I had installed Office 2010 last week, and the Outlook Connector installed just fine. When I reformatted and reinstalled Windows 7 over the weekend and then installed Office 2010 and got the same error I’ve been reading about all over the internet. A good number of people are saying they try to install it and get this error message:
You should have Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, 2007 or 2010 installed for the connector.
This was driving me nuts, until I figured it out: Last week, when it worked, I had Outlook 2007 installed, and didn’t after reformatting.
So, I installed a trial of Office 2007, and it worked! Just install Outlook 2007, which you can get here in Office Standard and don’t bother to enter a product key. Create the Hotmail account in Office 2010, it’ll download and install the proper version of Outlook Connector automatically, restart Outlook, and you’re done. Uninstall Outlook 2007 when you’re done.
Thank god I got this to work. It was driving me nuts!
Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit has announced that Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac OS will allow iPhone and iPod users to sync with PowerPoint. You will be able to run PowerPoint slideshows on your iPhone, iPod Touch, iPod Classic and fatty iPod Nano (any iPod with picture support) if you have a Mac with PowerPoint 2008 and iPhoto (2006 or better).
PowerPoint will connect with iPhoto and export your presentation as a series of high resolution photos. Those photos will be saved on your hard drive and synced to your iPhone as photos normally are. Then, you can whip out your iPhone at any time and show slides from your PowerPoint presentation, or you can even plug the iPhone/iPod into a TV or projector to run a version of the presentation, minus the usual animations and transitions.
Microsoft’s Word 2007 has the ability, with a plugin, to save your documents as PDF files. What it can’t do is import PDFs, but Microsoft’s MMEvents blog lists two utilities you can use to take a PDF and bring it into Word as an editable document.
Scansoft’s PDF Converter 4 lets you turn PDFs into fully formatted documents, forms and spreadsheets that look just like the original, retaining formatting and graphics. It even imports into WordPerfect, integrates with Word and Windows, and has a ton of other features for working with PDFs. The software costs $50 for download and requires Windows 2000 or better and works with Word 2000 through 2007.
Able2Doc 4.0 PDF to Word Converter also costs $50 and performs very quick conversions, and it has a free trial. They also have the more versatile Able2Extract PDF Converter 5.0, which can convert PDFs to Word, Excel, Powerpoint, HTML, text and more, for $100.
Office Mobile 6.1, the new version of Microsoft Office for Windows Mobile devices, has been released, and you can download it free right now for Windows Mobile 5.0 or 6 phones or PDAs. The new version brings, most importantly, support for Office 2007 Open XML file formats for Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Also, it adds:
Enhanced viewing experience for charts in Excel Mobile.
Ability to view SmartArt in PowerPoint Mobile.
Ability to view and extract files from compressed (.zip) folders.
You’ll need 6 megabytes of space on your device or storage card to install.
(via Robert McLaws)
Sabeer Bhatia, co-founder of Hotmail (which he sold to Microsoft) is now trying to take on Microsoft Office and Google Docs, launching an online office suite. While that in and of itself is a perfectly fine (albeit difficult) project, Sabeer’s methods are surprisingly self-destructive. His Live Documents site (a name that makes you think of Microsoft’s Office Live) uses Office 2007’s “Ribbon” interface, designed in Flex, to power document editing, spreadsheets and presentations.
The interface is a near-copy of the one in Office 2007, just with less features, containing the same colors and structure. Microsoft does allow other software developers to use the Ribbon for free and without permission, but the only real rule is that they can’t use it for programs that compete with Microsoft Office. Bhatia is tempting a lawsuit, considering he ignored the guidelines set by Microsoft, and I don’t envy his position.
There is some good stuff, like a plugin that synchronizes documents between Office and Live Docs, and makes it easy to upload, but I wouldn’t rely on a website that is destined to be sued into oblivion. Unless Bhatia is trying to get bought out by Microsoft, Live Documents doesn’t seem set for a long life.
(via Amit)
When Office 2008 is released shortly, get Office 2008 Special Media Edition for just $6.99.
Now, the Office 2004 Student and Teacher Edition is just $150 in most places, so with the rebate, you pay fifty freakin’ bucks. Office 2008 Special Media is $500, but you get it for seven dollars more. So, pay $57, and get a $500 ultimate edition of Mac Office 2008.
Unless you comparison shop, because Amazon.com has Office 2004 for just $125. So, you get the big 2008 edition for even less, just $32! What a deal! Oh, and it looks like they’ll send you Office and Student 2008, too, as part of the deal, so you’re getting four computers worth of Office 2008 here. Unbelievable.
Now, this deal is today only, so get cracking right now! Buy the Office suite, then head here to get your rebate. If you don’t buy today, you’ll still get the seven dollar upgrade, but lose the $100 rebate.
Microsoft’s battle to get Open XML approved as an international standard continues, with them working their asses off to clear three thousand, five hundred twenty two comments from international voting members. The members of Ecma have addressed their concerns, and if Microsoft wants their votes, they have to address those concerns. Microsoft’s Brian Jones, who is Microsoft’s sole Ecma member, explains what the company is currently doing to whittle those down.
There are 3522 comments in total, but when you group them into similar buckets it narrows down pretty quickly into a more manageable list… but still pretty impressive!
There are currently 662 responses, and the plan is to provide updates to this list every few weeks. We still have almost 2 months until the deadline, but given that we have a lot of issues to work though, we thought it would be best to provide the responses earlier than the Jan deadline to allow for more time to discuss the issues.
