Microsoft Office

Microsoft Word

Overcome Objections

If during an interview there were specific objections raised about your candidacy, use your thank-you letter to respond to and overcome those concerns. Demonstrate that the concerns are not an obstacle but an opportunity and you’re fully prepared to meet the challenge.

Example:

You’re interviewing to be an executive for a well-established company in the Midwest. Although you’re extremely well-qualified, the CEO is concerned you’ve never lived in the area and have no network of local contacts. Eliminate those concerns by explaining your network of professional contacts is nationwide and, in fact, you know John Doe of Local Company X, have a long-standing relationship with an economic development director in the area, etc. These contacts will only serve to expand the company’s already-established network.
Reiterate Your Expertise

If the company communicated its specific needs, issues or challenges, use your thank-you letter to demonstrate how you can meet those needs.

Example:

You’ve interviewed to be the CFO of a distressed company in need of immediate action. It needs a candidate with proven success in fast-track turnarounds and revitalizations. Highlight your experience in turning a company around and showing profitability.
Highlight Your Core Professional Competencies and Successes

If the company communicated its ideal qualifications for a candidate, use your thank-you letter to outline how you meet or exceed each qualification.

Example:

You’ve interviewed for the position of EVP of technology and product development with a high tech venture, and company officials have clearly communicated four essential candidate qualifications. Help them see that you have those four qualifications by providing an overview of your career highlights.
How Long Should Your Thank-You Letter Be?

Of course, as with anything else in a job search, there is no definitive answer. One page is the norm, depending on the amount of information you want to communicate. Letters certainly do not have to be only one page.

Remind yourself that you already have the company’s interest or you wouldn’t have been interviewing, and use your thank-you letter as a tool to communicate valuable information. The entire job search process is marketing and merchandising your product — you. There is no reason why writing thank-you letters should be any different than any other of your job search activities.

Courtesy of Microsoft Office Online and Monster.com.

Branding

When your documents, presentations, and workbooks have a unified and polished appearance, they make a positive impression. Now you can “brand” your Microsoft Office documents quickly and easily by applying a document theme — a set of colors, fonts, and other formatting details that work together to give your documents a stylish, professional design. Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007 offer a wide range of predefined document themes, and you can also create your own by customizing existing themes. Document themes are shared across the programs so that all your Office documents can have the same look. Watch this demo to see how easy it is to get great results.

You can quickly and easily format an entire document to give it a professional and modern look by applying a document theme. A document theme is a set of formatting choices that include a set of theme colors, a set of theme fonts (including heading and body text fonts), and a set of theme effects (including lines and fill effects).

Programs such as Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint provide several predefined document themes, but you can also create your own by customizing and then saving an existing document theme. Document themes are shared across Office programs so that all of your Office documents can have the same, uniform look. However, unlike Word and Excel, PowerPoint includes background style customization options. For information about adding and customizing backgrounds, see Add a background to your presentation.

Click the blue link above for more information.

Office Live Workspace

Microsoft Presspass has a great interview with Michael Schultz, Microsoft Office Live Director of Marketing.

There are millions and millions of people around the world using Microsoft Office to help manage their lives. They use the Office products to help schedule carpools, grocery shopping, design party invitations, write reports, just to name a few of the many helpful ideas Microsoft Office helps.

This week, Presspass (of the Microsoft network) spoke to Michael Shultz at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Schultz talked about how using traditional desktop software in conjunction with services such as the upcoming Office Web applications (lightweight, Web-based versions of Office applications expected to be released as part of the next version of Office) could change how consumers work and play, as well as about how parents, students, and home-based businesses can use Office 2007 to make life easier.

In part, here’s what Shultz and Presspass had to say:

Office 2007 can synchronize with Office Web Online to help search for ideas, products and reports. This can help students with school products, businesses with employees online and many other applications. Office Web applications, such as one being developed for Microsoft Office OneNote (becomea MOONie–MicrosOft OneNote!).

