Entries tagged with microsoft office - Channel 10

Microsoft Office Web Applications: Your Burning Questions Answered

sarahintampa — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:15:00 GMT

Since the announcement of the upcoming Microsoft Office Web Applications at this year’s PDC, there has been a lot of excitement about this new service which will allow for creating, editing, collaborating, and sharing documents using the web. However, as I’ve followed the blog posts about this topic, I’ve also come across quite a bit of misinformation about the web apps, too. In an attempt to dispel some of the rumors out there, I’ve created this special Q&A which will hopefully answer some of your burning questions about the new web applications.

Q&A

Q: Do the Office Web Applications require Internet Explorer?

A: No! Office Web applications will work across multiple platforms and browsers including Safari and Firefox, too.

Q: Will the Office Web Applications work on the iPhone?

A: Yes, in the Safari web browser.

Q : Is Silverlight required in order to use the Office Web Applications?

A: No! Silverlight is not required. Using Silverlight will enhance the user experience, resulting in sharper images and improved rendering. Also, the Office Live Workspace has integrated Silverlight technology into the multi-file upload function for a better experience there, too.

Q: Will the Microsoft Office Web Applications work on Linux?

A: Yes! It does not matter which operating system is used as long as you're running a supported web browser.

Q: Are the Web Applications replacing Microsoft Office software?

A: No. This does not change the way customers buy Office nor will it slowdown the future innovations coming to the desktop software.

Q: Will the Microsoft Office Web Applications be free?

A: We don't know for sure yet, but Microsoft will deliver Office Web applications to consumers through Office Live, which is a consumer service with both ad-funded and subscription offerings. That seems to imply a free (ad-supported) and paid (subscription) offering will be available.

Q: Will the Microsoft Office Web Applications be made available to business users, too?

A: Yes. For business customers, Microsoft will offer Office Web applications as a hosted subscription service and through existing volume licensing agreements. Pricing has not been released yet on this.

Q: Will educational institutions get the apps for free?

A: Yes. Students will get Office Web applications through Office Live Workspace and universities will get it through the free Live@edu service.

Q: When will Microsoft Office Web Applications be available?

A: A private technology preview of the Office Web applications will debut later this year. For more information about this and other details about the Office Web applications, people can sign up for Office Live Workspace at workspace.officelive.com.

Q: How does the collaboration feature work?

A: Collaboration will be done using Office Live Workspace. There are two scenarios here, one experience is similar to SharePoint, where a user makes a change to a document and then uploads or saves to the SharePoint site. Whoever opens the doc first has control of that document.

The second scenario is using Microsoft SharedView, which is integrated with Office Live Workspace and enables real-time collaboration. With Microsoft SharedView, you can share your desktop and edit documents with others in real time. While sharing your desktop, Microsoft SharedView, enables you to control who edits, makes comments, etc. and then save that document back to your Office Live Workspace.

Save Your Spreadsheets With Autobackup

sarahintampa — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:26:00 GMT

I can’t tell you how many times I was asked this question when I worked in I.T.: “I accidentally just closed my spreadsheet and said NO to saving my changes…is it gone?” For whatever reason, some people’s fingers slip from time to time and the wrong button gets mashed. The shadow copies feature introduced in XP (aka “previous versions” in Vista) helped to some extent as does the AutoSave feature in Office. However, if you’re working with a spreadsheet undergoing a lot of revisions, what you might like even better is a tool that took periodic snapshots of the file at intervals you specify, allowing you to restore the spreadsheet to any particular moment in time.

As it turns out, there is a tool that does just that. I recently came across a review of it over on gHacks. The tool is an Excel plugin called Autobackup. With Autobackup installed, you can specify how often you want your spreadsheet backed up, how many copies it should save, and how long those copies should be saved (in days). Installation is simple – just got to Tools –> Add-ins and browse for the Autobackup file. Autobackup is available as a free download from here. An English and Portuguese version are available.

Making Engaging Digital Presentations With Freepath

sarahintampa — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:42:00 GMT

Freepath 2.0 is a new application that lets you create presentations that are mashups of web content and content from your PC. So, instead of a traditional PowerPoint, for example, your Freepath presentation could combine a PowerPoint file with images, videos, music, PDFs, Word, and Excel documents and play them as a seamless digital presentation. You can integrate web content like YouTube videos, slideshow’s from slide.com, music from Pandora, images from flickr or photobucket, and more alongside files saved on your PC like those from Office documents, PDFs, Quicktime videos, or Flash files.

