHT!!**************

Signed in successfully at 28/09/2007 14:15:18                                                                          

Mail: Error at 14:16.                                                                                                 Â
Calendar: Error at 14:15.                                                                                             Â
Contacts: Last successfully refreshed at 14:16.                                                                        

Errors :

Time: 28/09/2007 14:15:21
Error in Mail
Network operation failed
Time: 28/09/2007 14:15:23
Error in Mail
Outlook Connector is available only to subscribers.
Time: 28/09/2007 14:15:24
Error in Calendar
Outlook Connector is available only to subscribers.
Time: 28/09/2007 14:15:45
Error in Mail
Outlook Connector is available only to subscribers.
Time: 28/09/2007 14:15:49
Error in Mail
Outlook Connector is available only to subscribers.
Time: 28/09/2007 14:16:03
Error in Mail
Outlook Connector is available only to subscribers

I hate bitching about software that has been given to me for free but it is a little frustrating when the beta worked without issue

I’ll keep playing with it but i think i’ll be waiting for a fix from the Outlook connector guys

Outlook 2003, faulting module outllib.dll in Windows XP

I got a call today where one of our clients was unable to open Outlook (2003)

She would open it and get the standard “we’re sorry but Outlook needs to close” error. She would restart and unless she went into safe mode it would just keep doing the same thing

The event log entry basically said “faulting module outllib.dll” (not very helpful!)

The first thing i thought was that there was an add-in or something preventing it from loading so i disabled all of them via safe mode….no good

So i used some of the Outlook 2003 switches such as /cleanviews /cleanprofile (full list here)….still nothing

I created a new profile and it still crashed, before it asked for the profile. I then used the “create item switches” (e.g /c ipm.note) which worked fine which got me thinking it must be something to do with the “user interface” as it crashed before it really got anywhere during the load (my hunch would prove to be correct)

I then logged in as a different user and this worked fine so it must be something user specific

I opened the “C:\Documents and Settings\- YOUR USER-\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook” folder and basically moved all the files out.

Outlook opened fine!!

After a bit of trial and error i found out it was the Outcmd.dat file causing the problem. This file stores all your toolbar customisation settings. If you delete (or rename) this file a new one gets created and your problem is sorted

Just as a note, the switch /nocustomize would have spotted this for me…..

Access 2003 & blank drop down list after installing SP3

I was at a customers site today when i had an Access database presented to me

“Where has all the data gone?!” 

When attempting to select a value in a drop down (combo) the list appeared empty. If you selected an item the field value was updated correctly.

I found this a little wierd and it appeared to be affecting everyone and it appeared to only be occuring with instances with a particular field.

I went to the underlying table and it turns out this particular field had some custom formatting applied. All the other fields did not

I removed the formatting and everything returned to normal

It was sorted but i was still scratching my head as to WHY when someone said

“It was fine until yesterday, then it all went funny this morning”

So what changed? Turns out “someone” had installed Office 2003 SP3

A bit of searching after the event turns out i’m not the only one who has run into this!

PDF Preview Handler

I got sent an email today with a PDF attached to it.

Since i’m using Outlook 2007 i did what i normally do and click on the message to preview it. Then i forget i never got around to installing a PDF preview handler so open it up in Acrobat

But today something was different. When i clicked on the message there was a “preview file” button. I clicked it and lo and behold PDF preview in the email! I tried it using Explorer and it works as well

I did a bit of digging and it turns out the Acrobat 8.1 update included a PDF handler

I’m suprised i hadn’t spotted it sooner but there you go!

PST Files Unsupported on LAN

We recently did some data reorganising at one of client sites

The idea was to make the folder structure reflect the current organision (some departments had been merged, made redundant,etc), setup new permissions and setup new network drives for easy access

One of the users reported that he didn’t want drive X: to disappear as his Outlook PST wouldn’t work

!!!!

We all know that PSTs on your file servers are bad but users always ask “why?” so i thought i’d see if i could come up with some official reference to point him at

First up, the official line is in the guise of a Microsoft KB article

PSTs stored on the LAN (or WAN) have been officially unsupported since Exchange 4

I also found an entry on the Enterprise Platforms Support Windows Server Performance team blog (or Ask the the performance team which is easier!) which shows off a so real world information which you don’t always get with a KB article and goes into a bit details as to why PST have such an impact on performance

After speaking to the client he wanted to use PST files so that he could archive any old messages to keep them away from his Mailbox (storage limits in place) but still have access to them on a daily basis

He is going to create the PST file on his local drive but use the Microsoft Outlook Personal Folders Backup tool (more info here so that he can get them covered by the file server backup. I haven’t used the tool before so if there is anything weird or wonderful i’ll post about it