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Microsoft Office 2010 Beta Downloads Live

Martin — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:50:49 +0000

Microsoft Office 2010 Beta downloads have been active for a few days for MSDN and Technet subscribers. Everyone else did not have a choice but to wait until Microsoft would enable public downloads of their latest Office software suite. Downloads have finally been activated for the public and are now available on the official Microsoft Office 2010 Beta website. The strange thing here is that the download link that was reported a few days ago is still not working. Downloads can on the other hand be initiated on the following Microsoft Office 2010 website.

Users need to log into a Microsoft Live account and fill out a short form before they are able to download the beta of Microsoft Office 2010. Downloads are available for 32-bit and 64-bit editions and various languages. The product key for the beta will also be displayed on those pages. The key is required to activate the beta.

Step 1: Open Microsoft Word 2010 Beta and click on the “File” tab. This will take you to the Backstage view. Next click “Help” in the set of tabs on the left.

Step 2: Click “Change Product Key” on the right side of the screen.

Step 3: Enter the Multiple Activation Key (MAK) displayed above. Please check the box to activate automatically or restart the app to activate using the activation dialog box.

Step 4: That’s all you need to do. Entering the MAK key in Microsoft Word 2010 Beta automatically activates all the Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta applications. Click on the “File” tab to return to the Document view.

New features in the beta include:

Outlook Social Connector (blog)
Deeper integration between Office client and Web Apps allowing users to save directly to Windows Live Sky Drive or SharePoint 2010
Improved navigation, visual design and icon update
New Office logo
Increased performance and stability

The 32-bit English beta has a size of 700 Megabytes which can take some time to download depending on the Internet connection. Users who want to follow the development of the beta can subscribe to the #officebeta Twitter channel to do so.

Tags: microsoft office 2010, microsoft-office, office, office 2010, office 2010 beta, office 2010 download

Microsoft Security Updates November 2009

Martin — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:54:26 +0000

Microsoft has released six security bulletins today as part of their monthly Tuesday patch day which fix a total of 15 different security vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows. The maximum severity rating for the bulletins contain three critical and three important patches for vulnerabilities that can allow remote code execution and denial of service attacks.

Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office users are encouraged to update their computer systems as soon as possible to protect the PCs from possible exploits that could attack the systems successfully. The usual options to download the patches are provided including automatic updates, Windows updates, Microsoft update or manually by following the links posted in the different security bulletins.

MS09-063 Vulnerability in Web Services on Devices API Could Allow Remote Code Execution (973565) – This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in the Web Services on Devices Application Programming Interface (WSDAPI) on the Windows operating system. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if an affected Windows system receives a specially crafted packet. Only attackers on the local subnet would be able to exploit this vulnerability.
MS09-064 – Vulnerability in License Logging Server Could Allow Remote Code Execution (974783) – This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft Windows 2000. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if an attacker sent a specially crafted network message to a computer running the License Logging Server. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of the system. Firewall best practices and standard default firewall configurations can help protect networks from attacks that originate outside the enterprise perimeter.
MS09-065 – Vulnerabilities in Windows Kernel-Mode Drivers Could Allow Remote Code Execution (969947) – This security update resolves several privately reported vulnerabilities in the Windows kernel. The most severe of the vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user viewed content rendered in a specially crafted Embedded OpenType (EOT) font. In a Web-based attack scenario, an attacker would have to host a Web site that contains specially crafted embedded fonts that are used to attempt to exploit this vulnerability. In addition, compromised Web sites and Web sites that accept or host user-provided content could contain specially crafted content that could exploit this vulnerability. An attacker would have no way to force users to visit a specially crafted Web site. Instead, an attacker would have to convince the user to visit the Web site, typically by getting them to click a link in an e-mail message or Instant Messenger message that takes the user to the attacker’s site.
MS09-066 – Vulnerability in Active Directory Could Allow Denial of Service (973309) – This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Active Directory directory service, Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM), and Active Directory Lightweight Directory Service (AD LDS). The vulnerability could allow denial of service if stack space was exhausted during execution of certain types of LDAP or LDAPS requests. This vulnerability only affects domain controllers and systems configured to run ADAM or AD LDS.
MS09-067 – Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Excel Could Allow Remote Code Execution (972652) – This security update resolves several privately reported vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Excel. The vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Excel file. An attacker who successfully exploited any of these vulnerabilities could gain the same user rights as the local user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.
MS09-068 – Vulnerability in Microsoft Office Word Could Allow Remote Code Execution (976307) – This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability that could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Word file. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

Detailed information are available in the security bulletins linked above or at the security bulletin summary page here.

