All Entries Tagged With: "Office"

OffiSync Combines Google Docs and MS Office Apps

OffiSync is a new tool that allows users to work with Google Docs from within Microsoft Office applications rather than a web browser. When you install OffiSync, a new tab will appear in your Office apps that allows you to save and share your documents to Google Docs. You can invite collaborators to view and edit your documents from within Word or Excel.

OffiSync’s integration with Microsoft’s applications reminds me of DocVerse, which Rob Bushway blogged about here.

Check out the below video demo and let us know what you think about OffiSync.

Visit OffiSync to register for the free open beta.

DocVerse Brings Online Collaboration to Microsoft Office Files, Beta Invites Available

One of the most frustrating things about working in an office is the constant emailing back and forth of documents to various team members. Each person has their own way of saving files, making edits, etc, and the person in charge of the document has to manage multiple copies coming from in multiple people. It’s a headache that has Excedrin written all over it. Since most corporations still use Microsoft Office as the “standard”, switching over to Google Docs / Zoho isn’t really a viable option. How then to streamline this problem and offer online type of collaboration to Office documents?

DocVerse to the rescue! DocVerse brings online collaboration / sharing of Microsoft Office documents to your office and mobile workers, allowing user level access, and single file management. If you’d like to check this out for yourself or your office, we’ve got good news for you. DocVerse has set GottaBeMobile and its’ readers up with 101 beta invites and you can sign up here.  ou only need one invite per team since each Beta user can share and invite their colleagues to view documents using DocVerse. The beta version of DocVerse only works with PowerPoint 2007 for the time being, but CEO Shan Sinha says that support for other Office applications, Office 2003 and Office 2008 for Mac are coming soon. You can view presentations and comment on them from any web browser, including IE, FireFox and Safari.

Watch the video below for more info - click the little tv icon to enlarge.

Microsoft Drops Office Ultimate Prices For Students

Microsoft is offering Office Ultimate to students for the unreal price of $59.95. All you need is to have a .edu email address and be registered for at least 0.5 credit hours in case MS decides to come asking for proof of your enrollment for whatever reason. Office Ultimate retails for $679, so this is a very significant savings. The beauty of Office Ultimate is that it offers the complete Office suite of software allowing for integrating files between different programs. For example, a OneNote page can be turned into an Outlook appointment. Similarly, an Outlook email can be sent into OneNote for editing. I’ll be showing the relatively seamless coordination between Office programs soon here in an upcoming Inkshow.

Via Digital Trends

Use ScanPST To Fix Corrupt Outlook Data Files

If you’ve seen that pesky balloon pop up that tells you that an Outlook 2007 data file did not close properly and it needs to be scanned for errors, you know how initially terrifying that little message an be. Sometimes the automatic scan fixes the issue and life moves on. You can even continue to work in Outlook while the automatic scanning is taking place, although things will move a bit slowly, and if you shut down Outlook while it is being scanned, of course it all begins anew the next time you open up Outlook.

If you see the warning balloon pop up frequently, then you might need to take some more corrective action to repair things. Outlook includes a file that will do the trick, if you can find it. It is called ScanPST. Usually it is located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office 12.

When you open ScanPST it asks you for the file you wish to scan, and of course the next trick is knowing where your .pst files are stored. Mine are stored in C:\Warner Crocker\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook. I know some users move their archive files to other locations.

Once you locate the files you simply run the program and it will report if you have any errors or not an then ask if you want them fixed. Note that if you have multiple archive.pst files you should run this on them as well. In my first pass at the program I only ran it on my outlook.pst file, and the errors were still being reported when opening Outlook. A quick run thru with the various archive.pst files and I’m opening and closing Outlook 2007 without an issue at the moment.

Search Commands for Speech

Microsoft’s Rob Chamberlin points to a great new tool from the Office Labs team called Search Commands, which helps you find commands, options, and wizards in Office apps. Rob takes the Search Commands a bit further by developing a speech macro for it. Check it out!

The Outlook Shut Down Mystery

Do you see the message displayed in this graphic when you shut down and reopen Microsoft Outlook 2007?

James Kendrick says he’s seeing it on all his machines. I see it more frequently than I would care to as well. In fact, I’ve begrudgingly learned to live with it, sad to say. A number of the commenters on jk’s post say they’ve never seen the issue while some have. The problem occurs when the Outlook data store, either a .pst or an .ost file, does not shut down properly when exiting Outlook. OK, fair enough, but why does that happen?

From what I can gather there are several issues that can cause an improper shutdown and several fixes/workarounds that I’ve seen. If ever there was case for the well worn cliche, Your Mileage May Vary, (YMMV)this is it.

Microsoft’s solution

Microsoft suggests in this Knowledge Base article that the problem can occur if:

• Antivirus software is scanning the file (I assume that means the .pst or .ost)
• There is a forced Microsoft Windows shutdown before the Outlook.exe process shuts down completely.
• Outlook add-ins are present.

As a recommendation, the KB article suggests the following:

If you see this issue frequently, and you have to exit Outlook shortly before you shut down your computer, it may be better to shut down Windows while Outlook is still running. We recommend that you do this instead of of exiting Outlook and then shutting down Windows shortly after that.

Outlook add-ins

It seems from my research that just about any Outlook add-in can cause a problem, including (and there are a number of reports of this,) Microsoft’s OneCare. You’d think they would have figured that one out by now in Redmond. To find out if this is what might be causing your problem open Outlook in Safe mode (/safe) and this will disable all add-ins. Then comes the trial and error part of adding them back in one by one until you find the culprit. You can find out which add-ins are disabled and re-enable them by going to Help/Disabled Items. A number of users report that this solves their problems, once they’ve identified the offending add-in, but note that your mileage may vary. One of the guilty culprits in my usage has been MindJet’s MindManager and I keep that turned off. Fortunately, when it has caused a problem, I get a report that says that the add-in was the culprit. In many of the cases I’m seeing in my research, it is a mystery to tell which add-in causes the problem. I’m also testing Xobni, and I think that might be why I have been seeing this occur more frequently of late.

