Microsoft Office

I love Amazon. I have books set on pre-order, I sell my old stuff since Ebay charges so much, whether you sell your item or not. It’s a great service, and one of the few I couldnt live without.

However, sometimes there just isnt anything there that I want to order, but I have a gift card. What to do? Easy. Sell yourself an item.

Here’s how it works. Say you have a $100 gift card (I’ll be using rounded figures just for simple math’s sake), and you would rather have it in your checking account. Here are the steps I’ve used.

• Have your main account already setup, one that you’ll be having your money go into
• Sell a book from this account. Set the amount equal to the gift card
• Open a second account
• Use the gift card to buy your own book
• Take a little cut that Amazon charges
• Watch money go into your bank account

So, you might lose a little, but at least you have the majority of your gift card nestled safely in your bank account.

Are you a single desktop user, with all of your apps locked down in the taskbar, or do you use manage all of your tasks by desktop. One for office work, one for personal, etc etc.

So, what makes you more productive?

If you’re like me, you usually download the latest and greatest versions of software, and wait until you’re all comfortable with our new setup when a thought hits you.

What about people who dont have this?

Well, if you’re using Office 2007, that shouldnt be a problem anymore. Docx Converter.com lets you upload your Office 2007 files, and it will convert them to html. It will still keep most of your formatting, and then you can just cut and paste the page into your earlier version of Office, and save it out in a more supported version.

Give it a shot, let me know your thoughts, and if you wind up using it a lot, they have a free desktop widget you can use.

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Here’s a tip from Microsoft Talk that I think needs to go here too. Its about a little tool to remove duplicate emails from Microsoft Outlook 2003.

It’s called the Outlook Duplicate Items Remover. Download it, run and enjoy your duplicate-free Outlook.

*Note: This also works on removing duplicate calendar appointments, notes, and tasks.

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Have you ever needed to make some directories with subdirectories in a hurry? You might not want to have to open the folder, right click, choose ‘New Folder’, highlight it, rename it, and repeat. Well here’s a quick tip that you can use from the command line, and will also check to see if the directories exist!

Here’s how to do it:

• Go to the command prompt (click start->run->type “cmd.exe”)
• Type (without quotes) mkdir -p a\b\c\d

What this will do is make a directory called “a”, and inside that directory it will create “b”, and so on and so on. If the directory already exists, it will give you an error message, but still make the ones that aren’t there.

Don’t forget, if you’re going to have spaces in a name, enclose it with quotation marks.

Stay tuned for more.

multiple directories, sub directories, mkdir, tips, new folders, quick, quick directories

If you’ve paid any attention to my blog, you’ll notice that I’m a big fan of automation. Whether it’s making backups, syncing files, or having my daily news and comics loaded in Firefox while I’m brewing my morning coffee. I’m lazy when it comes to remedial tasks. And now you can be too.

Today I’ll be posting about a nifty program called Texter. What Texter does is let you define hotkeys to replace text.

Say you’re a big time Ebay seller, and you’re constantly entering in your shipping address. Instead of typing it out everytime, you can use Texter to have a hotkey combo, say “addr”, to automatically insert your address. So how do that?

• First, install and run Texter.
• On the left, under “hotstring”, click the ‘+’ and type in your shortcut. I’ll use “addr” here for my address.
• On the right, type in what you want to be actually used.
• Finally, give it a trigger. The trigger is what will be pressed to search for the hotstring. I’m going to use “Tab”.

That’s all there is to it. Enjoy your new-found productivity shortcut.

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If you’re an Outlook user, you may not know, but all of your email messages, contacts, calendar appointments, etc are stored in a .PST file. PST stands for “Personal Folder File”, and can be quite handy when you want to consolidate everything for backups.

But how do you back THIS file up?

Sure, you can do it through the import/export wizard in Outlook, but the whole point in being productive is to automate the menial tasks. So I’m going to show you how to do it.

To begin with, you’ll need to download the Windows 2003 Resource Tools, since we’ll be using robocopy. Also, you’ll need to check and see if your system has Taskkill, and if not, download it. To check, go to the command prompt (Click “Start->Run”, type “cmd”, and at the prompt type “taskkill”. If you DONT get a line saying it cant be found, then you have it. If you dont have it, get it from the above link and drop it in to your windows\system32 directory).

Ok, now that you have the tools, bust out Notepad, and cut and paste the following into it, saving it with a .bat extension.

@echo off
taskkill /f /im OUTLOOK.EXE
robocopy “X:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook” “X:\Backup” *.* /S /PURGE /NP /XO
“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\OUTLOOK.EXE”

You’ll need to change the “X:” to correspond with your setup, as well as the backup destination. Also, double check to make sure your path to “Outlook.exe” is right. If not, just change it here.

So what does this script do? Well:

Save the file with a .bat extension, add it to your scheduled tasks, and you’re done!

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Live Meeting enables you to collaborate online with colleagues, customers, and partners in real time, between either individuals or large groups—with just a PC, and an Internet connection.

What are some uses? Here’s a few:

• Communicating and collaborating online and in real time means you don’t need to leave your desk to conduct effective meetings with others. Save time and money by meeting online and avoid all the hassles of business travel.
• With a familiar and easy-to-use environment, all you need is a computer with an Internet connection to conduct your online meetings. Live Meeting works directly with your other business productivity applications, such as Microsoft Office and Windows Messenger.
• With Live Meeting, you can deliver remote presentations with the same effectiveness as being in person. With full support of Microsoft Office PowerPoint animations and transitions, and the ability to receive real-time feedback from your audience, you can successfully get your point across without having to be in the same room.
• Share, collaborate, and discuss your projects in real time. Windows of opportunity are short, and you can’t afford to wait for everyone to be in the same place, at the same time. Make critical decisions quickly, with all the stakeholders, regardless of geography.

If you use this, let me know your experiences, and get a plug to your site.

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Well. Microsoft allowing something for free. Who would have thunk it?

This is from last year, but today is the first I’ve heard about it. A lot of people out there believe that all information (aka “software, movies, music, etc”) should be free. While I’m not in this camp, I do like the idea that SOME concepts of digital media should be free for all, just to prevent the reinvention of the wheel. This little tool from Microsoft can designate certain documents created in Word as having a Creative Commons License. How does it work?

• First, download and install this plugin from Microsoft.
• Now, in the “File” menu, choose “Creative Commons”. This will add the CC logo, as well as the tagline saying that the document is covered under the Creative Commons License.

While you could do this manually, if you’re writing a lot of articles that need to be covered, this can save you a little time. Enjoy.

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So yesterdary, I mentioned one way that you can compare two different doccument versions of Word using built in tools. Today, I’ll show you another way. It takes a little more work, and is a little more ugly, but the results are actually more accurate.

In addition to Microsoft Word, you’ll also need a copy of WinMerge.

Let’s start.
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