Additionally, there may be a separate variant of Office 15 for ARM users that will be running in a more limited mode that’s designed for efficient consumption of power.

It’s said that Microsoft had originally intended to re-do Office to make it consistent with Windows 8, but that the company made the compromise to keep the planned release date for the productivity suite. As such, the suite will be comprised of desktop apps underneath, rather than the more modern HTML5-style Metro UI apps.

However, there may still be exceptions in the form of Lync and OneNote, which will, unlike the rest of the Office products, be built upon the WinRT Metro UI design language. As those apps are less complex than other Office products, it may be easier to port those first to Metro UI. The move is smart as well, as OneNote has been a staple of Microsoft’s Tablet PC users, offering the ability an easy way to collect, annotate, and store notes. With Metro UI, finger-friendliness meets digitizing pen may help Microsoft different its tablet products further from consumer-based Android and iOS tablets.

A beta of Office is expected to come in summer.

Office 15 for Windows 8 Rumored to Lack Metro Design UI is a post by Chuong Nguyen from Gotta Be Mobile.

The move will be significant to Microsoft and the PC industry as utilizing ARM chipsets may serve to reduce the costs of devices, including tablets, and make them even more affordable to consumers. Compared to PCs, tablets, and laptops running Intel or AMD’s x86 architecture, ARM chipsets will cost less.

“The bigger implication is, with [Intel-based] ultrabooks you’re popularizing the idea that you have this thinner design that turns on faster, that lasts longer [battery life]–but then you have Windows 8 on ARM that’s built at a price point that’s much lower. And does all of those things too. This is setting up the ultrabook to head right into the teeth of their [ARM] competitor,” according to the source.

One source said that a high-profile device, that was undisclosed, shown at CES with Intel chips will cost hundreds of dollars less on ARM chipsets.

Sources say that Microsoft may also target all three chip platforms at the same time, rather than staggering the launch for devices running Intel, AMD, and ARM CPUs.

The biggest challenge, still, with ARM chipsets is that devices running on ARM may not be compatible with legacy apps, and still missing in any preview from Microsoft is compatibility with the OS-maker’s Office suite. Though Microsoft claims that Office will be compatible, no one has yet seen a preview or demo that has Office running on ARM.

For ARM, Microsoft has largely demoed HTML5-based full-screen applications based on the Metro UI language.

So far, Microsoft has said and shown little publicly about its ARM-based efforts.

Windows 8 Now Said to be Stable on ARM CPU is a post by Chuong Nguyen from Gotta Be Mobile.

While the focus is on Word, Excel and Powerpoint, Microsoft does have one of its Office products already available for iOS and that’s a sort of lackluster version of OneNote. That App is intended for the iPhone but can be used on the iPad.

Given how every company has its own Cloud these days it would be interesting to see if Microsoft can make this work with its Office 365 and the Office Hub in Windows Phone. I’m sure that’s the intent, and not surprisingly, there is an opportunity there as Apple has yet to release good iCloud functionality for its suite of iWork Apps for other than mobile devices. Of course timing is everything these days.

Speculation on this speculation is that the price points would be around $10 for each App, following Apple’s lead with Pages, Keynote, and Numbers.

Let me just say this. I think it is a natural for Microsoft to do this and expect it to happen someday. Less natural, but more needed is for Microsoft to focus some effort on its iOS OneNote App. But then we all know that Microsoft likes to keep anything OneNote related as a big secret.

Rumors Circulate that Microsoft is Looking at Office for iOS is a post by Warner Crocker from Gotta Be Mobile.

Press release:

Quickoffice Updated to Version 5.0, Brings Increased Cloud Support is a post by Chuong Nguyen from Gotta Be Mobile.

The tablet user experience is optimized to give consumers a better experience, rather than scaling up from a smartphone OS. For example, the three-pane view will give users the ability to arrange their files into drives and folders. Cloud-storage solutions, like those from Dropbox and Box.net, will be mounted as drives. Users can tap, hold, and drag to move files around.

Additionally, QuickOffice 5.0 will support Office 2010 features, which supports formats such as .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx. Users can manipulate images, resize, and rotate as if they would on Microsoft Office on the desktop. The app supports live preview so you get to see what you’re doing in real time. Text formatting is also available in real time.

Enterprise users will be happy to know that SharePoint integration through third-party apps will be available. Users can make changes to files on SharePoint and save the files right back to the SharePoint cloud storage.

The update will be available in November. If you work in the cloud and choose to do productive work using a consumer tablet, QuickOffice will be a great choice for those that need to view, create, and edit on the go.

QuickOffice for Tablets to Be Updated with Better Cloud Integration (Video) is a post by Chuong Nguyen from Gotta Be Mobile.

Here’s the line that’s giving folks hope.

“…we are rethinking and working hard on what it would mean to do Office Metro style.”

The Steve Ballmer I know doesn't pull punches.

