Friday, August 17, 2007

Publishing a Calender

I'm going to have to try this - looks awesome!

Publishing a calendar using Office Online

In Ben’s previous post, he spoke about sharing a calendar via e-mail. Many people correctly commented that sharing a calendar via e-mail does not support subscriptions and that for items that changed regularly, it was difficult to use. Can Comertoglu (our Calendar Sharing Program Manager for Office 2007) spent some time with Ben to put together this guide on how he uses the Office Online publishing features of Microsoft Outlook 2007 to manage a soccer team.

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Posted by: Lena | 1:16 AM |

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Vista, Sharepoints, OneNote & Outlook

I read this article below and it pretty much says what I would have said.
However I now have a tablet - will write about that shortly and I find it very useful.

Windows Vista improves productivity, power management for mobile PC users

When I travel, it isn't always convenient to have both my laptop and my Smartphone with me at all times. That's why I like the capabilities of Sync Center in Windows Vista. I can work on whatever device is most convenient for me at the time, and Windows Vista ensures that the same information appears on both devices.

Windows SideShow is another feature getting attention from mobile PC users. It's a new technology that allows you to view important information from your computer on a secondary display, such as a small screen on the outside of a laptop's case.

Windows Vista improves the wireless networking experience by consolidating key information in the Network and Sharing Center. From there, I can check my connection status, signal strength, and other properties.

When I'm on the go, I'm always worried about how much battery life my laptop has left. How quickly your battery drains depends, in part, on which power plan you select. When I'm home, I use the Balanced power plan, with a few extra settings tweaked. One of the power management settings I've tweaked is what happens when I close my laptop's lid. I've changed the setting so that nothing happens when I close the lid. That way, my e‑mail continues to download and is instantly available when I reopen the lid.

One of the major purchases I plan to make within the next year is a Tablet PC—a mobile PC that allows interaction via a tablet pen or, if the computer has a touch-enabled screen, a fingertip. In Windows Vista you can perform specific actions with pen flicks or touch flicks on supported hardware. You can flick your pen in a certain direction and the selection is copied to the Clipboard. What's more, you can customize the pen flicks to perform the actions you choose.

I have to make a presentation in front of an audience several times a year. I turn on presentation settings from Windows Mobility Center, a dashboard of sorts for common mobile PC settings. Windows turns off the screen saver, turns off system notifications, and prevents the computer from going to sleep. I can also customize the presentation settings to change the desktop background and adjust the volume level.

Jerri Ledford


View and update a SharePoint calendar

You can view and update a SharePoint calendar, just as you do your Outlook calendar.

You can view a calendar from a SharePoint site side-by-side with an Outlook calendar, view an overlay of the calendars as if they were one single calendar, and even copy events among the calendars.

When you connect a SharePoint calendar to Outlook 2007, it appears under Other Calendars with your calendar folders. You can connect multiple calendars at the same time, such as a team vacation calendar and a project schedule. Depending on your needs, you can choose which calendars you want to work with: a single calendar from a SharePoint site, multiple SharePoint calendars (if you have them), or Outlook calendars.

If your team stores its project schedules, conferences, or vacations on a SharePoint calendar, you can view the team calendar simultaneously with your personal calendar and check for conflicts. Additionally, you can copy items back and forth, without leaving Outlook.


OneNote Table of Contents powertoy!

Nani Courten is another tester on the OneNote team and created an incredibly useful addin for OneNote. There is a group of people sharing a notebook. Each person edits a few pages here and there every so often. Now when I open the notebook, I want to quickly find the most recent changes. If a page was changed last night, I want to see it, and if a page has been unchanged for some amount of time, I'm not as interested in viewing it. Essentially, I want a list of most recently changed pages. Nani created an addin which creates a Table of Contents for the section I'm looking at with the most recently changed pages at the top of the list. Each page in the list is a link to the page: I can see what changed last night, click the link and go straight to that page.

