Level 400 – Expert

Are you an Office freak from down-under?

On the weekend of the 15th and 16th of November, a group of Aussie Office fanatics are putting together a conference called Office DevCon2008.  From what is on the agenda it looks like a great event for anyone involved in managing Office products in their workplace, or for those interested in getting a little more intimate with the Office 2007 suite, SharePoint and more.

Registration is free… and there might be sneak previews of Office 14 as well!

If you are in Sydney in mid November, make sure you check it out.  You never know, you might bump into yours truly there as well

You can find out more by visiting the Office DevCon 2008 website

’till next time!
TNP

In my day job (yeah.. this Paperclip can’t live off giving you Office 2007 help yet!) I always got frustrated when I tried to check my corporate email from home or on the road.  My office is essentially my laptop, and wether I am on my ADSL connection at home, or on my 3G Wireless connection, whenever I wanted to check my email using Outlook, for security reasons (I am guessing) I needed to connect to work through a Virtual Private Network (VPN).  Very annoying!

But then I discovered a great way to get around that!  It is called "Outlook Anywhere" and is probably the hardest option to find and change in Outlook 2007!

For those interested in the details (from a popup box in Outlook 2007)… "Microsoft Office Outlook can communicate with Microsoft Exchange over the Internet by nesting Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) within HTTP packets." 

Woooo too technical for me… but what that basically means is that you don’t need a VPN connection, you just need access to the internet!  How good is that.

Here is how to do it.

1. Click on "Tools", then "Options"
2. Click on the "Mail Setup" Tab
3. Click on the "E-mail Accounts…" button
4. On the "Email" tab, click on your email account, and then click "Change"
5. Click on "More Settings"
6. Click on the "Connection" tab
7. In the "Outlook Anywhere" section, check the box that says "Connect to Microsoft Exchange using HTTP"
8. Click on "Exchange Proxy Settings…"
9. Type your companies "Outlook Web Access" address in the "Connection Settings" box.  For example, it could be owa.companyname.com
10. Click "OK" about 15 times to close all the windows
11. Restart Outlook

And there you go – probably the most complicated menu structure in Outlook 2007, but when you find it, it is absolute GOLD!

Now go out and enjoy that extra 30 seconds I have given you every time you want to check your email!

’till next time!
TNP

Are you sending something to someone that you don’t want anyone else to see?  Maybe you are talking about your boss behind their back, sending a friend some photos that you don’t want the rest of the office to see… or simply don’t want someone to hit Reply-All on your email.

Well there is a way to turn off Forward and Reply-All.  Yes really!

First things first – this will only work if the person is using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007.  If the person you are sending the email to uses Outlook Express or Outlook Web Access… then you are out of luck

Want to learn how to do it?  Simply have a read of this article on Microsoft Office Online.

(Thanks to the Inside Office Online blog for pointing this great tip out!)

’till next time!
TNP

A lot of organisations have had a chance to play around with Office 2007 for a while now, and are now walking down the road of deployment.  But where to start?  Deployment has changed a little from previous versions of Microsoft Office, so it might be a good idea to brush up on a few things before kicking off that Office 2007 deployment project.

First step is to visit the 2007 Microsoft Office System Plan and Deploy with Confidence site.  This site includes Webcasts (from level 100 through to 400), Virtual Labs, and Podcasts to help you get you complete your deployment successfully.

Secondly, check out some of the articles on deployment from media outlets such as Computerworld.  These start to give you a real world perspective on the types of issues you might face during your deployment.

Thirdly, if you are ready to go now, check out articles from experts in the community, just like Aaron Parker’s post on Deploying Office 2007 with Group Policy Startup Scripts.

Finally, once your deployment is complete, make sure you let everyone in your organisation know about Thenewpaperclip.com – so they can get up to speed quickly with the new features of Office 2007!  Remember… the key to a successful deployment is not the deployment itself, but the training and adoption that takes place afterwards.

’till next time,
TNP

Are you a systems administrator charged with deploying and maintaining an Office 2007 environment? You can now download some key sections for the 2007 Office Resource Kit.

There are four different titles available, Planning and architecture for the 2007 Office release, Deployment for the 2007 Office release, Security for the 2007 Office release, and Technical reference for the 2007 Office Release

You can download each of them from the Microsoft Office System site on Technet

Ask your Office 2007 questions at The New Paperclip Forums – http://forums.thenewpaperclip.com

Do you have questions about Word 2007, Excel 2007 or Outlook 2007, but don’t know who to ask?  Are you stumped by something in Access 2007, OneNote 2007, or Visio 2007?  Do you know what to do with SharePoint Designer 2007, Publisher 2007, Groove 2007 or Communicator 2007?

If you have answered yes to any of those – you need to start asking your Office 2007 questions at The New Paperclip forums – http://forums.thenewpaperclip.com.

Not only are their forums for all the desktop programs that are in Office, there are also forums for the server programs that make up the Microsoft Office System – SharePoint Server (MOSS), Performance Point Server, Project Server and Groove Server. 

I will be on hand when I can to answer your questions – and most importantly members of the community will also be there to help out.

I look forward to answering all your questions in the near future – start posting them today! http://forums.thenewpaperclip.com!

’till next time,

TNP

Thats right… 23 Sleeps, thats 552 hours, or  33120 minutes until Office 2007, and Windows Vista will be available in the shops.  January 30 is not that far away!

You can pre-order your copy of Windows Vista or Office 2007 now on Amazon.com!  They can even gift wrap it for you!

Over the next three weeks I will be in overdrive making sure that you have all the tips, tricks and tutorials you need to hit the ground running as soon as you take off the shrink wrap on your own copy of Office 2007.

Make sure that you subscribe to the feed, and if you have any areas that you would like me to focus on… make sure you leave a comment!

’till next time

TNP

[tags]Windows Vista, Office 2007, Launch[/tags]

Exciting news!!!  My sources at Microsoft have all been spruiking that Microsoft Office 2007 has now reached the magic milestone that is RTM.

If you are a MSDN subscriber, you can expect the gold code to be available in the next few days.

If you are a consumer, we still need to wait until early next year to purchase Microsoft Office 2007 from the shops!

So now that Office 2007 is available, are there any areas that you need me to cover?  Over the next week or two I think I will get back to basics and build tutorials that cover the products (Word 2007, Excel 2007, PowerPoint 2007 and Outlook 2007 to start with) from the ground up!

If you have any suggestions… please leave a comment and let me know.

TNP

[tags]Office 2007, RTM, Tutorial[/tags]

There are a few screencasts starting to appear on the Microsoft Office 2007 Developer Center.

For those of you who don’t know what screencasts are, they are basically videos showing you exactly how to do something in an application.

This screencast details exactly how to extend the Office 2007 UI by building a custom ribbon!  Great if you want to customise the ribbon in Word 2007, Excel 2007, PowerPoint 2007, or Outlook 2007 with some menu options specific to your business, or your business systems.

[tags]Screencast, Ribbon, Office 2007[/tags]

Does the Word 2007 Splash Screen distract you too much when you are waiting for Word to load?  There is a solution.

1. Create a shortcut on your desktop (right click on the desktop, go to new, and select shortcut).
2. Type the full path of Word 2007 on your computer (the default is probably “c:\program files\microsoft office\office 12\winword.exe”
3. After the full path, add a space, and then /q (so it looks like “c:\program files\microsoft office\office 12\winword.exe /q”
4. Click finish.

Now, double click on the shortcut to load Word 2007, minus the splash screen

’till next time

TNP

[tags]Word 2007, Tutorial, Splash Screen[/tags]