The Freepath 2.0 software offers three different viewing modes: a preview mode which shows you digital assets on the right but also makes the playlist and playlist library accessible, a full screen mode (like what PowerPoint offers), and a dual screen mode which shows the presentation both on your screen and that of an external monitor. This dual monitor mode is also compatible with WebEx, GoToMeeting, Live Meeting, and Intercall.

If you’re more comfortable creating presentations in PowerPoint and are hesitant to try a new tool like this, you can actually prepare your slides in PowerPoint itself and then drag them into FreePath’s downloadable software to take advantage of the other tools that it provides.

When complete, your presentations can be shared with the Freepath community on myFreepath.com, which is similar to how Slideshare operates. All beta users receive 100 MB of free storage space in this community.

Three Flickr Plugins You’ll Love

sarahintampa — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:11:00 GMT

If you’re a flickr user, there are three plugins that you need to know about: Flickr4Writer, Flickr4Outlook, and Flickr4Word. I had mentioned the Flickr4Writer plugin before when I blogged about some of my favorite plugins for Windows Live Writer - it helps you to insert flickr photos into your blog posts. However, thanks to gHacks, I learned that there are also similar plugins for both Word and Outlook. Like the WLW plugin, they give you easy access to your flickr photos from directly within the application. You can also use the built-in search feature to find photos from other flickr users that match the tags you enter in the search box. The Outlook and Word plugins only support Office 2007 installations (Word 2007, Outlook 2007). All of the plugins are available from their respective sites (linked above) as free downloads. Hey, does this count as software+services? I think it might!

Integrate the Web Into Office With KallOut

sarahintampa — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:58:00 GMT

A new program called KallOut works with all Microsoft Office products to let you search the web right from within Office. After installing KallOut, an icon will appear in your system tray to show that it’s running. To use the program, just double-click or select any word or phrase from within any Microsoft Office program (Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Notepad, WordPad), Adobe PDFs, Facebook, even IE and Firefox. You’ll then see a small KallOut icon appear. From here, you can access a small pop-up menu that displays several different search options. You can choose from several different search providers including Google, Live Search, Yahoo Search, and Technorati. You can also search reference sites like Wikipedia and Dictionary.com. videos on YouTube, or photos on Flickr, and more.

What’s really interesting about KallOut is that it essentially brings the power of the web into traditional Microsoft Office software. One of the perks of using online office suites is that, by their very nature, they’re connected to the real-time information of the web. So for example, if you needed to pull up a stock quote in a spreadsheet, it was possible. However, for many people, especially those using Office software in a traditional business environment, the web office suites are just not robust enough, rich enough, or powerful enough for the tasks at hand. But with a simple add-in like KallOut, you no longer have to choose between easy access to the live web or feature-rich software – you can have both.

Here are some examples of Kallout in use:

5 Microsoft Office Ribbon Tweaks You May Not Have Known

sarahintampa — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 13:19:00 GMT

Thanks to some internal emails that were going around recently, we’ve discovered some great Microsoft Office ribbon tweaks, tips, and customizations. I’ll confess, I hadn’t known about all of these, but they certainly are handy:

Hide the Ribbon: To hide the ribbon out of view leaving only the tab names showing, just double-click on any tab’s name.
Customize the Quick Access Toolbar: By default, the Quick Access Toolbar has the “Save,” “Undo,” and “Redo” buttons on it, but you can change that. To do so, go to any tab and right-click on the little pull-down menu symbol next to the window title on any Ribbon app. Here, you have the option to click on “Customize Quick Access Toolbar.” From the menu that displays, you can add and remove commands from the Quick Access Toolbar to suit your preferences. Add your most frequently used commands and you can hide the ribbon to get more screen real estate without losing access to the commands you use the most.
Find Hidden Commands: Because the Ribbon is meant to bring more simplicity to working with Office software, there are some infrequently used commands that are not available on the ribbon or are just harder to find. To bring these back into view, follow the steps above in #2 to customize the Quick Access Toolbar and you can get access to these commands once again. A couple examples of hidden commands include Excel’s pop-up calculator and PowerPoint’s Advanced Document Properties, which lets you see how big the file is.
Customize the Quick Access Toolbar on the Fly: No need to hunt down the little right-click menu, though, you can just right-click any command on the ribbon and choose “Add to Quick Access Toolbar.”
Scroll Through Tabs With a Mouse Wheel: If you have a mouse with a wheel, you can scroll through the tabs if the cursor is over the Ribbon – very useful for quick switching.

