The first thing any Windows user would think to do is uninstall Microsoft Office 2010. This doesn’t work. Files still do not open. This is Microsoft’s way of goading users into buying the Office 2010 suite, which is fine if you want to do so. For users who do not, more steps need to be taken to regain control over the Office suite that you paid for.

When a file association is missing between a file and a corresponding application, various problems occur and the file cannot be opened. This is what happens when the Microsoft Office 2010 trial expires and you do not purchase the suite.

Click the Start menu and open the control Panel. Select Uninstall a program.

Scroll to find the instances of Microsoft Office 2010. Uninstall all instances of Office 2010 and you should be prompted to restart your computer. Restart as suggested.
The problem will most likely remain unsolved due to the instance of the Microsoft click-to-run application. Use the same steps to uninstall click-to-run (you don’t need it) and restart again.

Try opening a .doc, .docx, or .xml file and see if you get the same error message. You probably will because the default application to open the file has not been changed. Open the Control Panel again and click on Programs (indicated in green). This will open the Programs options. Under Default Programs, click “Make a file type always open in a specific program”.

A list of all file associations will be presented. Scroll down to .doc, .dochtml, .docx, etc.

The screenshot above shows the default applications to which you will need to change the file type to. This demonstration uses Office 2007. Change doc, dochtml, docm, docx and docmhtml files to Microsoft Office Word as the default application. Do this by double clicking each one individually and changing the file association. Change docxml, dot, dothtml, dotm, dotx and dqy file associations to the appropriate Microsoft Office component, which would be Office 2007 in this case (ideally in any case).

Files should open properly now. The process is slightly different for XP and Vista, but this should give you a good idea of how to approach this issue. There is absolutely nothing wrong with switching to Office 2010 if you want to. If you do, all of the above steps will be unnecessary. However, Windows 7 users who have encountered this problem will find this useful.

The third service pack includes two main categories of fixes. The service pack includes all public updates, security updates, hotfixes and other updates that were released for Office 2007 through September 2011. It also includes fixes that were made specifically for the service pack. This includes according to Microsoft “general product fixes and improvements in stability, performance and security”.

Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 3 is a cumulative update, which means that it includes all fixes that were part of Service Pack 1 or Service Pack 2 for Office 2007. Office users and administrators can install the third Service Pack release to apply all patches to the software.

The service pack can be downloaded via Windows Update or Microsoft Update automatically, or manually from Microsoft’s Download Center.

The following link points to the download of the 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 3 (SP3) on Microsoft’s Download Center. The Office Language Pack 2007 is available as an alternative download as well. Please note that there is only one version of the service pack available (no 32-bit and 64-bit edition).

The core improvements are the following ones:

• Documents that require custom security trimming are not returned from alert search queries, even if the user who created the alert could see and query for these documents.
  Non-Unicode characters in certain error message strings now display correctly.
• Four new bibliography styles are now available in the “Word Citations & Bibliography” feature: Harvard Anglia, IEEE, APA Sixth Edition, and MLA Seventh Edition.
• Chinese New Year holiday is now included in the Outlook calendar for Singapore.
• Fixes an issue in which Excel 2007 sometimes crashes when you open an Excel workbook previously saved in a newer version of Excel. This occurs if the file uses a new feature that is not available in the 2007 Office system.
  Fixes issues with the Pre and Post Reform rules in the French Thesaurus.
• Fixes an issue in which encryption settings are not configurable when they are used with a file format compatibility pack converter and Office 2003 or an earlier version of Office.
• Fixes an issue in which a crash sometimes occurs when an Excel workbook is opened in Excel and then previewed by using the Windows Explorer preview pane feature.
• Fixes an issue in which Excel Slicers and Ribbon customizations are lost when an XLSX file is first saved as an ODS file, and then saved as an XLSX file in Excel 2007.

Office users and administrators who notice issues after installing the service pack can use Microsoft’s Service Pack Uninstall Tool for the 2007 Microsoft Office suite to uninstall the service pack without affecting the core Office 2007 installation.