Tags: microsoft-office, office updates, patch tuesday, security updates, windows security, windows-update

Clear Microsoft Office History

Martin — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:15:35 +0000

Microsoft Office keeps track of the recent document history. That option can be useful if the Office user needs to access a document in one of the Office programs that was recently open in the application. This feature on the other hand can reveal information about documents that have been opened recently which might not always be desired by the owner of the document. The document history can be accessed by users with physical access to the computer system but also by programs that automatically look for this information.

The eSecure Office add-in has been designed to provide Office users with the means to delete the Microsoft Office history from within the Office suite. To be more precise, it offers that functionality for the Office programs Word, Excel and PowerPoint at this point.

Classified Documents Anyone? No more worries from internet hackers and computer viruses. The eSecure Delete Office Ad-In is the only application of it’s kind that works right from the office application. With 1 easy to use menu in the office Ribbon and the Office Button you can easy delete your computers tracking history without even having to stop and open up a new window.

The Office add-in needs to be installed separately for each supported Office application. It will automatically add a new entry to the ribbon menu with the option to clear the Office history. The same functionality is also available in the Office orb menu.

The eSecure add-in is available for Microsoft Office 2007 and Office 2010 running on Windows Vista or Windows 7. It can be directly downloaded from the developer’s website. (via Addictive Tips)

Tags: microsoft-office, office 2007, office 2010, office add-on, office history

How To Join The Microsoft Office Web Apps Technical Preview Right Now

Martin — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 08:29:42 +0000

Office Web Apps could be Microsoft’s answer to Google Docs. Their intention is to offer the most popular Office applications like Word, Excel and PowerPoint, for free online as web applications giving users the chance to work with new and old documents on the Internet without the need for an Office installation on the computer system they are currently working with.

A limited technical preview of Office Web Apps was announced yesterday. Interested users could apply to become part of the technical preview but there was no instant way to get access to Office Web Apps at that time.

Instead of having to wait days, week or even months before they get accepted users can do the following to get instant access to Microsoft’s Office Web Apps preview.

It starts by logging into Windows Live Skydrive. Users who do not use English as their main language might need to change the language to English first before they can continue with the process.

Upload at least one Office document. The following screen should appear after uploading that document:

A sentence with a link to join the preview program should be visible above the uploaded document. A click on that link will open a license agreement page. Accepting the license will automatically enable the Office Web Apps Technical Preview for that account.

A new menu entry will be displayed in the header afterwards called new. A click on that opens a submenu with options to create a new Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, Microsoft Word document, Microsoft Excel workbook or Microsoft OneNote notebook.

Only Excel workbooks and PowerPoint presentations are available at this moment in time. It is also possible to edit Excel and PowerPoint files that have been uploaded. Files that can be edited will have an Edit option in the top menu indicating that. via Liveside

Tags: excel, live skydrive, microsoft-office, office, office web apps, onenote, powerpoint, technical preview, word

Office Web Apps (to be) Included Free In Windows Live

Martin — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 08:24:49 +0000

Office Web Apps is basically a version of Microsoft Office on the Internet. While it is likely that the initial release will not provide access to the complete functionality of the various Office products like Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint it will offer the most commonly used functionality. Best of all, completely free for all Windows Live users. Microsoft began sending out invitations to the beta of Office Web Apps to Windows Live Skydrive users and after the beta tests have finished will become available to all 500 million Windows Live user.

Probably the two most interesting aspects of the announcement of Office Web Apps is that it will be completely free and compatible with browsers other than Microsoft Internet Explorer. Microsoft has not been very specific about the requirements but Brian Hall mentioned Firefox and Safari in the announcement. It is likely that additional web browsers will be supported as well. There have also been no information regarding access from other operating systems like Linux or Mac at this point.

Office Web Apps can be interesting for many users who sometimes work on computer systems where Microsoft Office is not installed. It would allow them to work with their Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents online. This would get rid of formatting problems and other difficulties when editing these documents in Office alternatives.