We would like to thank both Steven Levy and Alex Babanov for these great tips!

Crowdsource Your Office: Introducing Task Market

sarahintampa — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 18:17:00 GMT

Have you heard the term “crowdsourcing?” It means taking a task that was traditionally performed by an employee or contractor and farming it out to an undefined, large group of people – a group which is often found online. Microsoft has turned this trend into Task Market, a place where a business can crowdsource their projects to a group of freelancers who are skilled Microsoft Office gurus. What kind of tasks can be posted here? Pretty much anything that involves Office like design work, writing, presentations, spreadsheets, and more. Similar to the “hire a VA” concept that Timothy Ferriss promoted in his “4-Hour Workweek” book, outsourcing these important but time-consuming tasks can help you free up your time to focus on the things only you know how to do – that is, running your business. Posting a task is free, so give it a shot. And if you’re a freelancer looking for some work, you can sign up, create a profile, and get email alerts when to be notified of new work is available.

Office Live Add-In Updated

sarahintampa — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:34:00 GMT

If you've been using the Office Live Workspace (Beta) which allows you to save and share your Office documents from an online collaborative workspace on the web, then you probably also installed the Office Live Add-in which gave you access to open and save files to or from the workspace right from within your Office program. Now, that add-in has been updated and re-branded as Office Live Update. With this new version, there are also several improvements including 1) performance updates which make using it faster, 2) direct access to your workspaces from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and 3) a Multiple Document Upload Tool, which lets you drag and drop files directly from your desktop.

Get the ODF Office Plugin Now

sarahintampa — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:49:00 GMT

You may have heard the news about the upcoming Service Pack for Microsoft Office 2007, that will let you access more document formats like the XML Paper Specification (XPS), Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.5, PDF/A and Open Document Format (ODF) v1.1. The ODF format is becoming quite popular these days because it's a free and open file format for documents. With the upcoming SP2, available in early 2009, you'll be able to open, edit, and save documents using ODF and save into the other formats, including PDF. However, if you don't want to wait, you can go ahead an grab the ODF plugin now from Sun's website. This plugin is also compatible with older versions of Office, including Office XP, 2003, and 2000. (via gHacks)

Free Designer Templates for Office 2007

sarahintampa — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:36:00 GMT

Wow, these are nice! The Small Business site is offering some really good looking designer templates for Microsoft Office 2007 as a free download. There are templates for presentations, spreadsheets, invoices, business cards, emails, and newsletters. And if you're using a Mac, you'll be happy to know that the templates work in Mac Office 2008, too (except for the ones for Publisher.) The offer is part of a promotion for Office 2007 Small Business, which you can also download for free from the site - a 60-day trial version. (via Cybernet)

Open the Web Right in Microsoft Office

sarahintampa — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:28:00 GMT

The Digital Inspiration blog had some cool tips on how to open the internet right into your desktop applications, but what caught my eye was their example of opening a web page in Microsoft Word. To do so, all you need to do is type in a URL in the "Open" box - just don't forget the http://. Of course, the web page might not look the same in Word as it does on the web, but this is handy way to import web content into a document.

iStockphoto Announces More Free Photos for Microsoft Office Users

sarahintampa — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:40:00 GMT

iStockphoto, one of the top online destinations for stock images announced the extension of its year-old program to provide low-res images and illustrations online, for free, to Microsoft Office users via Microsoft Office Online. Because the initial run of the program was so successful, iStockphoto will actually be increasing the number of photos they are making available. They are also planning to expand the program to new languages and countries in the upcoming year. The iStockphoto site benefits from links to higher quality photos that are available from the Microsoft web site which helps those users who need high-res images.

The clip art is available directly from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/clipart/ or from within Microsoft Office software.

Office Live Add-In for Office

sarahintampa — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 23:25:00 GMT

Along with the announcement of the new features to Office Live, there also arrives a new add-in for Microsoft Office users. With this add-in, you can now open and save documents directly from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, directly into your Office Live Workspace. The add-in works by providing you with new menu options if you're using Office 2007 or it will provide a toolbar if you're using Office XP or 2003. You can download the add-in for free from here.