Open Office 2007 and then open Excel. Using the Excel Options menu, select Add-Ins:

A window will open for View and Manage Office Add-ins. At the bottom of this window, ensure that Excel Add-Ins is selected. Once that is done, click Go to move on to the Add-Ins window itself. The Add-Ins window opens:

Highlight each option for a clear description of each one. This takes only a single-click, but it allows you to determine if the Add-In is needed for any particular purposes. If it is not needed, there is no point in selecting it. Remember that this is customization and all options do not need to be added unless that is the desired outcome. If there is an intention to later create Hot-Keys for the functions, the fewer the better. The ultimate point of this is to simplify, not complicate Office 2007. Select the appropriate functions one at a time. With each selection, the following window will open:

Click Yes and the configuration will begin. Once complete, any given Add-In is installed and available in the Ribbon. This example shows a conversion function for Euros:

Each different Add-In will come up under different headers. This one was under the Formulas tab because it is a conversion. Expect similar comparatives for each Add-In function included to the Ribbon. This allows for a certain degree of convenience, but is also where Hot-Keys might ideally be created for functions most frequently used.

Add-Ins can also be installed from the Microsoft website. Just search for Add-ins in the Office 2007 section and they will be clearly presented. They are updated frequently, so options are growing over time. These installations are free. One of the options, for example, is to create a function for adding a Creative Commons license to documents. These functions serve a convenience that cuts document creation time down significantly. Third party Add-Ins will have to be purchased to authenticate the license for use, generally after a trial period of use. At least there is the advantage of trying the Add-In before use. Otherwise, most of the practical functions can be added without cost.

Ribbon Hero is an add-on for Microsoft Office that can be used to learn new features of Microsoft Office in a playful way. The Microsoft Office add-on offers two modes. The first mode is basically showing a score that can increase or decrease depending on the user’s command of the Office program. Formatting text for instance will raise the score.

That alone is an interesting feature but not the core of what Ribbon Hero is about. The Office add-on comes with challenges which are small tasks that it asks the Office user to complete. It displays a document to the user and asks the user to edit that document in a certain way, e.g. changing the orientation of it to landscape mode.

Many Office users might feel helpless at this point but help is directly available on the same page in Office meaning that every step of the process of editing the document is explained to the user, if necessary.

Every completed step is visualized to the user who receives a congratulations message upon finishing the task. Ribbon Hero uses an achievement page, like one used in many computer games, to show the overall progress to the user. New tasks can be selected from that screen to increase the tasks that have already been completed.

Ribbon Hero is being offered for Office 2007 and Office 2010 users who run a 32-bit or 64-bit edition of Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7 or a 32-bit edition of Windows XP. The Office add-on is only offered in English currently and integrates itself into Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

The process works the following way:

• Purchase Office 2007, or a new PC with Office 2007, and activate it between March 5, 2010 and September 30, 2010.
• Have, or create a Windows Live ID.
• Redeem your Tech Guarantee before October 31, 2010 by visiting www.office.com/techg.

The Microsoft Office 2010 upgrade will be delivered to the user as a download or by DVD for a fee. It has to be noted that not all retailers are part of the free Office 2010 upgrade program and that there is a limit of 25 upgrades per customer.

Upgrade Paths:

Office Ultimate 2007 – Office Professional 2010
Office Professional 2007 – Office Professional 2010
Office Small Business 2007 - Office Professional 2010
Office Standard 2007 - Office Home and Business 2010
Office Home and Student 2007 – Office Home and Student 2010
Office Basic 2007 – Office Home and Business 2010
Word 2007 – Word 2010
Excel 2007 – Excel 2010
PowerPoint 2007 – PowerPoint 2010
OneNote 2007 – OneNote 2010
Access 2007 – Access 2010
Outlook 2007 – Outlook 2010
Outlook with Business Contact Manager 2007 - Outlook 2010
Project Standard 2007 – Project Standard 2010
Project Professional 2007 – Project Professional 2010
Publisher 2007 – Publisher 2010
Visio Standard 2007 – Visio Standard 2010
Visio Professional 2007 – Visio Professional 2010

Eligible Languages:

Brazilian, Chinese Traditional, Chinese Simplified, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English/International English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Russian, Turkish

Note: The language of the qualifying Office 2007 purchase will determine the language of the Office 2010 product.

Check out the faq to read up on all the frequently asked questions. It is recommended to check with the retailer to get a confirmation whether the Microsoft Office 2007 copy is eligible for the free upgrade to Office 2010.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Update: The ODF Plugin is no longer available on the Sun or Oracle website.

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.