Section: Office

Office 2010 Build 14.0.4417.1000

September 01, 2009 by Jason

A new development milestone of the next iteration of the Office System has been leaked and made available for download in the wild. Microsoft is currently making its way to the first Beta of office 2011, a release slated to be available to all users as a public testing build.

However, the Redmond-based company managed to keep a tight lid on all details associated with the development process of Office 2010 since the delivery of the Technical Preview build in July 2010. Still, the silence must not be mistaken for inactivity, as the leaked Office 2010 Build 4417 comes to prove.

Both the 32-bit and the 64-bit flavors of Office 2010 Build 4417 have been leaked and are now up for grabs from various third-party sources. And while torrent trackers and warez websites are serving the bits illegally, Microsoft continues to be mute on the development of Office 2010.

Still, the productivity suite is undoubtedly advancing. According to Wzor, Office 2010 Build 14.0.4417.1000 is labeled as a Beta release, and no longer just a Technical Preview.

Technical Preview testers of Office 2010 have been able to grab the bits for the first development milestone of Office 2010 since July 13, 2009. The Office 2010 Technical Preview is a limited testing program, as opposite to the beta. Read More»

How do I enable or disable DEP for Office applications?

August 13, 2009 by Jason

This tips helps you enable or disable Data Execution Prevention (DEP) for Office applications.

To enable or disable DEP automatically, click the Fix it button or link. Click Run in the File Download dialog box, and then follow the steps in the Fix it wizard.

Note this wizard may be in English only; however, the automatic fix also works for other language versions of Windows.

Note if you are not on the computer that has the problem, save the Fix it solution to a flash drive or a CD and then run it on the computer that has the problem.

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Read More»

New Microsoft Update Email Trojan

June 26, 2009 by Jason

Microsoft never sends out updates by email so you should instantly bin this latest threat, which has been doing the rounds over the last 24 hours, I’ve already had about 50 of them sent to me. It’s really easy to spot, the Subject line says ‘Critical Update for Microsoft Outlook and if you open it, it says: Update for Microsoft Outlook / Outlook Express (KB910721). Obviously it’s nothing of the sort though it looks very plausible and has none of the usual clumsy spelling and grammatical errors. If you click on the link you will be taken to a spoof website and instantly download a nasty Trojan, though there are some reports suggesting that the payload may have changed in the past 12 hours. Either way don’t open it and do not on any account click on the link, and at the risk of repeating myself, remember that, Microsoft never sends out updates for Windows by email.

Google Apps Sync Kills Outlook Search

June 26, 2009 by Jason

Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, introduced at the start of the past week, manages to handicap the Redmond company’s email client, delivered as a part of the Office System. Essentially, the installation of Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook manages to kill the email client’s ability to search its own data. The tool from the Mountain View-based search giant is designed to bridge Outlook 2003 SP3 and 2007 SP2 (or SP1) with Google Apps. However, it appears that Google failed to perform sufficient testing of the utility, as Microsoft came across a bug that no longer allowed users of Outlook to search through their data.

“The installation of the Google Apps Sync plugin disables Outlook’s ability to search any and all of your Outlook data,” stated Dev Balasubramanian, Outlook product manager. “When a Google Apps user installs the sync plugin for Outlook, the plugin modifies a registry key which disables Windows Desktop Search from indexing and providing search functionality for all Outlook data, not just the Outlook data being synchronized from GMail. Because Outlook search relies upon the indexing performed by Windows Desktop Search, Outlook search functions are broken as a result.” Read More»

Open XML Compatibility Pack

June 24, 2009 by Jason

Downloads of the Open XML Compatibility Pack have passed the 100 million mark, Microsoft revealed. The Redmond-based company is offering the Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats for users of Office releases prior to Office 2007 in order to enable them to not only open, but also edit, and even save documents, workbooks, and presentations in Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007 file formats, namely the Open XML ISO standards. The software giant indicated that the number of Open XML Compatibility Pack downloads was illustrative of the increase in adoption of the OOXML standards introduced with the advent of the Office 2007 System.

