Microsoft Office

Whether you’re on the road for business or pleasure—provided you’re not traveling by canoe in the Amazon jungle or dog sled in the arctic—there’s probably a way to stay in touch by e‑mail. With a little knowledge and advance planning, it’s easy to check your e‑mail from the road. Here are some tips to help you remain in contact with friends, family, and colleagues while you’re on the go.

1. Use web mail and travel light

If you use a web-based e‑mail service such as Windows Live Hotmail, you can send and receive e‑mail using someone else’s computer, without the need to carry around your own mobile PC while you travel.
2. Carry a laptop and use your own e‑mail program

If you’re traveling on business, chances are you’ll have your own mobile PC with you. In this case, you can use a more full-featured e‑mail program such as Windows Live Mail or Windows Mail.
3. Try doing e‑mail offline

Write messages when you’re inspired, not when you’re connected. If you have a laptop with you, take advantage of offline time to read messages you have already downloaded and compose replies and other new messages.
4. Hone your skills at finding Internet cafés

If you’re traveling without a mobile PC, train yourself to watch for Internet cafés and other places where you can rent a computer for a short period of time to check your e‑mail.
5. Look up Internet café locations before you go

If you want to be sure you can check your e‑mail from the road, make a list in advance of Internet cafés where you will be traveling. This can be important if you will be traveling in areas where Internet access is less likely to be available.

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FEllow MOONies (MicrosOft OneNoteies), here’s part of an article from the OneNote and Education blog that has highlighted a study by a Finnish Educator.

Since it was launched in October 2003, the electronic notebook, OneNote, has been one of Microsoft’s best kept secrets.

Fortunately, more and more people now seem to be introduced to the program – fortunately, for OneNote is a very strong learning tool that may be completely personalized in accordance with to the users’ needs, not least their learning styles needs. The comprehensive tutorials that come with the program very instructively show its immense possibilities and flexibility, and in order for the users to make qualified choices among the many features, they would be well advised to use their learning styles. As the above table shows, quite a few learning styles elements are directly addressed in OneNote and the rest of them are indirectly addressed.

The Analytic and the Global Learners

The OneNote interface (and the interface of other MS Office programs as well) supports both analytic and global processors. Analytic learners are often not visual-picture oriented, and they should therefore stick to the text based dropdown menus and remove the icons. Globals, on the other hand, tend to be strongly visual picture learners and should wallow in toolbars with icons, even if this makes the working screen somewhat smaller.

Analytic learners can easily develop the very structure they need and prefer in order to build up knowledge. The flexible OneNote search feature prevents the analytic learners from getting lost in tiny details, and the use of hyperlinks between notebooks, sections, and subsections obviously has the same effect.

Education institutions worldwide embrace Microsoft Live@edu to enrich student experience, enhance learning outcomes and fuel productivity; new Microsoft Outlook Live delivers new e-mail functionality based on the popular Outlook interface.

several universities and institutions of higher learning have recently signed on to Microsoft Live@edu, signifying continued worldwide growth of this service. With enhanced collaboration and communications features, Live@edu is a no-charge suite that enhances student productivity in both the classroom and their personal lives. In addition, Microsoft announced that Microsoft Exchange Labs, which currently delivers rich e-mail functionality as a service to 3.5 million Live@edu users, will be renamed Outlook Live. The Outlook Live service will also be extended to support faculty and staff members at no charge.

“Live@edu’s impressive growth trajectory demonstrates that it’s an attractive offering with institutions of higher learning,” said Anna Kinney, senior product manager for Microsoft Live@edu. “Today’s new enhancements and extension to include faculty and staff members will make Live@edu even more compelling for today’s budget-conscious campuses.”

Booming Enrollment

The growth in universities, colleges and schools embracing Live@edu includes the following recent landmark customer wins:

• University of Queensland. The university has created 83,000 accounts on Live@edu for student use and plans to create an additional 100,000 accounts for use by alumni in the near future.

• Ohio State University. The U.S.’s largest public university, counting more than 61,000 students.

• Ministry of Education of Peru. Paving the way for the activation of up to 4 million students and 150,000 teachers on Live@edu.

