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Office Software
Microsoft Office
Business users generally use one of Microsoft's bundles
in their Office series. Depending on the year of purchase
and the amount paid, you will end up with one or more
of the following:
Word - essential - if you want to send
documents by e-mail to others who might want to edit
the document, there is no other option. One tip -
if Word one day fails to start, it may be that the file normal.dot has
become corrupted. Go to Start>Search and find this
file. Then delete it. Word will re-create it next time
it starts. The settings for your normal style will
revert to the default and if you had changed them you'll
have to change them again.
Excel - essential for spreadsheet users
- for the same reasons as for Word if you share spreadsheets
with others. If you'd like to add tools to Excel (approx
300), see ASAP Utilities.
Lots of useful improvements.
Power Point - the standard for Business
presentations. Most home users will not need this. However
there are e-mails that are distributed that use PowerPoint
format . To read these (.ppt, .pps or .pot) PowerPoint Presentations,
Microsoft has a free PowerPoint Viewer available here (updated
Nov/2004).
Outlook - the big brother of Outlook
Express. As well as e-mail, includes a good Contact manager
(good because it's integrated with e-mail), a Task list,
a Calendar with reminders etc and a Notes feature. For
a comparison with other e-mail programs, see E-mail
on our Browsers page.
Concerning management of attachments: If
not configured correctly, all attachments will be barred
from being received. To receive any attachments, be sure
to configure as follows: In Outlook, select Tools>Options>Mail
Setup>Send/Receive>>Edit>Download complete
item including attachments. Also, like Outlook Express,
attachments with "dangerous" extensions (like
.exe) are barred although there is more flexibility with
Outlook. Extensions are actually classified as Type 1
or Type 2. Type 2 can be enabled using the technique
described on our security
page but Type 1 can never be enabled. However, a
utility is available that allows you to selectively move
programs from type 1 to type 2 - thus enabling any attachment
if you are brave enough! Get the program here.
Download of pictures in HTML emails.
For Outlook, select Tools>Options>Security.
On that page you'll see a button under Download Pictures labelled Change
Automatic Download settings. Click that button and
uncheck the check box beside Don't Download pictures
or other contenet automatically in HTML Email. If
this box is checked, you won't see many pictures in your
emails. For this issue in Outlook, click
here.
One disadvantage of Outlook is that when you reply to
someone, it does not allow you to automatically add this
person and e-mail address to Contacts as can be done
in Express. But then Express only stores name and e-mail
address and nothing else. However, you can
buy
an add-on ($15US) to Outlook that does automatically
add names and addresses.
Moving e-mail data between Outlook versions: If
you just bought a new computer, you will want to move
your Outlook data to the new one. For e-mails, that's
easy, just copy the .pst file (which is typically in
the location: C:\Documents and Settings\<user
name>\ Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\ )
and paste into the corresponding location in the new
Computer. But although you'll see the contacts in the
new location, you can't use the contacts for your address
book for e-mail. That's because the 2 contact books are
incompatible. To transfer Contacts, Export the
Contacts from your old computer using File>Import
and Export... Choose Excel as the file format. Copy
the resulting file to the new computer. Now select all
the contacts (you may want to use a list view) and delete!
Then while viewing "Contacts", use File>Import
and Export>Import from another program or file to
import the Excel file you just created. You may have
to map one or more fields (e.g. e-mail addresses) to
be sure that all data gets imported. When complete, the
contacts are now available and in the new format and
can be made available as a source for the address book.
Access - if you want a data base and
you are not a full fledged data base programmer and you
like Reports to look good, then Access is for you. Like
Power Point, many people you want to send reports to
will not have Access. If you would to send them a report
anyway, you will need the Access reader - called Snapshot
Viewer! More here.
Other Office Programs. There are several
other Microsoft Office Programs that have the advantage
of being integrated with each other and having the same "look
and feel". However, since they are fairly specialized,
only a very brief description is given here.
- FrontPage -
Web Site development, writes HTML. Resulting code is
clumsy but pages usually look good.
- InfoPath -
For electronic forms.
- Live
Meeting - Internet Meetings (If you
need it, you need it!)
- OneNote -
Computer version of Yellow Post-its! Integrated with
Outlook - best for hand-helds.
- Project -
Project Management, Pert charts. (Has been the standard
in the work place for a while).
- Publisher -
Desk top Publishing - if you do a lot of newsletters
intended for printing, makes life easier.
- Visio -
Drawing program. Often too large and expensive so try Smart
Draw which is faster, cheaper, simpler and better
for many users or ConceptDraw which
is cheaper, Visio compatible and runs on Macs as well.
Converting formats. If you bought a
new computer, you might have saved money by not buying
Microsoft's office suite. But other people will often
send you files in Office formats e.g. Word [.doc], Excel
[.xls], Powerpoint [.pps or .ppt]. To read these files
- but not modify or save the new version - get the Microsoft
readers. More here.
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