Interested users can apply to become a part of the Office Web Apps beta test.

Tags: excel, microsoft-office, office, office online, office web apps, powerpoint, windows live, word

Office Tabs Brings Tabs To Microsoft Office

Martin — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:12:29 +0000

Working with multiple open documents in Microsoft Office applications like Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel is not as comfortable as it can be. The documents are all placed in the same interface with no straightforward way to switch between documents easily (the keyboard shortcut Alt Number will do the trick but one has to know the number of documents to use it effectively and it is limited to a maximum of nice documents).

Office Tabs brings a possible solution in forms of a tabbed browsing interface for Microsoft Office. The software program supports Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint and will display a toolbar beneath the ribbon interface in Office 2007 that is displaying all open documents. A double-click will quickly open a new document and a click on existing tabs will display that document in the foreground.

The tabbed interfaces for the three Microsoft Office products can be configured individually. This includes disabling the tabbed interface in an Office module, configuring the layout (colors, appearance and position) and shortcuts.

Custom Tabs is compatible with Microsoft Office 2003 and 2008 on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. It can be downloaded from the Chinese homepage of the developer.

Tags: microsoft-office, office 2003, office 2007, office add-on, office software, office tabs, windows software

Manage Office Add-Ins With Portable OfficeIns

Martin — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 20:10:43 +0000

Microsoft Office add-ins are a great way to enhance the functionality of Microsoft’s popular Office program. The software program comes however only with a basic add-ins manager. Far better are third party Office add-ins manager like the previously reviewed Microsoft Office add-ins manager Enable Disable.

Another popular Office add-ins manager is the portable software program OfficeIns by Nirsoft. OfficeIns will automatically display all add-ins in its interface upon startup. Various information such as the name, description, software it is loaded in and startup type are displayed in the table. It is possible to sort the add-ins by every column which is especially great for sorting them by startup type or product.

One of the most important features of OfficeIns is the function to change the startup type of one or multiple add-ins. Additional options include the usual Nirsoft features like exporting data into html, txt or csv files, generating HTML reports or displaying advanced properties of add-ins.

OfficeIns is a portable software program that is compatible with most Windows operating systems and Microsoft Office versions.

Tags: microsoft-office, nirsoft, office, office add-ins, office add-ons, portable software, windows software

Microsoft Office Live Workspace Add-in

Martin — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:59:48 +0000

Microsoft Office add-ins add a wide variety of features to Microsoft’s Office. Most are designed to add functionality to specific programs like Microsoft Word, Excel or Outlook. The Office Live Workspace add-in is an official add-in that is being developed by Microsoft. It provides Microsoft Office users with the ability to upload their documents to the Microsoft Office Live Workspace on the Internet.

This does mean that an account at Microsoft Office Live Workspace is required before the add-in can be used. The service is free on the other hand and it takes only a few seconds to signup for it. Windows Live account users can use their account to signup for Microsoft Office Live Workspace. The service is currently in beta and provides access to 5 Gigabytes of storage space for Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents that can also be edited on the website.

Office 2007 users find the option to upload their documents to the Microsoft Office Live Workspace and to open documents from the online storage space under the Microsoft Office button in Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Office 2003 and XP users get a new Office Live toolbar that provides access to three buttons that offer the functionality to open documents that are stored at Microsoft Office Live Workspace, save documents so that they are stored online and to open the Office Live Workspace website.

The Office Live Add-in itself is compatible with Microsoft Office 2007, Office 2003 and Office XP.

Tags: excel, microsoft excel, microsoft powerpoint, microsoft word, microsoft-office, office 2003, office 2007, office live, office live workspace, office workspace, office xp, powerpoint, word

Google Docs Adds Docx And Xlsx Support

Martin — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 08:34:55 +0000

Microsoft’s decision to change the default file format in Office 2007 for some of its most popular Office programs has caused some confusion and controversy, especially shortly after introduction. Back then no one was able to open the docx, xlsx or pptx file formats if they would not have Microsoft Office installed. This changed quickly as Microsoft released the Office 2007 compatibility suite for previous installments of Microsoft Office. Users without Microsoft Office were able to work with the new formats in Open Office or use online converters to convert them to traditional Office documents.

