Patrick’s Bytes

Microsoft released a open source project to create a Firefox based plugin to open OpenXML documents created by MS Office 2007 (or other Office versions with compat pack). This is to facilitate people who don’t have Office or are using *-NIX based OS like Linux. I got the plugin installed on my PC and below is the screenshot, appearantly it translates the .docx file to .xhtml file to be opened up by FF.

Here is the high level architecture I got from the website

The following features are planned for the first milestone:

1. Core transformation framework
2. Browser plug-ins for Firefox 3.0.x on Windows and Linux
3. Word Document features including translation of
1. font types
2. images
3. text styles
4. diagrams
5. tables
6. hyperlinks
4. Test Results

Outlook provides a feature called Suggest Name, when you type the name of the person in the To/CC/BCC field. However, when you migrate to a new PC, you find that all the lists are not there. This can be very tedious especially you need to email to that person, but you can’t recall the email address, and worst of all, you didn’t save it in your contacts.

So, how do you migrate the Suggest Name from old PC to the new PC? Here’s how:

1. At the old PC, quit Outlook, navigate to C:\Users\Your_Alias\Appdata \Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook\     (Note that the Appdata is a hidden folder. To view hidden folder, open Explorer -> Organize -> Folder And Search Option -> View -> Hidden Files And Folders -> Show Hidden Files And Folders)

2. Copy the file Outlook.NK2.

3. At the new PC, quit Outlook, navigate to C:\Users\Your_Alias\Appdata \Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook\ and replace the Outlook.NK2.

You will find that the Suggest Name will now appear on the new PC.

Tested on Word 2007

When you’re creating a bulleted or numbered list in Microsoft Office Word or Microsoft Office PowerPoint, you might want an item to appear in the list without a bullet or without incrementing the number. You can start a new line without a bullet by pressing SHIFT+ENTER. The next time you press the ENTER key, the new line will continue the bulleted or numbered list.

Awhile ago I blogged about Microsoft releasing products protocol documentation which are essential design specifications. That was about 2 months ago and the documents are of beta version.

Today the official version 1 is out that it covers the following products.

1. Windows
2. WCF
3. Windows Server Protocol
4. .NET Framework
5. Office
6. Office Binary File Format
7. SharePoint
8. Exchange
9. SQL Server
10. VBA Language Spec
11. XAML

I believe Microsoft is really committed to promote interoperability with other vendors, even when they are direct competitors. Recently announcement on inclusion of ODF and PDF support into Office 2007 Service Pack 2 is a strong evidence.

Having said that, the above mentioned 2 document formats have already been supported via freely available addins

1. PDF Save as in Office 2007
2. ODF translator for Office 2007

The default and newer MS Office file format still has its own advantage over the others especially for integration works with line of business applications. So after acceptance by ISO, Microsoft will of course continue to work on this format for the benefits of its customers.

Another interoperability evidence would be support of Silverlight inside Linux by Novel, which I think is very cool.

Sounds familiar? This is the No. 1 complain for first time user of Office 2007 because of the new Ribbon user interface, quite a number of commands have been repositioned. I keep on telling people that after a couple of weeks they will get used to the new UI and actually be happy with it. Honestly at least I do (whether or not I working with Microsoft)

So for the rest of us, Office Labs launched a new Office add in called Search Commands. It helps you find commands, options, wizards, and galleries in Microsoft Office 2007 Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Just type what you’re looking for in your own words and click the command you need. Search Commands also includes Guided Help, which acts as a tour guide for specific tasks. (pic above)

Go here for more details.

Patrick Schmid actually compiled together blog posts of Office 2007 UI Team Program Manager Jensen Harris into sections of topics about the new Ribbon UI.

As someone who do a lot of Office customization, I keep wonder sometimes why certain things are design in certain way inside Office 2007. This bible web site will more or less gives you the answer to the 4Ws of the Office UI.

http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/10/09/58

Jensen also did a prezzo at Mix 08 about the Story of the Ribbon, you can download the .wmv and .pptx there. Its interesting to see some early prototype of Office 2007 like the photo below.

This is a amazing book on customizing Office 2007 new Ribbon User Interface. All the Office programming books so far never go as deep into topics such as:

Contextual Ribbon

Office Menu

Quick Access Toolbar

Best of all, it even has samples on deployment and security best practices.

There are a lot of codes inside on how to customize the above mention UI. For anyone doing Office 2007 customization you guys should really pick a copy from Amazon.

Microsoft just launch the beta version of Office Live Workspace after allowing pre-registration for US based customers few months ago. Good news is this time it is available worldwide. Goto this URL to sign in using your Windows Live/ Hotmail ID http://workspace.office.live.com/

Upon signing in you will get a screen as below, notice that there is an ‘Install Office Add-in’ button. This is a less than 1Mb .msi file download which gives you integration on Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

I look at Office Live Workspace as a online extension of the Office client. There is a personal document library for you which you also can share with other people. Then for Outlook you can synchronize your tasks, appointments, contacts and even notes on your workspace.

On the help file it stated that the integration is available for Office 2003 and XP as well. Cool, FREE new features for older version of Office product. How many vendor does that?

Integration with Office 2003

Integration with Office 2007