gHacks technology news » office 2007

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

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

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

Microsoft Office Word 2007 AutoHistory

Martin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:44:57 +0000

One element that is missing in Microsoft’s Office Word 2007 program is the ability to manage document revisions. The software program comes with revision tracking features but those do not help that much once the document has been saved and closed in Word 2007. Enter AutoHistory; A Microsoft Office Word 2007 add-in that adds document revisions to Microsoft Word.

It does so by automatically creating a copy of the document whenever it is saved either by the user or by the software. The functionality becomes available immediately after installation of the Word add-in. Checking the Show / Hide History box will display a sidebar menu with all document revisions of the active document. A double-click on any of the documents will load it in a new Microsoft Word window.

A click on the Settings button opens the configuration menu where the maximum number of document revisions and the language can be configured. The default number of document revisions is unlimited but can be changed if size is of importance to the user.

AutoHistory (via Killertechtips) requires the installation of Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office system before it can be used and installed.

The Word add-in could come in handy for users who regularly work with Microsoft Word documents.

Tags: autohistory, document revisions, microsoft word, office 2007, office word 2007, word, word add-in

Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2

Martin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:46:46 +0000

Microsoft is currently distributing the Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 to various download mirrors in their network of sites to be prepared for a release later today. Users worldwide have been waiting for the release of the second service pack which promises to improve the functionality, performance and stability of Microsoft’s flagship product. Notable changes include support for the Open Document format which means the ability to open, save and edit files of the types Open Document Text (odt), Open Document Spreadsheet (ods) and Open Document Presentations (odp). Options to change to Open Document formats as the default formats in Microsoft Office 2007 are offered as well.

The standalone add-in to save documents as pdf or xps has been built into the service pack 2 which means that users do not have to download and install the add-in for this functionality. A complete list of changes is available at the official announcement of the availability date of service pack 2 for Microsoft Office 2007.

Downloads will be first made available via Microsoft Download and various third party download portals.

Update:

Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 is available on the download portal and via Windows Update.

Tags: microsoft office 2007, office 2007, office 2007 service pack 2, office 2007 sp2, service pack 2, sp2

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

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

Microsoft Office Classic Menu Add-on

Martin — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 16:02:18 +0000

If you cannot get used to the ribbon interface of Microsoft Office 2007 because it does not display all the options needed to do the job in one place you might like the Microsoft Office add-on Ubit Menu (via Instant Fundas) which brings back the classic Office menu to Office 2007. The software developers released an international version of the Microsoft Office add-on just recently which added German, English, Italian, Spanish, French and Portuguese support which means it can be used with those Microsoft Office versions.

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.

Tags: microsoft office 2007, microsoft office add-on, microsoft-office, office 2003, office 2007, office 2007 add-on, office add-on, office software, ubit menu

Remove Microsoft Groove Folder Synchronization

Martin — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:57:33 +0000

If you have installed Microsoft Office on a computer system you might have installed a module called Microsoft Groove with it. Microsoft Office Groove was designed for document collaboration “in teams with members who are regularly off-line or who do not share the same network security clearance”. The area where most users come in contact with Microsoft Groove is the right-click context menu entry that is added after the installation of Microsoft Office. The Groove Folder Synchronization will appear on right-clicks but also in Internet Explorer and other areas of Windows Explorer.

The easiest way to remove the Microsoft Groove Folder Synchronization is by uninstalling Microsoft Office Groove. That is the best and most secure way to deal with the entries of that Office module. All you need to do is go into the Windows Control Panel, select Add / Remove programs, click on the Change button in the Microsoft Office 2007 entry, select to add or remove components and to uncheck Groove when the list of components is displayed.

This will uninstall Microsoft Office Groove from the system. Users who simply want to get rid of the context menu entries can do the following instead.

Locate the following Registry keys and delete them to remove the Groove Folder Synchronization entries:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\XXX Groove GFS Context Menu Handler XXX

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\XXX Groove GFS Context Menu Handler XXX

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\XXX Groove GFS Context Menu Handler XXX

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\XXX Groove GFS Context Menu Handler XXX

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\XXX Groove GFS Context Menu Handler XXX

This will remove the entries from the context menu but will not uninstall Microsoft Office Groove.