The Google Docs team on the other hand was reserved and did not add support for these file formats until now. Today, they announced that they finally added support for both the docx (that is for Microsoft Word 2007 documents) and xlsx (Microsoft Excel 2007 spreadsheets) format in Google Docs.

Support in this case means that users can upload files with the docx and xlsx extension to Google Docs. The size limitations are 500 Kilobytes for docx documents and 1 Megabyte for xlsx spreadsheets.

The document can then be edited in Google Docs just like any other document. There is however no option to save documents to a local computer system in the docx or xlsx format yet. Google Docs will automatically convert the documents to doc or xls format.

Tags: docx, excel, google docx, microsoft-office, office excel, office word, pptx, word, xlsx

OffiSync Adds Google Docs To Microsoft Office

Martin — Tue, 19 May 2009 13:52:12 +0000

OffiSync is an add-in that adds the online document management features of Google Docs to Microsoft Office. Users who do use Microsoft Office and Google Docs do so for specific reasons. One of the prime advantages of Google Docs are the collaboration possibilities that Microsoft Office does not offer in that form. The problem that the developers experienced was that the way to work with both applications was cumbersome especially for users who liked to create and work with documents in Microsoft Office.

OffiSync as been created to integrate Google Docs naturally into Microsoft Office. The benefits are that Microsoft Office users can now save Office files to Google Docs without loosing any of the functionality provided by Microsoft Office as the documents can be accessed like any other locally saved documents. The documents do become accessible in Google Docs as well which means it is still possible to work with them directly from within a web browser.

The add-in makes it furthermore possible to manage the complete Google Docs library from within Microsoft Office. Another interesting feature is the option to add and manage collaborators in Microsoft Office. Changes that have been made to documents will also be applied to the corresponding Google Docs document.

The Office add-in provides access to search and communication features as well. It is for example possible to communicate with collaborators right from within a shared document or to send automated messages and notifications to collaborators.

The Office add-in is compatible with Microsoft Office 2003 or 2007 and requires a computer system running Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 plus the Microsoft .net Framework 3.5. The latter will be installed if it is not present on the target system. OffiSync is currently in beta. It can be downloaded for free from the developer’s homepage. It is likely that the product will become commercial once it leaves beta stage.

The Verdict:

OffiSync is an excellent solution for users who work with Microsoft Office and Google Docs. It might also be interesting for users who only use Microsoft Office to use Google Docs to backup their documents on the Internet. The developers have announced that they plan to add more Google services to their add-in.

Tags: collaborate, collaborators, google docs, microsoft-office, office add-on, offisync, online document management

5 Tips To Reduce The Size Of Microsoft PowerPoint Presentations

Martin — Mon, 18 May 2009 09:03:15 +0000

Microsoft PowerPoint presentations can take up lots of hard drive space. The size of the presentations depends largely on the multimedia content – that is pictures, videos and audio – that has been added to the presentation by its creator. While this usually is not a big problem for presentations that do not have to be distributed it could become one if the document has to be distributed to other users. The following five tips will help uses to reduce the size of their Microsoft PowerPoint presentations so that their distribution does not put as much weight on the network infrastructure than before which saves costs and time.

1. Use the new pptx format instead of ppt where possible. Saving a blank Microsoft PowerPoint presentation as pptx instead of ppt decreases the size of the presentation by about 70 Kilobytes. The new PowerPoint format handles multimedia content – especially pictures and photos – much better than the old format. Dragging a 1.2 Megabyte image into the blank PowerPoint presentation resulted in a pptx file size of 1.25 Megabytes instead of 5.62 Megabytes which the old ppt format occupied.

2. The biggest size reductions can be achieved by optimizing multimedia content in PowerPoint presentations. It usually comes down to images that have been added to the presentation but also other forms like videos or audio content.

You can compress all pictures that have been added to Microsoft PowerPoint by clicking on Format > Compress Pictures in PowerPoint 2007.

Selecting Screen or Email in the advanced options will reduce the size of the PowerPoint presentation further. It might however degrade the quality of the picture.

3. Please note that it is sometimes not possible to compress an image further especially if it already has been in a compressed picture format. It might however help to decrease the size of the image to reduce the overall size of the PowerPoint presentation. Many users add images that are to large to the PowerPoint presentation instead of reducing the height and width before adding it. It is always a good idea to optimize images in height and width before adding them to the PowerPoint presentation.