• University of New South Wales. Recognized as one of Australia’s leading teaching and research institutions with more than 44,500 students and 6,000 faculty members.

• University of Ulster. One of the largest universities in Ireland with more than 25,000 students, 1,100 of them studying fully online from over 55 different countries.

• Government of the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Live@edu will be made available to more than 6 million students of the state.

At the University of Queensland, students, faculty members and administrators are using Live@edu to augment instruction, improve communications and foster greater collaboration.

Game Giveaway of the Dayoffers games on Saturdays and Sundays. Today’s game is a fun little point and click format, “Ghost in the Sheets”.

Welcome to the afterlife! It’s nothing like you’ve expected. Ghost in the Sheet is a comedy adventure game of supernatural proportions. Become a ghost and master your new paranormal skill set to unravel the secrets of your life-after-death adventure! Mystery, intrigue, comedy and adventure await; aren’t you just dying to play?

Features
High-resolution graphics with detailed animations to immerse players
A RPG-like skill learning system: as players progress through the game, they learn new paranormal skills that are vital for future adventures
Skills range from the conventional paranormal Telekinesis to obscure skills like Scary Sound
Nonlinear gameplay that allows players to freely roam the factor while solving a variety of puzzles in any order
Music and sound design are seamlessly integrated into the game
Humorous and entertaining minigames integrated into the gameplay
No dying, mazes, slider puzzles, or timed sequences that can needlessly frustrate
NPCs who reveal hints and provide intriguing back-story
Comic style cutscenes to supplement the plot.

Unzip the package you’ve downloaded, and carefully read the instructions which you can find in the readme.txt file. This readme.txt file is included with all our downloads. Follow the instructions carefully to install and activate the software.

To get the game, click the blue link above to go to Game Giveaway Of the Day, then click their download link. It’s fairly large, at 211 mb, but the graphics are said to be great.

Valentines Card for your sweetie from Microsoft Office Templetes. Just download and print from your home office. There are several to choose from on their download site.

How about a special Powerpoint Valentine to share with your loved ones?

Throwing a Valentines Party? Send out E-Vites with this Microsoft invitation templete.

Make a Valentine’s Day card
Let’s create a card. There are a number of Valentine’s Day templates to choose from on Office Online. If you find one you like, you can print it, sign it, and, voilà — you’re done! You have an instant Valentine’s Day card, sure to be a pleaser.

But what if you want to make your own card with personal touches? Let’s make one from scratch in Publisher.

Step 1: Choose the predesigned publication and layout
Start Publisher. In the New Publication task pane, click Publications for Print, click Greeting Cards, and then click Valentine’s Day.
Scroll through the pre-designed greeting card publications on the right. Select any one you want, as we’ll soon customize it. In this example, we’re using Valentine’s Day Card 11.
In the Greeting Cards Options task pane, under Design, click the option that allows you to modify the layout and appearance of the original design. In this example, we’ll use Art Bit.
Note Some card designs, such as the Fading Frame and Tipped Title designs, are set up for only one layout option. If you choose one of these designs, the layout options displayed under Design in the Greeting Card Options task pane will not be available.

Click Page Options, and then choose the card size and fold style you want under Size and Fold.
Click Color Schemes, and then choose your color scheme.
Click Font Schemes, and then choose your font scheme.
When your greeting card looks the way you want, save the file.
Step 2: Choose the right clip art
Next, let’s change the clip art on this card. Nice heart, but let’s delete it and find another clip.

Step 3: Copy and paste clip art from the Web into your document
On the Clip Art and Media search results page, click on Copy to Clipboard for the clip you want to copy.
Go to your Publisher Valentine’s Day template. On the Edit menu, click Paste.

Give to your Favorite Valentine!

If you work with Project 2007, the Project Team blog posted a great article on how to more effectively use time sheets.

The functionality is so dramatically different that we changed the name to “Administrative Time”. The setup work requires:

Customers to create Administrative Categories
Each category must be marked as “Work” or “Non Work”
i) Non Working Time – Time scheduled as project calendar exceptions directly from the user without the need to involve Project Professional. While it still blocks the Project scheduling engine from assigning work to the individual during that time.

ii) Working Time – Time scheduled as virtual task assignments. These are virtual, since they do not reside in any true project file, instead they are simple records in the SQL database. This has the effect of allowing resources to be scheduled in excess of 100%.

