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.

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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.

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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.

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The installation of the Microsoft Office add-on is straightforward. It can be downloaded as an executable from the developers homepage. The setup will install the classic Office menu in the three Office programs Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint. The changes are visible immediately after installation and first start of one of the supported Microsoft Office programs.

The Microsoft Office add-on can be uninstalled from the software uninstallation menu of the Windows operating system. The add-on will bring the classic Office menu known from Microsoft Office 2003 to the supported programs of Office 2007. Below is a screenshot of how Office 2007 looks like after installation of the add-on.

It should be noted that the Microsoft Office add-on Ubit Menu will leave the current Office ribbon interface as it is. It does add a new entry to that menu on the other hand called menu which combines all the menu entries known from Office 2003.

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Microsoft Office Migration Planning Manager is available as a free download from the official Microsoft homepage. It comes as a 2.7 Megabyte download and an Office 2007 Online Migration Guide which explains the usage of the migration tool.

To achieve this Microsoft created a set of tools for the purpose:

• The OMPM File Scanner which is included in the whole package can scan for conversion issues
• A set of tools to import the findings of the scanner into a new SQL database
• A reporting solution based on Microsoft Access 2007 that provides various report about the analysis
• The Office File Converter that can convert previous Office documents into Office 2007 format in bulk
• The Version Extraction Tool which makes it possible to extract saved versions into different files.

The Office scanner is a command line tool and a user who wants to use it has to edit an .ini file of the same name to add the drives and folders that should be scanned for Office documents.

One interesting tool that comes with the Microsoft Office Migration Planning Manager is the bulk Office 2007 converter which can convert Office documents that have been created with previous versions of Office into Office 2007 format.

Ofc.exe is available in the tools directory of the unpacked archive. To make it work the file ofc.ini has to be altered to at least contain a path to a folder with Office documents. Upon execution of ofc.exe those Office documents will be converted into Office 2007 documents.

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Microsoft Office Slipstreamer looks pretty much alike and one could think that both software programs have been developed by the same person. There are however some differences that are worth to be mentioned. The latter supports Office 2000 and above while Office 2000 is not supported (yet) by Microsoft Office Integrator. That leaves Office 2000 users with no other choice but to select Microsoft Office Slipstreamer.

Both applications work the same way. The user begins by picking the setup.exe of his Office installation disk and a destination for the installation disk that will be created. He then picks Service Packs and Hotfixes for his Office product which will be integrated into Office which is the greatest benefit of slipstreamed software.

It is possible to enter the Office product key so that it is entered automatically during installation. Microsoft Office Slipstreamer can also fill out the Organization automatically. The user can also point at additional files that should be installed after Office setup has finished. That’s called Chained Installations.

Both support the creation of AIO (All In One) CD or DVDs and to create Iso images that can be burned easily. It basically comes down to Office 2000 support versus no Office 2000 support.

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Office Integrator does the same for Office basically. It allows you to create a slipstreamed installation source for Microsoft Office that contains all the updates and patches that you add to it. All that is needed is the current version of the Office Integrator, the patches for Microsoft Office that you want to slipstream and Microsoft Office.

Several so called Office hotpacks have been created at the forum where the Office Integrator has been published that contain all official Microsoft Office patches in one download. Another possibility would be to use Autopatcher Office to download the Office updates.

Once the software program is on the computer start it. Now select the Microsoft Office setup.exe and a destination for the slipstreamed version of Office. After that pick a Service Pack if you have one and hotfixes and patches from the computer. A click on the Integrate button starts the slipstreaming process.

A beta version of Office Integrator 0.7 was published on the forum as well but a user account is needed to use it. The main homepage of the application seems to be down currently which could be problematic for the whole process.

Update: Latest version is Office Integrator 1.0. You can grab it from the forum as well.

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The most notable is that it is a privacy issue for the author of the document. I would not feel comfortable if I had to publish a document on the Internet that would contain information about me. The information could also be used by someone else to find out if you are the real author of the document.

Microsoft’s Remove Hidden Data tool for Office 2003 and Office XP is an add-in that provides the user with an option to remove that meta data from the documents. The application that created the document has to be installed to make this work though. I’m not sure if it is backwards compatible but it seems to be logical that it should be.

The application can be controlled from within the applications of Microsoft Office or from the command line. The following information can be removed with the Office tool:

• Comments.
• Previous authors and editors.
• User name.
• Personal summary information.
• Revision marks. The tool accepts all revisions specified in the document. As a result, the contents of the document will correspond to the Final Showing Markup view on the Reviewing toolbar.
• Deleted text. This data is removed automatically.
• Versions.
• VB Macros. Descriptions and comments are removed from the modules.
• The ID number used to identify your document for the purpose of merging changes back into the original document.
• Routing slips.
• E-mail headers.
• Scenario comments.
• Unique identifiers (Office 97 documents only).

Restrictions prevent it from removing those information from the following types of documents:

• Documents using rights-management permissions
• Protected documents
• Digitally signed documents
• Shared workbooks

It does work pretty well. Users of Office 2007 on the other hand do not need to install this tool because the feature to remove the hidden data was build into that application. More on that later.

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Affected are documents that have been created with old versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Corel Draw and Lotus Notes dating back to the pre-Office 97 era. This won’t be a problem for the majority of users but some, like me, will question the purpose of blocking those old document formats.

Microsoft is claiming security reasons for the blocking. The old file formats can apparently be used to execute malicious code. Instead of fixing the security holes they decided to block the file formats, the Download Squad calls them lazy, I would prefer the term incurious though.

Instead of giving the user the choice to enable or disable these old document formats he has no other choice but to edit the Registry or download a tool from Microsoft that changes the Registry for him.

It is interesting to note that only Microsoft Office 2003 SP3 can’t open those old file types while third party software like Open Office can open them without difficulties.

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Besides the security update Office 2003 Service Pack 3 contains also stability improvements which have been implemented after receiving enough user feedback on several issues. There is no Windows Genuine Advantage check before you can download the new service pack and I assume there will also be none when installing it.

All important applications like Word 2003, Excel 2003 and Outlook 2003 receive at least one security update. Cautious users can also download and install updates separately if they feel that they do not want to download the 117 Megabytes.

Read More:

Office 2003 Service Pack 3

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