2007

Microsoft is releasing a free add-on that could make life easier for teachers, professors, and others who use the online educational system Moodle.

The plug-in, which works with Office 2003 and Office 2007, allows users to save Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents directly to the open source online service. It also allows users to edit directly in Office a document saved on Moodle, which is widely used in colleges and at some K-12 schools as well.

"We know that it's out there in force," Jon Perera, general manager of Microsoft's Educational Products Group, said of Moodle. &… Read more

Microsoft is hoping to let Word do better in Chemistry class.

The software maker said on Wednesday that it is releasing an add-on for the word processor that makes it easier to include labels, formulas, and chemical images into documents. Chem4Word, as the add-on is known, was introduced on Wednesday at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society.

It's available as a free download from Microsoft's Education Labs Web site. Microsoft also said it plans to release the code under the Apache open-source license later this year.

Chem4Word, which works with both Office 2007 and the forthcoming … Read more

I spent several hours last week cleaning up the errant formatting in a complicated, 30-page Word document that was loaded with custom styles. It seems the author pasted material into the file from several different applications. Unfortunately, the formatting of the source documents made the trip as well. The resulting file was a formatting disaster that bore little resemblance to the template the document was allegedly based on.

One of the best features Microsoft added to Word 2007 is the ability to change the program's default paste setting so added material adopts the formatting of the destination document. To … Read more

Microsoft's chief financial officer said on Tuesday that the company sees business spending picking up over the next 18 to 24 months and expects to benefit as companies buy more PCs and servers.

"We feel very well-positioned for growth as the economy recovers," said Peter Klein, speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom conference in San Francisco. Klein, whose speech was available via Webcast, said that the majority of large businesses are making plans to deploy Windows 7.

"There will be an enterprise refresh cycle," Klein said. "It's not precisely certain … Read more

Few PC glitches are more frustrating and more difficult to troubleshoot than your e-mail program failing to connect to a mail server. Recently, a family member told me about the enervating problems he experienced trying to figure out why his new Vista notebook wouldn't link to his office's mail server.

"I have Office 2007. Our firm uses Exchange Server 2003. I was having the damnedest time getting Outlook on my new laptop to sync with the server away from the office. I was at this for hours and hours reading through a bunch of 'fixes' until I … Read more

The latest minor-point update to OpenOffice brings users faster launch speeds and better support for Microsoft Office 2007-formatted files. OpenOffice 3.2 for Windows, Mac, and Linux also sees the debut of comments in Impress, encryption support for Office 2007-formatted files, and smoother sort, merge, and copy and paste functions in Calc.

Highlighting has also been tweaked to stand out more visually, with a new blue background and edging. The full list of changes can be read here. Be warned, it's a very tech-speak-heavy chart and is not easy to navigate.

The performance improvement is immediately noticeable, although when … Read more

It is not uncommon for Microsoft to launch a "technology guarantee" program ahead of a new version of Office or Windows, offering buyers of a product late in one cycle an upgrade to the new version once it comes out. So it's not a shocker that Microsoft has one planned for Office 2010.

That said, Microsoft wasn't quite ready to tell the world about the program. Nonetheless, an employee briefly posted details of the planned upgrade offer on a blog. It was quickly pulled down, but the cat is out of the bag. (The post also … Read more

You never know when you're going to need an Outlook message that was archived long ago. In a comment on a previous post about moving Outlook mail to local folders, Cliff Brandt asked how to move a file from the archive to one of his main Outlook folders.

Doing so is a breeze, but keep in mind, an archive relocates only Outlook data of a specific age and is intended primarily to keep your Outlook.pst file a manageable size. A backup copies all your Outlook data and allows you to restore all your messages, contacts, tasks, and calendar … Read more

I'm not sure it's exactly the approach I would take, but Redmond has decided to make a game out of what I find to be one of the most significant annoyances in Microsoft's Office--finding the command one is looking for.

Introduced on Tuesday, "Ribbon Hero" is aimed at turning into a game the often frustrating task of finding commands on Office's Ribbon toolbar, which debuted as part of Office 2007.

In a blog post, Office program manager (and self-described casual games enthusiast) Jennifer Michelstein said Microsoft was trying to see if the company could … Read more