Sounds like they’re serious about bringing Office to the Metro interface. Great news, except that’s not what Ballmer really said. Here’s the full exchange on the question about Office in Metro (transcript from Microsoft).

QUESTION: Thank you. On Office, I know there’s a development effort for Office for ARM. The question is Metro interface for Office. How critical is it to Windows 8 adoption to have software that takes full advantage of Office with Metro? It’s now only been about 15 months since the last release of Office. If we’re, say, a year away, still kind of on the cusp, I’m not sure if you had to choose to add functionality to Office, or you say let’s just do a Metro infrastructure. If you can kind of share with us your thoughts, particularly as it pertains to the adoption rate of Windows 8.

STEVE BALLMER: Yeah. No, we’re certainly — as I said in my remarks this morning, supporting our platforms and having our platform support innovation in our applications broadly remains super important to us.

The brilliance of the Windows 8 strategy, though, is we get all of the applications that come from Windows on X86, as well as applications that have gone through the process of rethinking how they might work in a Windows 8 world. When we have something that we want to talk about, we will, but certainly you ought to expect that we are rethinking and working hard on what it would mean to do Office Metro style.

Notice how the first part of the second half is dismissive of the notion that they need to bring Office to Metro. Why should they? Windows 8 delivers all the applications you have now, including Office, so it doesn’t need to be in the Metro side.

The last part is far less affirmative than is being interpreted. “Certainly,” he says, “you ought to expect” that they’re thinking about “what it would mean to do Office Metro style.” So will they do it? I don’t know. Do they know what it means to do it? I don’t know. Are they working on what it means to do it? I don’t know. Should we expect them to be working on what it means to do it? Absolutely!

Seriously, Ballmer? You think we should expect you guys to think about how Office could be Metro-fied? Because me, Warner, Kevin, and a bunch of other past and present users of Windows tablets think Office in Metro needs to be ready to go when Windows 8 launches. We don’t expect you to think about how to do it. We expect it to be done.

I realize Ballmer may have been imprecise with his obfuscation, but lack of Office support was a serious hindrance to Tablet PC adoption from the beginning. If it’s still not fixed with this second (or third) try at tablets, well, don’t say nobody warned you.

Will They or Won’t They Metro-fy Office for Windows 8? is a post by Sumocat from Gotta Be Mobile.

We talked about how there’s really no excuse for a lot of people to work at an office and how it’s a drain on resources all around. Companies pay thousands of dollars (sometimes 10′s of thousands) per year for each employee to have a cubical or office, equipment and other facilities at a central office. Employees spend countless hours commuting to and from work, which means that eight or nine hour work day is more like 10 or 11 hours away from home, especially in major metro areas.

The worst aspect of working in an office, at least in many cases, is coworkers and bosses. The endless chit-chat about ball games, politics and personal business takes a serious bite out of the work day. My wife’s cousin doesn’t deal with any of that any more, instead chatting with co-workers about WORK when needed.

He no longer lives in North Carolina, a place he didn’t particularly enjoy living since his family and friends are all in the Tri-State area.  He now lives in New Jersey and is as happy as can be working for the same bank. He says he gets a lot more done these days in fewer hours. He completes his work on time, but he works when he wants to.

Another thing we talked about is how much time work takes out of your day before you even get to work. Showering, shaving, getting dressed, doing laundry, dropping off shirts at the dry cleaners are all things that eat into your work day. Obviously, you’ll have to do some of the above items at some point, but the ability to wake up at 6a.m. and be at work as quickly as you can open a laptop and punch in an RSA security number is really important when you’re on a tight deadline.

As I ate a late breakfast this morning in my home office, I visited Ted.com to catch up on the Ted Talks series. Jason Fried, the founder of 37 Signals, gave a talk about Why Work Doesn’t Happen at Work. He addressed many of the issues my wife’s cousin and I discussed. He added that meetings and managers are two of the biggest time wasters at work. I couldn’t agree more.

My wife’s cousin says he’ll never be able to go back to working at an office full time again. His company is allowing workers to work from home for two primary reasons. The first is to save on office costs. The company doesn’t have to build more offices, buy office equipment or make food for those that work from home. The other reason is so that it can retain employees with what many consider the ultimate perk. While he currently resides in New Jersey, he’s toying with the idea of living and working from Brazil for a few months since his boss really doesn’t care where in the world he is, just as long as he’s getting things done.

This TED Talk brought back flashbacks of my former corporate life. When I used to work at a big corporate media company, I spent well over half of my day not working. Instead, my typical Monday looked something like this:

7 a.m.: Leave home, drive to work on one of the most congested streets in downtown San Francsico. Drop off wife at her office

7:45 a.m.: Park (thankfully work gave me a parking spot) and run to coffee shop.

