My Digital Life

Word/Excel 2003 to 2007 command reference

Yesterday, I was at a Microsoft Windows 7/Office 2010 presentation and learned about these publically available flash based interactive guides which look to be very useful. Especially, if you are having trouble finding a command in Word or Excel 2007 you knew how to get to in Word or Excel 2003.

• Excel  interactive guide
• Word interactive guide

There are also downloadable versions for Word and Excel.

The complete list of interactive guides is here.

In a nutshell the theme that I got from the Office 2010 presentation is collaboration on any platform. That is about all I can say since the details are still under NDA, but I am pretty excited…

Fixing the disappearing Send to OneNote Printer

A recurring problem I have had with Office 2007 OneNote on Vista is the disappearing Send to OneNote printer. I use this printer to send information from web sites which have a printer friendly link. The link usually pops up the printer selection box, I select send to OneNote and the web page is transferred to my OneNote notebook's unfiled note section. The translation to OneNote is displayed correctly most of the time.

The annoying part is when the printer selection box pops up and there is no Send to OneNote printer. In the past I have been able to bring up OneNote and run the Office Diagnostics under help, however lately that has not worked. I started Googling for a fix, found out that Microsoft seems to be aware of the issue but has no fix. I then stumbled on a post from the Microsoft public forums which described how to create a OneNote Printer. Since then I have created the OneNote printer on 2 machines, and it has not disappeared.

1. Add Printer - Local - Do not detect.
2. Use the following port: Send to Microsoft OneNote port.
3. Select a printer. Select any printer driver, it does not matter you will be changing it later.
4. Printer Name: you can choose any name.
5. Do not share, do not print a test page.
6. Finish.
7. Go to properties on the printer and under Advanced click the drop down
   and select the Send to Microsoft OneNote driver.

    

   

    

8. Also Under Advanced select Print Processor and choose the
   OneNotePrint2007 and leave as RAW.

    

   

    

9. Under Ports make sure it's set to the "Send to OneNote" port

    

   

    

10. Close the properties and you are set to go.

The instructions were posted by Kelvin Krastel on http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.onenote/browse_thread/thread/58c3b6f451c79f97/3498b7069519c3b5?hl=en&pli=1

GoDaddy Hosted Exchange - Forwarding to multiple email addresses

The problem: I use several alias email addresses to forward emails to myself and my wife. For example when I make a travel reservations I use an email alias called [email protected] to receive the confirmation. This eliminates the need for me to manually forward the confirmation to my wife. The problem with the GoDaddy Hosted Exchange service is that their Microsoft Email Manager Email Forward feature only allows you to forward to one email address. With GoDaddy's standard SMTP email service, you can forward to multiple addresses.

The resolution: GoDaddy's Hosted Exchange Service does allow you to create Exchange Server rules which can be executed when email arrives in your inbox. Here are the steps I use:

1. Create forward using GoDaddy's Microsoft Email manager under Email Forwards. The display name is the alias email address you want to use and the forward to address is your email address.
2. In Oultook 2007, go to Tools/Rules and Alerts.
3. Under the E-Mail Rules tab, click on New Rule.
4. Under the Start from Blank Rule section, click on Check messages when they arrive.
5. Click Next.
6. Select the check box next to sent to people or distribution list.
7. Click on the hyperlinked people or distribution list (in rule at bottom)
8. Select (double click) the email alias you created in the GoDaddy Microsoft Email manager (step 1). You may have to select the Global Address List under Address Book to view the email aliases.
9. Click OK.
10. Click Next.
11. Select the check box next to redirect it to people or distribution list.
12. Click on the hyperlinked people or distribution list (in rule at bottom).
13. Select (double click) the email address you want the email forwarded to.
14. Click Finish.
15. Click OK.

Now every time an email comes from an alias address you created in the GoDaddy Microsoft Email manager (step 1), it will automatically be forwarded to the other individuals you specified in the redirect step 11/12. These rules will run even when you are not signed in to your email account.

Windows Mobile 6.1 - Snooze that meeting reminder

I usually set my appointment reminders in desktop Outlook to 15 minutes. When the reminder pops up, the default option is to snooze the reminder to 5 minutes before the meeting. At the 5 minute mark by default you can snooze the reminder for the last 5 minutes. I find this to be a great feature and I automatically click the snooze button without having to worry about setting the snooze time frame.

The Outlook reminder pop up with the default "5 minutes before start" option set for the snooze function.

Up until to 6.1 this option was not available on Windows Mobile. 

A subtle addition which simplifies my life.

 

Microsoft to develop applications for the iPhone

Microsoft's Specialized Devices and Applications Group has the largest group of Mac developers outside of Apple. That group produces the very profitable Office suite for Mac. According Fortune.com they have been looking at the iPhone SDK to determine the viability of building application for the iPhone. Microsoft's TellMe subsidiary is also looking at the SDK to implement voice recognition applications.

Will it be long before we see Office and Voice Command on the iPhone, probably not...Could this be another blow (after the ActiveSync licensing) to the Windows Mobile team?

I think it is just another wake up call. Time to get innovative.

Office 2007 OneNote missing virtual printer

I use OneNote regularly on my Lenovo X60 tablet as well my Dell XPS 720. OneNote has an excellent synchronization feature which allows you to sync notebooks between machines. In addition to note taking, OneNote is great way to store web content. You store web content by printing to the OneNote virtual printer. Last week I went to print a page to OneNote on my XPS 720 and found the virtual printer missing. After unsuccessfully trying to manually recreate the virtual printer, I started searching for a solution.