4. Use hyperlinks to multimedia content if possible. Not all video and audio content has to be embedded into the PowerPoint presentation. It sometimes make more sense to upload the content to a server (for example Ovi)on the Internet instead of embedding it directly. This will reduce the size of the presentation so that it becomes easier to distribute.

5. Save the PowerPoint presentation in a different format. Saving the same PowerPoint presentation (that uses 1.25 Megabytes of space in pptx format) as pdf reduces the file size to 352 Kilobytes. While it is not always feasible to distribute a presentation as pdf (or flash) it might be the optimal in most cases

Tags: microsoft powerpoint, microsoft-office, powerpoint, powerpoint files, powerpoint presentations, powerpoint tips

Microsoft Security Bulletin May 2009

Martin — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:05:31 +0000

Microsoft has released the Security Bulletin for May 2009 which contains one Microsoft Office PowerPoint vulnerability which affects various editions of Microsoft Office but also the Microsoft Office PowerPoint Viewer and Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack. Affected are Microsoft Office PowerPoint editions in Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, Office 2003 and Microsoft Office 2007. The security update is rated as critical for Microsoft Office 2000 editions and important for all other affected editions of Microsoft Office and software programs by Microsoft.

This security update resolves a publicly disclosed vulnerability and several privately reported vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office PowerPoint that could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted PowerPoint file. An attacker who successfully exploited any of these vulnerabilities could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

The security update is available on Windows Update and Microsoft Update. Additional information and links can be found at the Security Bulletin that has been created for the security vulnerability. Users of affected software programs are encouraged to perform the security update as soon as possible.

Tags: microsoft security bulleting, microsoft-office, Security, security bulletin, security vulnerability, windows updates

Microsoft Office Add-ins Manager

Martin — Sun, 10 May 2009 12:36:04 +0000

Add-ins are a great way of increasing the functionality of Microsoft Office. Some add-ins are compatible with all Microsoft Office programs while others only work in specific applications such as the email client Microsoft Outlook or the presentation software Microsoft PowerPoint. Microsoft Office does not however provide an easily accessible interface to manage all add-ins that are currently installed which is why Topalt’s EnableDisable, a startup manager for Microsoft Office add-ins, might come in handy. Not all add-ins are needed all the time and some even slow down the startup or performance of Microsoft Office programs.

The Office add-in startup manager provides the means to disable Microsoft Office add-ins comfortably. The program will display all add-ins, enabled or disabled, that are currently installed in Microsoft Office. It sorts the add-ins in tabs that refer to the Microsoft Office program that they are installed in. Displayed are tabs for Microsoft Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word.

The listings contain checkboxes, the startup type of the individual add-in, its name and description. The Office add-in will be loaded if the checkbox is checked. All it takes to disable an add-in is to uncheck it in the program.

EnableDisable might also come in handy to permanently disable add-ins in Microsoft Office in case they are not needed at all. All in all a very straightforward comfortable tool to manage Microsoft Office add-ins.

Tags: access, enabledisable, excel, microsoft-office, office, office add-ins, outlook, powerpoint, word

Docx And Xlsx Data Recovery Software

Martin — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:52:08 +0000

Dealing with corrupted Word documents or Excel spreadsheets especially without access to backups of those documents either because they have not been created in first place or because they are inaccessible in the current location. The only way to deal with corrupted documents is data recovery software. Docx2txt and Xlsx2csv have been specifically created to recover data from corrupted Microsoft Office 2007 Word and Excel documents that have been saved in the new docx and xlsx formats.

Both data recovery tools are portable programs that can be executed after unpacking them. The interface looks similar in both applications. It offers options to load and save docx and xlsx files. It will analyze the selected document and try to recover its text and values. The recovered document will then be displayed in the interface of the programs. The displayed data can be edited right away or saved as txt or csv files for further editing in programs that are better suited for editing the data.

The main advantage of both Docx2txt and Xlsx2csv is that they can easily be put on a DVD or USB stick to have them nearby when all other means of recovering the data of docx or xlsx documents fails. Docx2txt and Xlsx2csv (via Addictive Tips) have a size of less than 4 Megabytes each and can be directly downloaded from the developers webpage. They are compatible with all Microsoft NT based operating systems since Windows 2000 including Windows XP and Windows Vista. They also require the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0.