8 a.m.: Run upstairs to get to conference room in time for 8 a.m. meeting w/manager and colleagues. Spend first 15 minutes hearing jokes (‘Where’s my coffee?’), wait for everyone to show up (Oh my Gosh! Theere was Traffic…sorry!) and how awesome some club was on Saturday night.

8:15 a.m.: Manager would go over some goals for the week (same as every other week), highlight a few successes (that co-workers already bragged about last week) and then talk about his wife’s charity, his new car, trip to N.Y., etc for the remainder of the hour. For added fun, he’d scold me every so often for playing with my phone (in front of everyone), despite me showing him that I actually used my Palm Treo for things like taking notes, scheduling and alerts…

9 a.m.: The team would head down to Starbucks to get that coffee I didn’t bring them. I’d be hungry by this point and would join them to grab a bagel or pastry.

9:45 a.m.: Return to office. Begin work…

9:46 a.m.: A co-worker would stop by and recount how awesome his sons did in their hockey games (I think the oldest was 9). Yes, every day since super-dad coached the hockey team. If there wasn’t a game, we’d hear about practice. Or travel plans for the next game.  Or what new piece of hockey gear he was going to buy one of his sons….

10 a.m.: Start working again. Phone calls, emails, spreadsheets, reports, complaints from clients…apologizing to clients for co-workers’ mistakes. Scheduling meetings for the next few days.

11 a.m.: ‘So where do you want to eat lunch today?’ e-mails start coming in. Indian take out, Subway, burritos, Japanese noodles? A group discussion would ensue…

12 p.m.: Lunch time!

1:15 p.m.: Stagger back towards the office to get laptop, head out to meetings.

1:30 p.m.: Drive for an hour to meet client in Palo Alto

2:30 p.m.: Meet with client, talk about how we could help them. Chit chat about tech.

3:30 p.m.: Drive to the nearest Kinko’s to check email. Yes, we all did this as work was too cheap to pay for BlackBerry devices

4:30 p.m.: Leave Palo Alto…sit in traffic.

6 p.m.: Arrive in downtown San Francisco to pick up wife…wait for half an hour as her boss or clients always seemed to have a crisis or two towards the end of the day.

7 p.m.: Arrive home…check email to make sure I didn’t have anything urgent. Get sucked into a work discussion of some kind

7:30 p.m.: Done for the day

In the year 2010, there’s simply no excuse for herding hundres or thousands of employees into a single office building, most of whom never interact with more than a handfull of others. It’s an extraordinary waste of resources for many of these people to commute. The daily grind of commuting and dealing with all the distractions can be far worse than work itself.

If my former boss had axed those early morning meetings, I could’ve accomplished the same amount of work in about a third of the time. I could’ve met with my clients in the middle of the day, reducing my travel time. I probably would’ve been far happier as a result and sold more widgets.

Too many companies are mis-managing their human resources, forcing them to work in the same manner as they did 40 years ago.Of course not every job can be done remotely, but there are millions of people sitting slouching in cubes right now that should be happily working away at home, in cafes and libraries with smiles on their faces.

Why Work Doesn’t Happen at Work (TED Talk Video) is a post by Xavier Lanier from Gotta Be Mobile.

Three thoughts on this grain of salt. Of course they are. They’d be fools not to “look at it.”  Microsoft is a software company and with many predicting the demise of Office if they can sell it on the iPad they’ll sell it on he iPad. The second is that on many levels this fits perfectly with what we know of Microsoft’s three screens and a cloud strategy although it might end up being a fourth screen. Lastly, given all the talk last week about how internal crap derailed the Tablet PC within Microsoft, it would be absolutely ironic if Microsoft did release a version that somehow was Tablet optimized.

For what’s it worth, given Apple’s play with iWork I doubt we’d see this happen anytime in the near future.

Microsoft “May” Bring Office to iPad is a post by Warner Crocker from Gotta Be Mobile.

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.

OffiSync Combines Google Docs and MS Office Apps is a post by Xavier Lanier from Gotta Be Mobile.

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.

DocVerse Brings Online Collaboration to Microsoft Office Files, Beta Invites Available is a post by Rob Bushway from Gotta Be Mobile.

Via Digital Trends

Microsoft Drops Office Ultimate Prices For Students is a post by admin from Gotta Be Mobile.

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.

Use ScanPST To Fix Corrupt Outlook Data Files is a post by admin from Gotta Be Mobile.

Search Commands for Speech is a post by admin from Gotta Be Mobile.

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

The Outlook Shut Down Mystery is a post by admin from Gotta Be Mobile.

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.

Inking Not Working in Office? is a post by admin from Gotta Be Mobile.

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.

Are You Still Using Microsoft Office? is a post by admin from Gotta Be Mobile.

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.

Outlook Tip: Add Pen Options to Quick Access Toolbar is a post by admin from Gotta Be Mobile.

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.

OneNote 2007 Training for the Beginner is a post by admin from Gotta Be Mobile.

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.