I found the solution in the comments attached to this post. I ran the Office diagnostics in the help menu. The function recreated my OneNote virtual printer driver automatically. No need to perform the other steps in the post. I love simple solutions...

Now; if the Office team could produce a decent Windows Mobile OneNote companion, life would be grand...

Microsoft finally releases Windows Mobile Office Mobile 6.1

Office Mobile 6.1 has now been officially released for Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC and Windows Mobile 6 devices. 

Per the Microsoft web site:

"To allow Windows Mobile users to work with Office documents created in the Open XML formats, Microsoft has developed an upgrade for Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, and PowerPoint Mobile applications. This upgrade to the Office Mobile applications allows viewing and editing of Word documents and Excel workbooks and viewing of PowerPoint slideshows created by using Microsoft Office 2007

Other improvements include:

• 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"

This upgrade only works for Windows Mobile powered devices that have an earlier version of Office Mobile. If your Windows Mobile powered device does not have Office Mobile applications, this upgrade will not work for you. You can purchase Windows Mobile full Office Mobile suite from handango.

The .msi install is available free from Microsoft here.

Windows Mobile - Office 2007 compatibility update

After announcing the update, Microsoft pulled it from its website. I found a link on Howard Forums which points to a download of the .cab file.

I installed the file last night. It is huge at 6.1MB so I placed it on my Storage Card. The installation created a Windows directory on my Storage Card. I am wondering if the installation would have just overwritten the previous Office Mobile files in Storage Memory. After the installation I got into a continual reboot situation which necessitated the removal of the omap850_sdhc.dll (per my post), very bizarre. I may try reinstalling in Storage Memory.

After I got passed the reboot problem, I synced some Office 2007 files and successfully opened them.

Windows Mobile 6 - Message flags

One of the feature I use daily in the desktop version of Outlook is flags. Flags are very useful to highlight a message and add a reminder without having to create a task. I sort my inbox by flag, then by date received. This provides me with my flagged email at the top of my inbox view. 

In Outlook 2003, flags and categories were linked together. Flags could have categories associated with them. This allowed you to categorize as well as highlight messages with one action. In Outlook 2007, the Office team decided to break out categories and flags. Categories are now separate from flags. From a view perspective this broke the way I sorted my messages, since categories are now sorted independently from flags. I have not been able to sort the messages in Outlook 2007 the way I had them in Outlook 2003. I have found categories to be very useful in the past but now that I can't sort them within flags I find that I don't use them as much. I do however use flags quite a bit and now with Windows Mobile 6 and Exchange 2007 we have the ability to use flags in Mobile Outlook.

A tap on a message displays the menu with the flag options.

The only missing feature in Windows Mobile 6 is the ability to set an associated reminder on the message. Also message flag reminders are not synced to Windows Mobile 6. Hopefully, the next version of Windows Mobile will provide these features.

The week of August 13th in My Digital Life

This weekend I migrated over from 4smartphone.com Hosted Exchange 2003 server to their new Hosted Exchange 2007 server environment. The process was fairly painless.

• Create new Exchange 2007 account
• In the Exchange 2007 management console, make sure to create your email alias under mailbox, unless your are using a DNS MX record, then create a domain record under domain names
• Cleanup/Archive your 2003 mailbox
• If you have not upgrade to Outlook 2007, I recommend you do so.
• If you have rules in 2003 mailbox, export them
• Create redirect rule per 4smartphone instructions in Outlook to forward mail to 2007 mailbox (this way you won't loose any mail)
• Export Exchange 2003 mailbox to backup.pst file
• Close Outlook
• Run the profile helper under setup in the management console (this will create a new Outlook Profile pointing to Exchange 2007)
• Open Outlook
• Import backup .pst (the import won't take long, however the synchronization back up to Exchange 2007 may take some time depending on you upload bandwith, think hours not minutes)
• If you use rules, import them (you will have to edit every rule and clean up any conversion errors such as target folders)
• If you use categories, you will need to recreate them
• If you use signatures, you will have to point them to the appropriate mail account
• If you use RSS feeds, you will need to clean them up (I found duplicate feeds after conversion)
• I also had to adjust some minor options like requesting read receipts, and selecting my digital certificate
• On your Windows Mobile device you will have to delete your Exchange Server and recreate (under activesync/menu/options)

I am now running against Exchange 2007, everything seems to be running fine however some of my rules don't seem to be executing on the server. The mail comes through on Windows Mobile before it gets to the rule. I am researching the problem. 

So far here are the new features I find outstanding:

• The management and mailbox web based consoles
• The ability to wipe my Windows Mobile 6 device from OWA in case the unthinkable happens.
• Searching my entire mailbox from my Windows Mobile 6 device since I only store 1 week of data.
• Setting a Out Of Office message from my Windows Mobile 6 device
• Setting follow up flags from my Windows Mobile 6 device (this is limited compared to Outlook but helpful).
• HTML mail on my Windows Mobile 6 device.

Now I need to migrate my wife's account so we can continue to share our calendars and contacts...

I played around with MusicBridge this weekend with no luck. Unfortunately, this along with my DFL-210 router VPN setup will have to go on the back burner for now.

As I mentioned in this post, Ilium Software has just released ListPro 5.0. I have never used it and will start playing with it for a pocketnow.com review early next month.

This week:

• My review of  Sunny solar charger should be published on pocketnow.com
• I need to look at how to best share pictures with Kodak's EasyShare web site with family and friends on my upcoming vacation (I am not taking my laptop). They now all have EasyShare accounts making their access simple.