Sign Up for Microsoft Office Live Workspace

sarahintampa — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:03:00 GMT

Microsoft Office Live Workspace , the recently announced online companion to Microsoft Office, now has a website where you can pre-register to use this new, free service. Once the beta launches, Microsoft Office Live Workspace users will be able to store 1000+ documents online and access them from any computer with a web browser and internet connection. You'll be able to invite other people to your workspace, where you will have control over who can view, edit, and comment on your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. You'll also be able to synchronize contact lists, task lists, and event lists with Outlook. However, you can upload other documents, too, like PDFs and pictures; you are not just limited to Microsoft Office file formats.

Your files will be protected against viruses by Microsoft Forefront Security for SharePoint, and they can only be accessed with a Windows Live ID and password. Despite numerous comparisons to online office suites, that is not what this is. Rather, Office Live Workspace is a place to store, share, and collaborate with others on your documents online, whether those documents are slideshows or spreadsheets, PDFs or photos. Although the current online office suites may work for light users, there are those who need the robust functionality of a full-fledged office suite, and they shouldn't have to miss out on the online component that's increasingly necessary in today's world. That's where Office Live Workspace comes in.

For people who have worked in larger companies, the description of the new service may sound familiar; it's been dubbed "Sharepoint Lite" by some, and it's true, the service will soon bring "regular users" some of the powerful online collaboration and sharing features large businesses have used for years in Sharepoint. While many will clamor to be the top online office suite, Office Live Workspace offers a different way to work: a combination of software you own (Microsoft Office) plus a service (Office Live Workspace).

Get Your Webmail in Your Outlook

sarahintampa — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 23:52:00 GMT

Do you want to use Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007 to check your Windows Live Mail (formerly known as Hotmail)? You used to be able to configure HTTP through Outlook, but then need a paid subscription to do so. However, with the new Microsoft Office Outlook Connector Beta, you can now download, read, and compose Windows Live Mail emails for free.

If you do not have a paid subscription, the Outlook Connector Beta enables you to use your Live accounts within Outlook to read and send your Office Live Mail/Windows Live Hotmail e-mail messages, manage your Live Mail contacts, use advanced options for blocking junk email messages, and manage multiple email accounts in one place.

With a paid subscription, the Outlook Connector Beta also enables the ability to manage, share, and synchronize your Windows Live Calendar in Outlook and access your Tasks and Notes. The beta is available for download here.

Office 2007: Many ways to share your calendar

Larry — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 18:47:00 GMT

Sharing your calendar with a co-worker is as easy as sending an email. Click the calendar tab in Outlook 2007 and select “Share my calendar…” an email-like window comes up allowing you to share calendars with co-workers. But what about sharing your calendar with friends and family members who don’t use Exchange Server or might not even be using Outlook at all? The new calendar sharing feature of Office 2007 has lots of options for easily sharing your calendar with anyone.

Outlook-to-email: Chris E. Avis posted the first of his Office 2007 Coolness series, and in this tip he shows how easy it is to send your calendar via email to anyone on any platform using any email client.

Outlook-to-Web: There’s another option that I picked up from Jeff Sandquist, who shares his calendar with his family. Simply click the calendar bar on the left side of Outlook 2007, then choose “Publish my calendar…” and step through the wizard. This publishes your calendar to Office Online, where you can select the people you want to make your calendar available to, or you can publish it publicly to the world (you as the publisher, and the individual viewers will need to use a Windows Live ID to view private calendars.)

Outlook-to-other: Jon Udell has good blog post about how he shared his Outlook calendar with other calendar services like Google Calendars.

Outlook Sync'ing: Scott Hanselman has a podcast that digs a little deeper into how to sync Outlook with a number of different services and providers. Be sure to check out his resource links including the very impressive Holy Grail of Synchronization.

New Audiocast: Collaborative solutions for better patient care and a healthier bottom line

bcrounse — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 21:15:00 GMT

Back in January, I wrote a piece entitled Big Healthcare Savings from Surprisingly Simple Solutions. I profiled some excellent work at Childrens Memorial Hospital of Chicago where they are using solutions built with Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Office, and InfoPath to absolutely delight clinical staff and add of ton of money to their bottom line.