So far I think we’re doing a pretty good job of doing what the national body is asking for. Most of the comments were accompanied by a proposed resolution, and most of them are great suggestions, so our response back is often that we’ll do exactly what they are asking for.
Take a look at this rap music video for Microsoft Word. I’d warn you about the lyrics, which are really crass at times, even for a rap song (or a normal amount of crass, just with words that are easier to understand).
Microsoft has released a new Microsoft Math add-in for Microsoft Office Word 2007. It adds enhanced computational and graphing capabilities to Word, letting you do this:
Plot a function, equation, or inequality
Solve an equation or inequality
Calculate a numerical result
Simplify an algebraic expression
Get it as a free download from here. Using it as simple as pressing “Alt-Equals sign” to create a RichEdit math object, type the equation or expression and right-click it to get solving and graphing options.
I got a phone call from Roger, a reader who wanted to know how to upgrade from Office 2007 Home & Student to Office 2007 Small Business. Sadly, I didn’t have a good answer for him, and after looking around, I still don’t have one. If you have Windows Vista, you can pay Microsoft to upgrade to a better version using a program called Windows Anytime Upgrade, but no such program exists for Microsoft Office.
What option do you have? Not much. I’d suggest selling your copy of Office to a friend (not always possible, but it usually works). Uninstall it on your PC, install it on your friend’s PC, and as long as you haven’t installed it in the previous 90 days, it should activate (if it doesn’t, a phone call to Microsoft’s unfriendly activation representatives should fix the problem). Then, take your friend’s money and put it towards the purchase of the better Office suite, and call the difference your upgrade costs.
It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s probably your best deal. You could probably get $100 for Home & Student from a buddy, and while it’s $50 less than the retail price, it brings the cost of an Office Small Business Upgrade down to $180, thirty dollars less than the cost of buying Outlook and Publisher on their own (though you lose OneNote).
The new versions of the Word Viewer and Powerpoint Viewer were recently released, and they finally support the viewing of Office 2007 file formats. The new viewers support the Open XML files used in Word 2007 (.docx) and Powerpoint 2007 (.pptx). However, you need to install the Compatibility Packafter you install the viewers, otherwise the viewers will only be able to read older file formats.
This comes via Amit, who also advises that if you want to read Excel 2007 files (.xlsx), convert it to Excel 2003 format using a tool like Zamzar, then you can view it in Google Docs or a similar free spreadsheet service that supports importing.
Marshall Kirkpatrick published screenshots of Office Live Workspaces, Microsoft’s coming online Office collaboration platform. Check out Read/Write Web for all of them.
UpdateStar is one of those programs that checks the software on your computer and determines if there are updates to that software you can install. It’s a routine type of app, though high profile blogs like Download Squad and Lifehacker seem impressed with it, so its likely one of the better ones. What’s really cool about it is that UpdateStar uses the Office 2007 Ribbon interface.
Looks like they do a good job with the interface, resulting in a bold, modern app with instantly recognizable controls. I wonder if they’ve managed to comply with all the interface guidelines? Seen any cool Ribbon apps lately?
UK students are eligible for a contest related to The Ultimate Steal, the cheap deal that nets students a copy of Office Ultimate 2007 for practically nothing. Just blog about how you plan to use Office in your academic studies, and you could win a first prize of a spring break trip for you and a guest to a destination of your choice. First prize winners get a £500 American Express gift card, and second prize winners get an Xbox 360 Elite.
(via the UK Academic Team blog)
Here’s another useful Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget for you to try out: The Microsoft Office Tips & Tricks Gadget gives you a new tip every day for using Microsoft Office. Click the Gadget and read the whole tip, which should hopefully make your day a little bit easier.
Slashdot reports that the ISO, the Internation Standards Organization, has grinded to a halt, unable to conduct any business at all since the vote over Microsoft Office’s Open XML file format. Because the fight was so cutthroat on both sides, Microsoft pushed many countries to register to be able to vote, resulting in significant growth in the number of ISO voting members.
Since rules require 50% of the members to participate on each ballot, and most of the new members dissapeared after the Open XML vote, they don’t have enough of a quorum to conduct any official business. Looks like the new guys kind of suck. Let’s hope next time around, if Microsoft does win, its with a better class of voters behind them.
Some blogs have been discussing the recenly announced packaging for Microsoft Office 2008, the upcoming Mac edition of Office, which doesn’t seem as cool as the packaging for Office 2004. Compare the two, with 2004 on the left, 2008 on the right:
Office 2004 photo by jidnet under CC license, 2008 image courtesy Long Zheng
Office 2004 came in this cool plastic tube-like thing, utterly unique and perfect. The new packaging is kinda boring by comparison… or is it?
Sheridan Jones of group marketing explained at Long Zheng’s blog that Microsoft is going for something forward-thinking again, but in a different way. The new packaging is designed with the environment in mind, made from recycled paper instead of the environmentally unfriendly thermoformed plastic of Office 2004. The new boxes reduce the carbon footprint of the product, something that should please a good percentage of Mac users.
Besides that, the photo doesn’t show the shiny metallic silver on the box or the embossed logos. Plus, it actually fits on a bookshelf, unlike Office 2004. So, it’s all good, but get us a cooler photo!
If you’re a Mac user and regular reader of this blog, send me a message via the contact form. If you live in New York, even better. I’m looking for someone interested in helping me review the product (and not pay for it). Let me know.
Also, read at the Mac Mojo blog where they explain the new Publishing Layout View, a new workspace for creating professional layout-rich documents. The Publishing Layout View presents you with a different user interface designed to expose the publishing features of Word, and it looks really useful and really cool.
Here’s another useful Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget for you to try out: 