“The compatibility pack is a manual download. It is not pushed through any update channels. In order for an end user to obtain it, they must visit the Microsoft download center, select one of the 35 available languages, and download the 26MB installer. To say it differently, more than 100 million people have had cause to seek out and download the compatibility pack for Open XML; likely due to their encountering a document stored in one of the formats,” explained Gray Knowlton, Microsoft Office Group Product Manager. Read More»

Stick with standard Office file formats

June 18, 2009 by Jason

You can minimize file-compatibility issues by standardizing on the most common file formats. By default, OpenOffice.org saves files in Open Document Format (ODF). Microsoft’s by-the-book support for ODF, unfortunately, breaks some spreadsheet files, according to a recent ZDNet blog post.

OpenOffice reads and writes Office 2007’s default .docx and .xlsx XML file formats. But the older .doc and .xls formats are still the ones most often used. I suggest that you make the classic Office formats your defaults in OpenOffice. To set .doc as the document default, for example, open any OpenOffice program and do the following:

Step 1. Choose Tools, Options;

Step 2. Select General under Load/Save;

Step 3. Click Text Document under Document type in the Default file format and ODF settings section; Read More»

Office 2007 Resource Kit

January 21, 2009 by Jason

Microsoft is offering as a free download the Resource Kit content already made available on TechNet for the Office 2007 System. Packaged in Compiled Help format, the 2007 Office Resource Kit Technical Library weighs in at just 3.7 MB, and end-users will need an operating system capable of dealing with compiled help files, namely Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. According to Microsoft, the downloadable Office 2007 Resource Kit CHM offers nothing more than the 2007 Office Resource Kit technical library, which can be accessed on the company’s portal for IT professionals.

Essentially, the 2007 Office Resource Kit is designed as a resource centralizing a range of information, guides, walkthroughs, troubleshooting techniques etc. related to Office 2007. In this sense, the kit is set up to streamline the deployment of the Redmond company’s productivity suite in the context of corporate IT infrastructures.

“The primary administrative tools for deploying the 2007 Microsoft Office system are included with the product and are no longer available as a download as in previous Read More»

14 Tips to Speed Up Microsoft Outlook 2007

January 09, 2009 by Jason

While Outlook 2007 offers many new features that do indeed offer real benefits it can come at a price – performance.

On my Core 2 Duo with 2GB of RAM Outlook 2007 originally took a good 20 seconds to fire up from a fully booted PC and appeared to be constantly sluggish. So what can be done about it?

Tip 1: Delete attachments

A little-known feature in Outlook is the ability to keep an email but delete one or several attachment. Firstly, sort your inbox by file size (descending) and open a message (by double clicking so it opens in a new window) where you no longer wish to keep the attachment. Right click over the attachment and select Remove. Now save the email, repeat with all relevant emails in this mailbox and then repeat in any other mailboxes (including your sent items). Read More»

Maximize Security in Outlook Express

November 01, 2008 by Jason

Although Outlook Express was known to be rather vulnerable to online attacks, viruses and spyware, recent updates have improved Outlook Express security a lot. Considering that many use Outlook Express for e-mail and news reading, it is reassuring that Microsoft has addressed most known security holes.

As with most software though, security can be harmed when users get sloppy in how they use the software and how they configure the software. This is especially true with online applications. If you allow all kinds of content in e-mail or click every attachment you receive, no protection will be good enough.

So use good judgment when using Outlook Express to minimize your exposure to online threats. For MAXIMUM Outlook Express security consider the following tips too.

Windows and Outlook Express Updates

Regularly update your Windows XP software. Outlook Express is an integrated part of Windows XP, so any patches or updates to Outlook Express are released through Windows XP updates. If you have Windows updates set to automatic, Outlook Express will be updated as well. If you set Windows updates to ‘disabled’, then you need to manually update Windows XP. Read More»

How to configure Gmail on Microsoft Outlook

October 27, 2008 by Jason

The following steps will explain about configuring gmail on Microsoft Outlook. First you have to enable POP for gmail Email ID.

Enabling POP

You can retrieve your Gmail messages with a client or device that supports POP, like Microsoft Outlook or Netscape Mail.

To enable POP in Gmail:

1. Sign in to Gmail.

2. Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page.

3. Click Forwarding and POP/IMAP.

4. Select Enable POP for all mail or Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on.

5. Choose the action you’d like your Gmail messages to take after they are accessed with POP.

6. Configure your POP client* and click Save Changes. Read More»