Optionally categories can be set to require a manager’s approval
Optionally categories may be marked for “Always Display” which places a copy of that category on every timesheet that is used

HOW TO USE

Let’s now talk about how best to implement and use these options. To begin with I would like you to consider the term “Non Working” and “Working” as terms that mean “Block Scheduling” and “Allow Over Allocation” respectively. With that understood, the first rule to consider is:

Non Working work type should only be used on administrative categories that will be used to plan time off.

This is important since Project does not like to move actual work once established and calendar exceptions cannot allow work to exist during time periods which they are set to occupy. An example of what you should NOT do is as follows:

i) You create a category called “Sick time” and make that non working.

ii) A member of your team comes to work on Monday and works on a task that begins on Monday and goes for two days.

iii) The team member reports that the task is 50% complete. But then the employee goes home sick.

iv) At the end of the week the team member fills in his timesheet and reports 4 hours of sick time on Monday.

Result: Project took the 16 hour task and assigned 50% of the work as actual work reported by the team member on Monday. But the timesheet also wants to place a calendar exception for that day. The team member should only have been able to logically complete 25% of the work on the task. Below are screen shots of what happens:

16 hours of work on Wednesday and Thursday, auto imported from My Tasks, with 8 hours of “Dr. Appointment” (non working time) entered into the timesheet.

Click the blue link to see the solution!

Armelle O’Neal over on Microsoft at Work has listed some great ways to protect your data.

Back Up Your Data
In 2004, 59 percent of computer attacks in government agencies, corporations, and educational institutions in the United States were attributed to mobile PC theft.1 In the same year, mobile PC theft resulted in $6.7 million of losses.2 These statistics underscore the importance of regularly (optimally weekly, but at least monthly) archiving your documents, folders, and settings so that you can retrieve the data if your mobile PC is stolen or the hard disk drive fails. You can back up your data to a CD or DVD, to a USB flash card, or to another computer if your computer is on a network. To back up data, you can use the Backup utility in Microsoft Windows XP.

Encrypt Your Data
Data encryption provides a great line of defense against misuse of information if your mobile PC is stolen. Data encryption is the transcription of data from an intelligible format to an unintelligible, but decryptable, format. When encrypted, stolen data on a mobile PC is worthless.

You can encrypt a subset of files or folders or a full disk, in which case it protects the data stored in files and folders, the operating system, and any installed programs.

If you’re using Windows XP, you can use Encrypting File System (EFS) to encrypt your data, including Web folders and offline folders. EFS allows you to seamlessly encrypt your data. When you save data to the disk, it’s encrypted on the fly.

Important To use EFS, you must be using the NTFS file system. To find out the file system you’re using, click Start and point to My Computer. In the My Computer window, right-click the hard drive and check the File format field on the General tab of the Properties dialog box.

Use an Anti-Theft Device
One of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to secure your mobile PC is to use a security cable or lock, with or without an alarm, to attach your mobile PC to a stationery object. Most mobile PCs have security slots in the side or the back of their case.

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Slow down, freeze, crash, and security threats are over. Advanced SystemCare Free is a comprehensive PC care utility that takes a one-click approach to help protect, repair, and optimize your computer. It provides an all-in-one and super convenient solution for PC maintenance and protection. All work will be done with 1 click and 1 minute. Compared with its nearest competitor, Advanced SystemCare Free provides the more essential and practical formula for Windows: Removing Spyware and Adware, Preventing Security Threats, Privacy Protection, Fixing Registry Errors, Temporary Files Cleanup, Startup Cleanup, Repairing Windows, Speeding up System and 1-click Mechanism.

Version 3.1.2 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.

This utility offers a one-stop-shop for cleaning and maintaining your computer for better overall system performance. The interface is very simple, featuring only a few buttons, which makes it easy to get down to cleaning immediately (in fact, it automatically runs on start-up) and doesn’t confuse you with multiple steps.