Tags: data recovery software, docx, excel recovery, microsoft-office, office data recovery, windows software, word recovery, xlsx

Open Office 3.1

Martin — Tue, 05 May 2009 11:02:34 +0000

Open Office 3.1 final has been released today. The Open Source alternative to Microsoft Office can be downloaded from download portals like Betanews but not directly from the Open Office homepage as it has not been updated yet to reflect the release of the new version. The new version of Open Office is packed with lots of new and enhanced features but also bug fixes which makes it a recommended download for Open Office users but also anyone else who is interested in installing an inexpensive Microsoft Office competitor.

Some of the new features that have been added to Open Office 3.1 are antialiased drawings to smooth the edges of graphics, replying to notes, improved grammar checking, hyperlink management and sorting, control of slideshow media, macro support for Open Office Base, relative database paths, better internationalization for Hebrew and Arabic plus performance improvements (read our Speed up Open Office article for even more tips on how to improve the speed and performance).

The full list of changes and new features can be seen in the official Open Office 3.1 documentation which lists all the major improvements over previous Open Office versions.

Open Office 3.1 is available as a free download for Windows, Linux and Macintosh.

Tags: linux software, mac software, microsoft-office, office alternative, office suite, open office 3.1, Open Source, open-office, windows software

Document Viewer TextMaker Viewer 2009

Martin — Fri, 01 May 2009 23:35:38 +0000

Users who regularly work with document formats like doc, docx or odt usually install one of the larger Office suites like Microsoft Office or Open Office on their computer system to do so. Many use the same programs for viewing those document formats as well. While they are compatible with most of them they do start relatively slowly on most systems which makes them less than ideal for this purpose. The default document viewers on the other hand cannot open several popular document formats which means that they are not the best choice either.

TextMaker Viewer 2009 is a free document viewer that supports a wide range of different document formats. It basically combines the supported formats of Microsoft Office 2007 with those of Open Office in a fast loading interface.

Supported are the following formats in the latest version of TextMaker Viewer:

.docx, .docm Microsoft Word 2007
.sxw OpenOffice.org/StarOffice Text
.dotx, .dotm Microsoft Word 2007 templates
.rtf Rich Text Format
.doc Microsoft Word 6.0 up to Word 2007
.psw Pocket Word (Pocket PC)
.dot Microsoft Word templates 6.0 up to 2007
.pwd Pocket Word (Handheld PC)
.tmd TextMaker 6.0 up to 2008
.htm/html HTML documents
.odt OpenDocument Text
.txt Text files (DOS, Windows, Unicode, UTF-8)

The document viewer comes with a few additional features like zooming in or out of the document or viewing it in full screen. Documents can also be printed on the local computer system. A little bit annoying is the “nag” screen at the beginning that can be used to enter registration information. Users have to press skip to continue. It will not appear as long as they keep the document viewer open.

Are you using a specific program to view documents? If so let us know in the comments.

Tags: document viewer, docx, microsoft-office, open office textmaker viewer 2009, windows software

Microsoft Translator For Microsoft Office

Martin — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 07:21:44 +0000

Microsoft has released an add-on for Microsoft Office 2003 and Microsoft Office 2007 that adds their Live Search Translator to these programs replacing the default WorldLingo translator. Replacing is not probably the best word to describe it as WorldLingo is still available and can be selected on a language per language basis in the translation options. Microsoft Translator will be the default translator with WorldLingo set as the fallback translator.

To install Microsoft Translator download the installer from the Microsoft website and execute it on a local computer system. Make sure Microsoft Office is closed during the installation. The installer will then add Microsoft Translator as the default Office translator automatically for the languages that are supported by it.

The add-on will add a button to the Review ribbon which will translate selected text in a document automatically and display it in the Research pane in Microsoft Office.

Microsoft Translator will automatically detect the language of the selected text. The default language to translate into is English unless the text that has to be translated in English. In this case it is French. Pulldown menus are available to change the target language of the translation on the fly.