Automatic send/receive

One suggestion I’ve discovered is to make sure Outlook isn’t polling for a send/receive when it is offline. You can do this by going to Tools/Options/Mail Setup and hit the Send/Receive button. Uncheck the box under ‘When Outlook is offline’ that says ‘Schedule and automatic/send receive every….’ Again, some report that this solves their problems. Others do not.

A not so appealing workaround

A number of sources have suggested turning off the Outlook services in Task Manager before shutting down Outlook. Talk about a silly workaround.

No easy conclusions

For whatever reason, this can, at the least, be an annoyance and at the worst perhaps cause data loss. You would think that Microsoft would have more to offer here about this, and I’m sure there are probably other causes and workarounds out there. But from what I’ve found there are too many variables out there to offer something definitively at the moment.

Here are a couple of other tech forum threads that I’ve found with discussions of the issue.

• Tech Support Guy
• All About Microsoft Outlook

Inking Not Working in Office?

Jeffrey Kent, a loyal GBM reader, was having a heck of a time figuring out why inking was disabled within Office 2007 on his Fujitsu P1620. James Kendrick and I even spent some time helping him through the debugging process. Through many emails back and forth, support calls to Microsoft, and to Fujitsu, it turns out that his custom installation of Office 2007 was the culprit.

It turns out that a customized install of Office may inadvertently remove the inking components necessary for inking within Office apps. Lesson learned: Do a Full / Non Customized Install. Head over to Mobile Barbarian for all the details.

This is definitely something the Microsoft Office team needs to look at. It is not a good thing if someone can inadvertently break inking by choosing not to install features that don’t appear at all related to inking.

While you are on Jeffrey’s site, be sure to checkout his vLite tutorial on streamlining a Vista installation.

Are You Still Using Microsoft Office?

Interesting little meme on Twitter this morning started by Robert Scoble with this Tweet:

My Microsoft Office trial is over. I am not spending $450 just to get Outlook. Gmail and Google Calendar win this game: big time

That prompted quite a few others to chirp in and say that with the exception of Outlook and OneNote they’ve moved to other solutions, mostly on the web.

How about you? Are you still using Microsoft Office applications and if so which ones? I know I still use Word and Excel quite a bit because the functionality I need isn’t there yet in online solutions.

Don’t forget you can follow GottaBeMobile.com on Twitter.

Outlook Tip: Add Pen Options to Quick Access Toolbar

One of the frustrating things about Office 2007 is how the inking tools are hidden under the Review Ribbon button. The ink options are harder to find, further sends the message that ink is a second-class citizen in Office products, and breaks that flow of “thinking in ink”. When I want to ink, I don’t want to hunt and peck for my pens. I just want to start inking.

Here is something I’ve done recently to make it easier to access my pens when I want to ink an email, mark up a document in Word, etc. These steps are for Outlook, but they generally apply to Word, Excel, etc. Just substitute Editor Options for Word Options, etc.

1. Create an email
2. Click on the Office Button on the top left corner of the email message
3. Click on Editor Options
4. Click on Customize
5. In the drop down of commands, select Ink Tools | Pen Tab
6. From that list of options add the Ink commands you want to appear in the Quick Access tool bar. I added the Ball Point Pen, Felt Pen, Eraser, Ink Color, and Close Ink Tools. Add as many commands that give you one-click access to your needed ink toolset.
7. Below the list of commands, put a check next to “Show Quick Access Toolbar below the Ribbon”. This will move the toolbar from the top of the window to below the Ribbon, and will require much less hand movement to select your ink tools.

Now you have one-click access to your pens and they are no longer hidden under the obscure “Review” tab. Unfortunately, the Editor Options do not apply system wide in Outlook. You’ll need to make the same changes to the Calendar, Contact, and Journal screens. Just create a new item for Calendar, Contact, and Journal, and then go to the Editor Options for each type to customize the Quick Access Toolbar. Follow the same instructions for customizing Word, Excel, etc.

OneNote 2007 Training for the Beginner

The Office Online training team has just published a new training course designed to educate new users about OneNote 2007. In addition to the training course, there is a short quiz to make sure you know all the basics of this popular Tablet PC application. Check it out! ( via Michael Oldenburg and OneNote Extensibility blog)

In addition, Clifford Brooks, a GBM reader, just let me know of a OneNote Notebook designed to teach you how to use the Enterprise version of Office 2007.

Microsoft Opens Office Live Workspace Beta

Everybody into the cloud. It sure seems like it today. On the heels of the Google Gears announcment, Microsoft is announcing that the Office Live Workspace Beta is now live worldwide (albeit in English only). Users can share and access their data online and Microsoft is rolling out several new features.

Office Live Workspace lets people organize documents and projects online and work on them from almost any computer. People can save more than 1,000 Microsoft Office documents to one place online,* and access and share them via the Web. They can view and comment on documents in the browser as well as create simple Web lists and Web notes, and share documents in real time through integration with Microsoft SharedView.

Microsoft has also added several new features to Office Live Workspace, based in part on feedback from early beta participants:

• Activity panel. A new activity panel shows all the activity in a workspace at a glance.

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• Notifications. People can now receive e-mail notifications about changes made to their workspaces or documents.

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• Direct links. People can now bookmark their workspace or a workspace item via a unique URL in a browser window.

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• Multi-file upload. People can now upload several files simultaneously by simply dragging and dropping from their desktop.

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• Improved sharing. New sharing functionality includes an easier user interface and auto-completion of e-mail addresses.