You can also delete the column which shows the time the pages were changed and make a table of contents which lists only the page titles. This way the user who posted to the newsgroups about wanting a summary of the pages in a section can get his information as well.

Links:
The setup files (and remember to exit OneNote, run setup.exe as admin and select to install for all users):

http://johnguin.members.winisp.net/Shared%20Documents/TableOfContentsSetup.zip

The source (includes setup):

http://johnguin.members.winisp.net/Shared%20Documents/OneNote%20Table%20of%20Content.zip

John


Sharing a calendar via email

Did you know that you can easily create and share calendars with others in Outlook 2007? with Outlook 2007 this is an absolute joy!
I have created a “Bike Races” calendar which I can now use to store all these events. Updating my friends is as simple as clicking on ”Send a Calendar via E-mail…”, selecting the level on detail and choosing my recipients. Outlook is even smart enough to attach a “human friendly” text version of the calendar in the mail body (if I choose).
For my friends running Outlook 2007 it’s as simple as choosing to open the calendar when they receive my message. For those who aren’t running Outlook (and yes, there are a few out there), they can still see all the dates and times in the body of the email, and if they have an application that supports iCalender files (RFC 2445) they can also import them.
Create the calendar

1. Open Outlook

2. Select Calendar

3. Click File + New + Calendar...
4. Enter the calendar name (Bike Races)

5. Click on OK

One of my favorite features is overlaying calendars in Outlook. To view a calendar in Overlay mode, you can either click the left-arrow icon in the calendar’s tab at the top, or right-click on the calendar in the list and choose “View in overlay mode”.
Share the calendar.

1. Click on “Send a Calendar via E-Mail…”

A new message window will open and the “Send a Calendar via E-Mail” dialogue will be shown.
2. Select the “Bike Races” calendar in the Calendar drop down and select the visibility and detail that you want to send.
3. Click OK
4. Enter recipients
5. Click send

6. You’re done!

Benjamin Gay

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Posted by: Lena | 7:39 PM |

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Vista Sidebar Gadget Development, Windows Performance Tweaks and Outlook SPAM Management

Sidebar Gadget Security: Inspect Your Gadget


Review a Gadget for Security Bugs

As a first order analysis, the following should be carefully reviewed to make sure they are not introducing security bugs.

* Verify that all innerHtml constructs render only trusted or sanitized data.
You can use the innerText property to add untrusted data into the DOM safely.
* Verify that all document.write method calls render only trusted or sanitized data.
Again, use the innerText property to add untrusted data into the DOM safely.
* Verify that all calls into the Gadget object model or ActiveX controls instantiated in the Gadget pass validated data. As an example, be careful when calling System.Sidebar.Execute.
* Verify that all calls to eval() pass validated data.
* Verify that all ActiveX controls used by the Gadget are secure (no buffer overruns, integer overruns, and such).

Lawrence James

A further link: Guidance on how to develop secure Vista Sidebar Gadgets



Simple Tweaks to Improve the Performance of your Windows PC

Here are four simple tweaks for your PC that will help improve your overall computing and internet browsing experience.

Step 1: Change the IE Concurrent Download Limit - Internet Explorer's default settings only enable you to download up to two downloads at the same time. Optimizing the download settings enables you to download up to 16 files concurrently from the same server.

Method - Open registry editor and navigate to the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings

Right click the right pane and select New->DWORD Value. Type MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server and give it a value of 16. Add another DWORD using the same process - call it MaxConnectionsPerServer with the same value - 16.

Step 2: Disable Windows Indexing Service - The indexing feature consumes system resources, and may adversely affect your system's performance. By disabling the indexing feature, you free up disk space on your computer and may improve its performance.

Method - Goto Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services. Find the Indexing Service, right click and select "Disable".

Step 3: Resize your Internet Explorer Cache - The default cache settings of IE are configured to hold a large number of cached temporary Internet files. However, storing many small files on your hard disk consumes valuable disk space and can cause disk fragmentation. Reduce the maximum size of IE cache to 128MB for optimal performance.