A click on Translate Options in the Research pane allows for the selection of the WorldLingo translator for selected languages instead of the Microsoft Translator. Microsoft Translator will work in Microsoft Office Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Excel, Visio and Publisher.

Tags: microsoft translator, microsoft-office, office, office 2003, office 2007, office add-on, outlook translator, word translator, worldlingo

Microsoft Security Updates April 2009

Martin — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:25:15 +0000

Microsoft releases security bulletins once a month that outline new security updates and patches for Microsoft products. The security updates for April 2009 list a total of eight vulnerabilities for various Microsoft applications including Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. Six of the eight patches affect various Microsoft operating systems. Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 face three critical, two important and one moderate security vulnerability while Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 bring it to two critical, one important and one moderate vulnerability. Below is a list of links that point to all eight Microsoft Security Bulletins. These bulletins contain extensive information about the vulnerabilities including the systems affected.

Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Excel Could Cause Remote Code Execution (968557)
Vulnerabilities in WordPad and Office Text Converters Could Allow Remote Code Execution (960477)
Vulnerability in Microsoft DirectShow Could Allow Remote Code Execution (961373)
Vulnerabilities in Windows Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (959454)
Vulnerabilities in Windows HTTP Services Could Allow Remote Code Execution (960803)
Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer (963027)
Blended Threat Vulnerability in SearchPath Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (959426)
Vulnerabilities in Microsoft ISA Server and Forefront Threat Management Gateway (Medium Business Edition) Could Cause Denial of Service (961759)

The easiest way to update is by visiting Windows Update or Microsoft Update. Please read our Windows Update Fix article if Windows Update is not working properly on your computer system. Alternatives are so called offline updates like Offline Update, Autopatcher or Update Windows Without Microsoft.

It is recommended to update the computer system as soon as possible to close the vulnerabilities.

Tags: microsoft update, microsoft-office, microsoft-windows, office security, office updates, security bulletin, security updates, Windows, windows security, windows-update

Google Docs Adds Office Excel 2007 XLSX Support

Martin — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:04:15 +0000

While Google Mail (Gmail) is already able to process Office 2007 file formats such as xlsx, docx or pptx by converting them to html format so that they can be viewed online Google Docs could not until now. This is kinda strange as one would think that Google Docs would be the primary application to display the Office XML formats. Google’s priority seemed to have been different. The developers have finally started to begin adding support for the new Office 2007 file formats beginning with the Excel 2007 format xlsx.

Not all pages have been updated in Google Docs with the information about the added Excel 2007 xlsx support. The upload page for example is not listing the new format as supported. The two other Microsoft Office 2007 file formats, that is Word 2007 with docx and PowerPoint 2007 with pptx, are not yet supported but it is very likely that the Google Docs team will add support for those file formats eventually.

The data transfer of the xlsx files produces good but not excellent results. The color highlighting of a test Excel 2007 file was for example not displayed on the Google Docs page of the document. The main information on the other hand were all displayed the way they looked in the real Office Excel document.

Tags: docx, excel, excel 2007, google docs, microsoft excel, microsoft powerpoint, microsoft word, microsoft-office, office 2007, office xml, pptx, xlsx

Document Imaging Software JOCR

Martin — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:11:37 +0000

JOCR is a specialized optical character recognition (ocr) software that can recognize characters from images taken on the computer’s desktop. Before we delve into the functionality it should be noted that JOCR requires the Microsoft Office Document Imaging component which is a component of Microsoft Office 2003 and never Office versions. The Office Tool has to be installed for JOCR to function.

JOCR itself is a portable software program. The interface looks like screen capturing software programs. It offers to capture a region, the desktop or the active window. The image will then be displayed in the program’s interface with options to print, copy or recognize.

Recognizing is obviously the main part as it will analyze the image at hand to recognize all the characters that it contains. The document imaging software will then display the recognized characters count and display them in the default text editor from where they can be edited or copied easily.

The document imaging software can be useful in situations where text has to be copied from interface elements. This can be error messages, text that is displayed in applications or images. The recognition rate depends largely on the type of image and text used. It ranges from brilliant (almost no editing required) to weak (failed to recognize certain characters, lots of editing required).

JOCR is compatible with the following languages: Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish.

Tags: document imaging, document imaging software, jocr, microsoft-office, ocr, office tools, portable software, windows software

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