Tags: Groove Folder Synchronization, microsoft office 2007, Microsoft Office Groove, microsoft-office, office 2007, office groove, windows tips, windows-explorer

First Ribbon User Interfaces Begin To Appear

Martin — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 09:08:14 +0000

Microsoft introduced a new user interface that they called the Ribbon in Microsoft Office 2007. It was designed to reduce the number of hierarchical menus in previous versions of Microsoft Office. It was a bold move that caused lots of concern by experienced Office users who had to get used to the new Office user interface.

Ribbon seems the way to go and Microsoft already made several announcements about their upcoming operating system Windows 7 and the use of Ribbons in default applications like MS Paint and Wordpad.

But Microsoft is not the only company that is trying to push the new interface. A user on the Deviant Art website saw the screenshot of Windows 7 Wordpad with the Ribbon interface and decided to code that for Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Solo-Dev pushed out an release candidate that is currently supporting plain text documents: A Notepad replacement so to speak with plans to integrate rich text and doc applications so that it will become a Wordpad replacement instead.

The downside of the project is that it requires the Windows .net Framework 3.5. It also uses lots of resources currently but the software developer promised to optimize the code and application so that the computer memory consumption would become less.

The interesting questions leading from this is: Have you worked with Microsoft Office 2007 yet? Do you like the Ribbon interface? Let me know.

Tags: microsoft-office, notepad, office 2007, office ribbon ui, ribbon, ribbon user interface, user interface, windows7

Microsoft Excel Autobackup

Martin — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 06:42:43 +0000

Excel Autobackup is an Microsoft Excel add-in which adds automatic backup capabilities to Excel. The default autosave in Excel is overwriting previous versions of the spreadsheet without asking the user if that is what he wants.

The Excel add-in provides automatic backups of Excel spreadsheets. The interval of each automatic backup, the destination folder, the days the backups will be kept and the maximum number of backups can be defined when the add-in is loaded and activated in Microsoft Excel.

The Excel Autobackup add-in has to be activated before it can be used. To do that a user would have to click on the Office ribbon and select Excel Options at the bottom of the menu. There he would click on the Add-ins menu entry on the left side and the button Go at the bottom the the add-ins menu once it is displayed.

This opens a list of available add-ins and a browse button among others on the right side. The user would then click on Browse and select the autobackup.xla file on the computer’s hard drive. This loads and activates the plugin. After clicking OK in the menu the previously described settings can be changed and the add-in will start to automatically backup Excel spreadsheets right away.

The backup will be named after the original filename with an additional number to differentiate the backups.

Tags: backup spreadsheets, excel, excel add-in, excel autobackup, microsoft-office, office 2007, spreadsheets

Microsoft Office Migration Planning Manager

Martin — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 07:28:28 +0000

The Microsoft Office Migration Planning Manager has been designed to aid individuals, administrators and companies to migrate from an earlier version of Microsoft Office to the latest version Microsoft Office 2007. It provides a full set of command line tools to analyze, create and migrate documents that have been created in previous versions of Microsoft Office into Office 2007.

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.

Tags: microsoft-office, office 2003, office 2007, office documents, office migration, office suite

Microsoft Office Slipstreamer

Martin — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 19:17:23 +0000

It has just been a week ago that I reviewed the Microsoft Office Integrator, a tool that made it possible to create a new Office installation disk containing all the official Office Service Packs and Updates that have been released by Microsoft.

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.

Tags: microsoft-office, office 2003, office 2007, office installation, office slipstream, office updates, office xp

Microsoft Office Integrator

Martin — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 07:39:59 +0000

You find lots of applications on the Internet that allow to slipstream service packs, patches and updates into a Microsoft Windows installation CD or DVD. This has a serious advantage the next time the operating system has to be installed because all patches and updates have already been applied to it. It also eliminates the danger of directly connecting to the Internet to download those patches for the system.

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.

Tags: microsoft-office, office, office 2003, office 2007, office integrator, office slipstream, office updates

Grab the ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office early

Martin — Sat, 24 May 2008 21:46:16 +0000

Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 will officially add support for the Open Document Format ODF which is a free and open file format for electronic office documents. The format is already implemented in Open Office and users of Microsoft Office 2007 who want their product to be compatible can download the ODF plugin for Microsoft Office at Sun.

The current release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 is scheduled for the first half of 2009 which means that it will take about a year before Microsoft is adding the support officially. Common Open Document File extensions are .oft for word processing, .ods for spreadhsheets, .odp for presentations and .odg for graphics.

The Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office gives users of Microsoft Office 2007 the ability to load, save and edit odf files. The plugin is also compatible to previous editions of Microsoft Office including Office XP, Office 2003 and Office 2000. The plugin integrates itself seamlessly into the Save and Load file dialogs and is translated into several languages including English, German, French, Spanish and a dozen more.

Tags: microsoft, microsoft-office, odf, odf plugin, office 2007, open document format, open-office, sun

Microsoft Office 2007 Design Families

Martin — Thu, 15 May 2008 05:02:05 +0000

The Microsoft Small Business Center is offering six free design families for Microsoft Office 2007 that can be downloaded directly from the promotional website. A design family is simply a collection of several templates for different Office 2007 applications that have all the same look and feel to them.

I have to agree with Ryan from Cybernet News that Microsoft Office was missing templates that tie together the different applications. The six design families each contain a spreadsheet, presentation, invoice, letterhead, business card and newsletter blast templates.

That’s not all however. The color of each design family can be selected from nine available ones including Azure, Sage and Rust. This means that a total of 6×9 design families are available for download at the Microsoft website.

As I said earlier the templates can be downloaded directly, there is no verification in place yet. If you have never worked with templates before you can take a look at the Microsoft Knowledgebase article that explains template usage in Office 2007.

Tags: business templates, microsoft, microsoft-office, msoffice, office 2007, office templates

Open Office 3.0 beta released

Martin — Wed, 07 May 2008 19:27:31 +0000

Open Office 3.0 beta has been released by the Open Office development team and is ready to be tested by the large community. The biggest change in my opinion is the support for Microsoft Office 2007 files, you know those docx, xlsx and pptx type of files that could not be opened not long ago and caused a lot of frustration by users who received such files from colleagues or friends. Other additions are Mac OS X and OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.2 standard support.

The beta can be downloaded and installed on computers that run Windows, Linux, Solaris or Mac OS X Intel Aqua. Localized versions are available as well and can be downloaded from the external mirrors that host all localized builds.

A Beta page lists all of the features that have already been implemented in the current Beta of Open Office 3. It divides the changes in New Core Features, like the import filter for Microsoft Office 2007 formats, Core Features that have been introduced in minor releases since the release of Open Office 2.0 and Features that have been released as extensions or complimentary tools.

The most immediately visible change to OpenOffice.org 3.0 is the new “Start Centre”, new fresh-looking icons, and a new zoom control in the status bar. A closer look shows that 3.0 has a myriad of new features. Notable Calc improvements include a new solver component; support for spreadsheet collaboration through workbook sharing; and an increase to 1024 columns per sheet. Writer has an improved notes feature and displays of multiple pages while editing. There are numerous Chart enhancements, and an improved crop feature in Draw and Impress.

Behind the scenes, OpenOffice.org 3.0 will support the upcoming OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.2 standard, and is capable of opening files created with MS-Office 2007 or MS-Office 2008 for Mac OS X (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx, etc.). This is in addition to read and write support for the MS-Office binary file formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt, etc.).

OpenOffice.org 3.0 will be the first version to run on Mac OS X without X11, with the look and feel of any other Aqua application. It introduces partial VBA support to this platform. In addition, OpenOffice.org 3.0 integrates well with the Mac OS X accessibility APIs, and thus offers better accessibility support than many other Mac OS X applications.

The size of the download lies between 145 and 197 Megabytes depending on the operating system.

Tags: editor, office, office 2007, open office 3, openoffice, software, Windows

Official Microsoft Office PDF Plugin

Martin — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 15:44:14 +0000

There are several third party applications that make it possible to create PDF documents from within Microsoft Office. Most of these add a virtual printer that converts the Microsoft Office document to PDF. There is however an official way to add PDF – and XPS – support to Microsoft Office 2007 and its various programs like Microsoft Office Word 2007, Microsoft Office Excel 2007 and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007.

Microsoft is offering a plugin on their homepage that adds pdf support to Office 2007 adding PDF as one of the options in the Save As dialog. That’s probably the most effective way to add support for PDF documents to Microsoft Office 2007.

The plugin can only be downloaded if you have a genuine Microsoft Office 2007. The check will be made before the download link for the plugin becomes available.