The Maintain Windows section focuses on four areas of maintenance: spyware removal, Registry cleaning, a privacy sweep, and deletion of junk files. The Diagnose System button provides system optimization tools, detects spyware, defragments your disk, and scans for hijacked Windows settings. In our tests the scan and clean for each of these areas took less than 10 minutes to complete. In many of these scans, it is difficult to tell what exactly is being accomplished by some of the tools, but we were able to test against other trusted apps, which confirmed Advanced SystemCare’s efficacy in those areas.

Under the utilities section you are given several tools, which are similar to plug-ins, for other areas of optimization and diagnostic tests. Overall, Advanced SystemCare Free is a good way to maintain your system’s speed and clear out junk files, but you’ll need to remember to run it regularly because scheduling of scans is only available in the paid Pro version.

From Access team blog: Access 2007 has a nifty feature that allows you to collect data via email. Recently, I got the following question from a user:

Is there any way to automate the creation, sending and receiving of Emails through the Data Collection capability of A07 using VBA? The wizard is too complex for the users I am working with.

Here is the reply we got from the developer—it isn’t for the faint at heart…

There isn’t a straight-forward way to do this and it isn’t officially supported. It’s possible if you don’t mind a little reverse engineering… The key is that there are two places Data Collection uses to do its work. One is in a system table inside Access used to store information about the action, and the other is an XML file that Outlook uses when mails are received to identify Data Collection mails and associated databases.

The system table is called MSysDataCollection. There’s one entry for each data collection action that’s created in the database. A quick rundown of the fields:

Active – Controls whether the current Data Collection action should be run.
BasedOnType – This marks whether the data collection is based on a query or a table
CreatedDate – When was the data collection action originally started.
ExternalID – A unique GUID to identify the Data Collection action
FormName – Name of the form; appears in the e-mail subject
InfoPathForm – True if we sent out an InfoPath form, false if it was HTML
Mapping – An XML chunk that defines how fields in the table/query map to fields in the form. Your best bet is to create a few Data Collection actions similar to ones your users might create, and mimic the XML. Here’s some of the interesting bits

stores most of the properties found in the Options dialog of the Data Collection Wizard

, despite the name, only supports one table. This section stores the database column name to the form field name mapping.

’s name attribute should always be “table1”, accessTable is the table name inside Access, and collectionType is either “insert” or “update”
points to where in the InfoPath/HTML form we’re looking for data (as opposed to formatting, etc.). This doesn’t change much.
There will be one
for each column in your form, including hidden fields. formNode is for the form, and is always “table1fieldX”, tableCell is for the Access table
The tag stores who we sent the mail to, in case we want to only accept certain people’s responses, or limit how many times, or what rows, they can update.

Read more by clicking link above.

Tell a great visual story about a memorable event or trip

What a memorable family holiday! What a special visit from your daughter and your new grandchild! Cool soccer party! Great vacation! Don’t you wish everyone could experience the most meaningful events in your life the way you did? Visual images can conjure up great experiences that you can share with others or revisit by yourself. This article shows you how to capture great photos that will help you to tell your story best.

That’s right, your family holiday, team party, or vacation is a story; each memorable experience has a beginning, middle, and an end. Taking photos in a way that tells the story is the first step in capturing the significant events in your life and sharing it with others.

Digital photography has dramatically changed the way you can share your experiences with others. It provides many new options for telling stories with images. For example:

• You can create a digital scrapbook or slide show to share with others.

• You might burn images to a CD and ship them to your parents or send them via e-mail to family and friends around the world.

• By combining Microsoft Pro Photo software Capture One and Expression Media, you can add stunning professional effects to your photos, and then easily publish, distribute, and archive them.

• With a program like Windows Movie Maker, you can even create a movie of your still images, complete with music, movement, and narration.

• Windows DVD Maker, available in Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate, enables you to create professional-looking video DVDs of your home movies and photos and then view them on your DVD players, regardless of geographical region codes.

• The new software AutoCollage enables you to create beautiful collages of your favorite pictures with a few mouse clicks. You can download AutoCollage and start creating your own collages within minutes, then share them with friends and the wider community.

• With the new program Photosynth, you can combine photos on a digital canvas and reconstruct a scene or object to achieve the cinematic quality of a movie and the detail of the real world. The program makes it easy to share your unique creations with others on the Web.