Method - Start Internet Explorer, Select Tools -> Internet Options ->General. Under Temporary Internet Files click the Settings button and type the amount of disk space to use.

Step 4: Windows Menu Display Speed - Menus are displayed on your computer according to Windows' default settings. By optimizing these settings, you speed up your computer's ability to display (and hide) these menus.

Method - Goto Start -> Control Panel -> System. Click the Advanced tab, and under Performance, click the Settings button. Clear the Fade or slide menus into view check box, and then click OK.

Amit Agarwal


Postmarking: helping the fight against SPAM

Postmarking is a new part of the Outlook 2007 junk e-mail feature; it complements the existing feature set to reduce the amount of spam in your inbox.

One of the great advantages of e-mail is that it is easy and cheap to send. Unfortunately, this is the very same reason that makes it so useful to spammers as it enables them to send huge amounts of email in bulk.

Think of Postmarking as computational “postage” imposed when sending email. This is a small burden for an individual user, but is a very large burden for spammers. Spammers rely on being able to send thousands of mails per hour, and in order to be able to send spam with postmarking turned on, they would have to invest a very large amount of money to expand their computational power.

Postmarking generation is only present in Outlook 2007 and postmark validation is present in Outlook 2007, Windows Live Mail , Exchange 2007, and Windows Mail in Vista.

Alessio Roic

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Posted by: Jethro | 2:01 PM |

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Outlook addins and Microsoft Office tips

Addintools

Classic Menu for Office 2007

  • bring back the Office 2003 menus and toolbars to your copy of Microsoft Office 2007
  • All new features items of Microsoft Office 2007 have been added into the classic menu and toolbars.
Addintools create for Excel

  • Use your own marketing analysis chart and a worksheet with a 1000 rows of data. Addintools Create generates a marketing analysis chart for each row. That’s 1000 new charts!
  • In just minutes, convert rows in a Microsoft Excel worksheet to Charts, Diagrams, AutoShapes, Drawings, WordArts, Reports, Cards, Labels, Forms and Sheets. You can decide how many data rows each result refers to!
Addintools assist for Excel

  • Convert data formats between Date, Numeric, or Text.
  • Will convert any number or date format to text: August 3, 2004, 08/03/2004 00:00:00, 12345678.90%, US$123,456.79, 1.23E+05…
  • Can safely merge cells or perform a smart Unmerge.
  • See Invalid Data Types quickly by viewing those cells in color!
  • View all locked or unlocked cells by color.
Addintools Mechanic

  • Clean, repair, defrag and compact the Windows Registry to increase PC overall performance immediately.
  • Enhances System Stability – regular maintenance helps stop system crashes and break-ups.
  • Easily undo any operation
  • The scanning is fast and smart

Microsoft Office Outlook
Copy Autocomplete name list to another computer

Important You must exit Outlook before starting the following procedure. The names will be included in AutoComplete when you restart Outlook.

  1. On the computer with the saved AutoComplete names, go to drive:\Documents and Settings\user name\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook.
    Note: Depending on your file settings, this folder might be hidden. To view the files in this folder, do one of the following:
    ShowMicrosoft Windows XP
    1. Click Start, and then click My Computer.
    2. On the Tools menu, click Folder Options.
    3. Click the View tab, and then, under Advanced settings, under Hidden files and folders, click Show hidden files and folders.

    ShowMicrosoft Windows 2000
    1. Double-click My Computer on your desktop.
    2. On the Tools menu, click Folder Options.
    3. Click the View tab, and then click Show hidden files and folders.
  2. Right-click profile name.nk2, and then click Copy.
    Tip You can copy the file to removable media, such as a floppy disk or a CD, and then copy the file to the correct location on the other computer. Or you can attach the file to an e-mail message and send the message to yourself. On the new computer, open the attachment in Outlook, and then save it to the correct location.
  3. On the computer where you want to populate the AutoComplete feature, copy the file to drive:\Documents and Settings\user name\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook.
  4. If the Outlook user profile name is different on the computer where you are moving the .nk2 file, you must rename the file with the same Outlook user profile name after you copy it to the correct folder. For example, if you move Kim Akers.nk2 from the original computer with an Outlook user profile name of Kim Akers, and you copy the Kim Akers.nk2 file to the new computer, you must rename it with the Outlook profile name being used on the new computer.
  5. When prompted about replacing the existing file, click Yes.
  6. Open Outlook to view changes.