Tags: create pdf, microsoft, microsoft-office, office 2007, office pdf, word 2007

Disable Recent Documents in Word 2007

Martin — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 09:37:28 +0000

The Recent Documents are a comfort function in Office 2007 products such as Word 2007 or Excel 2007 that displays the last 17 documents that you have opened in the applications. You can open that menu when you click on the big – some say huge – Office icon button on the top left corner of the screen.

Some users prefer to remove the Recent Documents altogether for several reasons. Maybe the computer is used by more than one user and the profile is shared – believe me that seems to happen a lot of times in families – or if you borrow someone a computer without creating a new profile for him or, my favorite, if you want to eliminate the chance that someone could see the Recent Documents on your computer at work.

The amount of Recent Documents that are shown can be changed in the Word options (Excel options..). You can access them from the same menu. Click on the big Office button in the upper left corner and select the Word Options button which is located right under Recent Documents.

Click on the Advanced tab in the right menu and scroll down – way down – until you find the Display part of the settings. There is an entry entitled “Show this number of Recent Documents” and a number next to it. If you change that number to 0 Microsoft Office 2007 will not remember the last used documents and will not display them in the Recent Documents pane anymore.

The Recent Documents entries should get reduced immediately which means that you do not have to manually delete them. But, a big one, this is only valid for the application where you changed it. So, if you change the number of Recent Documents that are shown in Word 2007 you will only reduce it for Word 2007 and not for Excel 2007, Powerpoint 2007 and all the other applications.

There is no global way to handle this which means that you will have to open each application once and change the Recent Documents setting for this application.

Tags: excel 2007, microsoft, microsoft-office, office 2007, recent documents, word 2007

Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 1 released

Martin — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 16:03:49 +0000

Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 1 has been finally released – sort of – and can be downloaded from the Microsoft download website. The links are already up and it is only a matter of time when the links do not point to a Ups sorry link not found message but the real download link of the Office 2007 Service Pack 1.

I’m not sure why Microsoft decided to create the links first and wait with the page creation that those links lead to but it surely is annoying. The only link that is currently working is the Office Update link on the left side of the download center which requires a genuine Office 2007. The download links are not working right now.

Lets see what Microsoft has to say about the Service Pack 1 and the benefits for home users and businesses found in the Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 1 Whitepaper.

By deploying the 2007 Office system SP1, home users and businesses can quickly reap benefits in the following areas:
Stability. Using data from the Dr. Watson bug-reporting system, Microsoft fixed, at minimum, the five software bugs that most frequently caused each application in the 2007 Office system to crash. The 2007 Office system SP1 also improves the stability of server components in the 2007 Office system and compatibility with Windows Server® 2008, so companies can more confidently move forward with upgrade plans.
Performance. The 2007 Office system SP1 improves performance in applications that are pervasive in modern offices, most notably: Microsoft Office Excel® 2007, Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint® 2007, and Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007.
Security. By incorporating incremental advances in security and results from application testing, the 2007 Office system SP1 offers home and office users better protection against malicious software and potential threats to privacy

Here are my top picks that I think really make it worth to install the Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office:

When inputting calculations that should result in numbers 65,534 through 65,536, Office Excel 2007 no longer returns the display error of 100,001
Office Outlook 2007 no longer closes unexpectedly when the junk e-mail rule is set to null.
Items moved from an offline folder file (.ost) to a personal folder file (.pst) now display properly in the preview pane.
When users try to open a presentation in Office PowerPoint 2007 from a Web site using forms authentication, the presentation will now appear properly.
With Office Word 2007, users can now open and edit embedded objects that contain other embedded objects.
Office Word 2007 no longer prints an extra page when users choose a printer with the duplex option enabled.
Improved performance in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 eliminates frustrating delays when opening large mailbox files and frees office workers to focus on important business tasks. The 2007 Office system SP1 makes it easier to open large offline folder files (.ost) and personal folder files (.pst) that are located directly on the user’s machine.

Here are the direct links to the Service Pack 1 downloads, as mentioned above they are not active yet but will be later today.

Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 1
Visio 2007 Service Pack 1
Project 2007 Service Pack 1

Calendar Printing Assistant for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

Microsoft Office InterConnect 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

Microsoft Office Language Pack 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

Microsoft Office Project Language Pack 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer Language Pack 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

Microsoft Office Visio Language Pack 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

Microsoft Office Visio Viewer 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

The 2007 Microsoft Office Servers Service Pack 1 (SP1)

The 2007 Microsoft Office Servers Language Pack Service Pack 1 (SP1), 64-Bit Edition