I just saw this tip on Lifehacker which points to a Tech-Recipes post on how you can customize your Outlook Today with just a bit of HTML code. Their post offers up some HTML templates for the various Outlook elements like Inbox, Calendar, Tasks, Contacts, and Notes.

But I also have to point to this TechRepublic post which gives some more details on this process, including the how-tos on how to extract the HTML page and the graphics in order to tweak them.

Pretty cool stuff. I did this once when I was bored at work and gave my Outlook Today page a pretty pale pink and purple swirly background. It rocked, of course. Have you ever customized your Outlook Today?

I love little productivity tips that help me do things faster and more efficiently, so I really enjoyed this blog post over at Web Worker Daily. Samuel gathered some of his favorite keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft Word, like Ctrl+Shift+C to copy and Ctrl+Shift+V to paste formatting and Ctrl + Shift to select all text between the current location of your cursor and the end of the current paragraph.

His list was short and sweet, but it was no match for the super massive list of all shortcuts for Word 2002, Word 2003, and Word 2007 found here. Wow, you really don't even need a mouse, do you?

• New Elements Gallery user interface offers easy access to the most commonly used tools and templates
• Powerful OfficeArt graphics engine puts stunning visual and graphic effects at your fingertips; SmartArt graphics enable you to transform text and bulleted lists into professional diagrams with one click
• Go to Entourage 2008's Project Center to manage project details, such as e-mail messages, documents, schedules and contacts, in one area
• Use Word 2008's new design tools to create professional-looking cover pages and bibliographies in a snap; Dynamic Guides keep words and graphics straight and true
• PowerPoint 2008's new Object Palette makes it more simple than ever to see and choose all your shapes, art, symbols and pictures; designer themes and custom designs make your presentations look sensational
• Excel 2008 now supports more than 16,000 columns and more than one million rows to compile enormous amounts of data into meaningful reports and thought-provoking graphs
• Also includes Messenger for Mac for communicating instantly with family, friends and colleagues

I caught a great article from Codswallop on PDF writers via Digg today. PDF can be useful for sharing documents with users who don't have Office installed, for archiving, or for when you want to print out something and you suddenly realize that your printer is out of ink.

I don't save files to PDF that often, but when I need to, I've got a couple of specific tools that I use that makes the process really simple.

Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS

This utility lets you save files as PDF from within Office applications. This Office 2007 add-in lets you optimize your saved files for print or online use.

CutePDF

CutePDF comes in both freeware and a commercial versions. The freeware version is free for both personal and commercial use. The commercial version offers a list of great features and is currently priced at around $50.00 US.

If you use PDF a lot, you should also check out Sarah's post: Outlook 2007 Tip: Preview PDFs Automatically.