Outlook Performance Update

Last Friday, we released an update to Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 that will help to address some performance issues that are discussed in Knowledge Base Article 932086. You can find a description of the update and a link to the appropriate download page for your version of the update in Knowledge Base Article 933493.

Davton Contact Synchroniser
The Davton Contact Synchroniser will synchronise contacts in one contact folder to another. It is designed to synchronise contacts from a shared Microsoft Outlook ‘Public Folder’ to a personal folder - so that the contacts can be synchronised to a PDA using ActiveSync.

It is a one way synchronization - changes made in the local folder or on the PDA will not be reflected back to the Public folder.

The synchroniser can filter the contacts it copies to your local folder, based on a categories. So for example if you just want the contacts with category 'Customer' to be moved to your local folder, Davton Contact Synchroniser can handle this.Download here (6.3MB installer file)

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Posted by: Jethro | 7:38 PM |

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

New Tools Roundup

Tech News Website - TechMeme

Tip of the Day site presents UnDelete Plus

Undelete Plus is a quick and effective way to retrieve accidentally deleted files, files removed from the Recycle Bin, in a DOS window, from a network drive, from Windows Explorer with the SHIFT key held down. And, it’s FREE.

MSN Screensaver
With the new MSN Screen Saver (Beta) you can:

* Personalize with background photos and news and weather information from MSN® or any RSS feeds from websites you choose.
* Search the Web and click news headlines directly from the Screen Saver.
* Stay connected with MSN Hotmail®, MSN Messenger, and MSN Spaces. Track how many unread Hotmail messages and current Messenger conversations you have, and display blogs and photos from your friends’ MSN Spaces.

GeekBrief Podcasts - Geeky vlog

MoBuzz TV Tech vlog - cute presenter!

WallStrip - stock culture meets pop culture

Unofficial Office Stuff - Pixel Squeezing - reducing picture size in powerpoint shows

Robin Good - Visual Communication And Online Image Editing Tools - The Best From Sharewood - as it says - a comprehensive list along with mini reviews of image editing software.

Delicious Bookmarks
This extension integrates your browser with del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/), the leading social bookmarking service on the Web. It does this by augmenting the bookmarking functionality in Firefox with an enhanced experience that offers the following advantages:

- Search and browse your bookmarks
- Access your bookmarks from any computer at any time
- Keep your bookmarks organized with tags
- Share your bookmarks with friends or anyone on the Web
- Import your existing Firefox bookmarks

Slipstick - Outlook 2007 - whats new
Outlook 2007, formerly known as Outlook 12, is scheduled to be released later this year and has a number of cool new or improved features that should prove popular with users. The following is a list of my top 10 favorite Outlook 2007 features and the reasons I like them, in no particular order.

Gliffy.com This is a pretty cool collaborative diagramming web 2.0 tool.

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Posted by: Jethro | 9:43 PM |

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Blank emails in Outlook 2007

I have experienced blank emails in Outlook 2007 on 2 separate machines with 2 different email accounts. My brother has had the same problem. Technically this is a rendering issue with HTML format emails, the most common format. After a bit of looking around on the net I discovered that it is an AVG Virus scanner issue. After disabling the AVG email plugin I was able to see the emails!

Hopefully AVG will fix this before Office 2007 is release at the end of the month.

References:
http://geekswithblogs.net/ajames/archive/2006/05/27/79806.aspx
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=197036

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Posted by: Jethro | 10:14 AM |