This story is especially compelling because it didn't take expensive consultants or a lot of IT support to make it happen. In fact, it originally started with one clinician who thought he could improve some scheduling and work-flow processes in his unit using software the hospital already owned. He did much of the work himself in his spare time. Some projects took only a few days to implement. Now, clinicians and business leaders across the organization are launching their own projects based on the simple premise of using very powerful, intuitive and proven commodity software to tackle some of the big issues in healthcare.

I wanted to share this story with more of you and decided to feature Children's Memorial Hospital of Chicago in my next House Calls audio-cast. And, who better to tell the story than the clinicians themselves. I hope you enjoy the show and I hope you'll share this with colleagues across the nation and the world.

Bill Crounse, MD Worldwide Health Director Microsoft Corporation

Click below to listen to the program:

Collaborative solutions for better patient care and a healthier bottom line
This program is also available in MP3 for download.

Are clinicians and business managers in your organization hindered by poor communication? Do gaps in daily work-flow processes overwhelm your hospital and reduce your bottom line? Despite the IT systems you have in place, do you still rely on paper forms and processes? Simple and cost-effective communication and collaboration solutions can reduce these problems for you, your care teams, managers, and patients. In this audiocast, Dr. Bill Crounse and his guests discuss how Children’s Memorial Hospital of Chicago is using information technology solutions from Microsoft to transform their business and improve their bottom line.

Panel guests

Dr. Cynthia Rigsby, is chief of Body Imaging at Children’s Memorial Hospital and co-chair of the Department of Medical Imaging. She also serves as professor of Radiology at Northwestern University.

Dr. Andrew De Freitas, is attending physician in the Cardiology division at Children’s Memorial Hospital, is also a professor of Cardiology at Northwestern University.

Eric Gasber, is a Registered Nurse in Surgical Services with the Nursing Sedation Team at Children’s Memorial Hospital.

Big Healthcare Savings from Surprisingly Simple Solutions

bcrounse — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 23:07:00 GMT

Even if you work in a so-called “most wired” American healthcare facility, I guarantee if you look around you’ll still find lots of paper forms and processes. Paper is endemic in American hospitals and clinics, even in those with fairly robust enterprise information systems and electronic medical records. Paper is still used for staff scheduling, HR processes, reporting, transfers, discharges, and all kinds of other tasks.

There are a couple of ways around this. You can ask your HIS vendor to automate a work-flow that’s still trapped on paper. But often the aggravation, delays, and high costs don’t justify the return; and that's if you can even get them to do small projects like this. You can also buy specialized software to solve these problems, but you just end up with a bunch more departmental applications in an already crowded and complex array of applications that don’t talk to one another.

That’s why I have been so pleased to learn what some of our most innovative customers are achieving with software that so many of them already own. This is particularly true of the way some hospitals and clinics are using Microsoft Office and SharePoint Server (MOSS) and InfoPath Forms.

One such example comes from Children’s Memorial Hospital of Chicago. Last week at our Healthcare Executive Forum event in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Eric Gasber, RN, followed me on the podium with a presentation that truly wowed attendees. Eric describes Children’s use of SharePoint as a solution that “begins where the enterprise applications end”. In example after example he showed paper based workflow, reporting, and collaborative processes that had been automated with MOSS. Most of these solutions were developed by Eric with little help from IT. He’s created solutions for time off requests, patient financial services, crash cart logs, meeting agendas and materials, service requests, and pre-procedural forms and scheduling for interventional radiology, cardiac catheterization, and anesthesia. Some of these solutions took just hours to put into production. Some took days or weeks. Eric soon identified “power users” in the organization who could develop their own solutions and forms. “If they have ever created a form in Word, they have most of the skills they need”, he says.

In some cases the return on investment from these solutions is measured simply by delighted clinical or business staff. But in many cases, Eric can claim real dollars coming from his work. His solution for Cardiac MR scheduling resulted in an 80 percent increase in scanned cases per month. Total increased throughput in Cardiology and MRIs have resulted in an additional $6.5 million to the bottom line. Eric attributes this success to the fact that the solutions he designs using SharePoint Server and InfoPath are fast to develop and implement, highly flexible, and very intuitive for end users.

This is another great example of how commodity software is being used to address critical business and clinical processes in hospitals and clinics, at a cost that is affordable. And that means more money for what really counts in healthcare; taking care of our patients.

Bill Crounse, MD Healthcare Industry Director Microsoft