Office 2007 can help with tracking your exercise. Says Schulz: “After each daily run, you can post your time to a personal fitness workspace in Office Live Workspace and compare it to previous times. If you share that workspace with your teammates, they’ll get an e-mail every time you update the workspace and will be able to see how you’re doing, and whether they need to step it up.”

Use one of the many online options to share your information: from Office Online, Web based applications, Groove, Infopath, Outlook, for starters. The options are limitless on how you choose to share your information.

Families, businesses, schools and friends can keep in touch instantly with all the available technology Microsoft Office has to offer.

When we mention “Help” in the software publishing world, we don’t mean technical support or maintenance (that’s generally called “Support”). Instead, the collective term “Help” refers to the free published content that ships with most commercial or professional software programs. When we mention “Help” in the software publishing world, we don’t mean technical support or maintenance (that’s generally called “Support”). Instead, the collective term “Help” refers to the free published content that ships with most commercial or professional software programs.

What you may not have noticed before is that, regardless of the interface, the programs in the Office 2007 suites have two very different Help experiences. When your computer is connected to the Internet, and if you (or your system administrator) have given permission, the Help viewer will fetch and display the most up-to-date and complete content for the Office 2007 Help in each program. This experience is preferred because, in this so-called “connected state,” you’re sure to always see the latest and greatest Help content that’s available for your program(s). In this scenario, the Help viewer bypasses the Help files that were originally installed with each program because such disk-based content cannot be automatically updated and thus becomes outdated rather quickly.

If you yank the network cable from your computer or otherwise disconnect from the Internet for any reason, the Help viewer reverts to the offline Help files on your hard drive — outdated as they may be. All of the Help and How-to content that has been published since the launch of the product is then no longer fetched from the Office Online Web site. This is problematic when you need to look up procedure steps for a program task or feature and the corresponding Help topic exists only online. For example, imagine you’re traveling on business and finishing your big PowerPoint presentation on the plane. Your boss told you to insert an animation or video, but you don’t remember how to do this. If a specific article with the solution to your issue was not published as part of the original “offline Help” files on your Office CD or DVD, you’ll have to wait until you can next connect to the Web.

Tip: To make sure your Office 2007 Help viewer is configured to fetch the latest online content whenever you’re connected to the Internet, click the button in the lower right corner of the Help viewer window (in OneNote 2007 or any other Office 2007 program, press F1) and then choose Show content from Office Online from the popup menu. “Connected to Office Online” means that your Office program will automatically include the latest online content in the Help Table of Contents and in the Search results.

From the Microsoft Office Live Small Business blog: Every morning, it seems, the news brings tidings of another massive layoff. Recently, Citigroup announced plans to lay off more than 50,000 workers. In my industry newsletters, every day at least one big company announces reductions of 10 percent to 20 percent of its work force.

For you, the small-business owner, there is some good news amidst all this bad news. The upside is that an unprecedented supply of skilled, talented, and hard-working employees is up for grabs.

“But I’m not ready to hire anyone right now,” you’re thinking. I don’t blame you. Taking on the responsibility of a new staffer’s payroll, benefits, and training at this time is not the most cost-effective move.

What I am talking about is expanding your business by outsourcing to these workers. With “real” jobs harder and harder to come by, more and more laid-off employees are exploring the freelance world, at least temporarily — and that can be a perfect fit for your business’s needs.

Contracting work to “virtual” workers enables you to meet your company’s demands without tying up cash. You pay only for the services you use. You can pay by the project or by the hour. For far less than the cost of hiring one, you could gain access to the services of a skilled marketer, Web designer, salesperson, CFO, and more.

Where do you find these workers? You don’t necessarily need to spend a lot of money advertising on the big job search sites. Craigslist and elance.com are sites lots of freelancers I know go to look for jobs. You can also check out industry-specific trade association sites or job search sites to see what types of listings they offer.

However, often the best way to find good people is simply to ask your colleagues and friends. Sadly, today everyone knows several people who have been laid off. Put the word out to your circle that you’re looking to freelance such-and-such type of project, and you’re likely to end up with several good candidates.

Sure, this may be only a temporary arrangement if the person you hire ends up finding a full-time job elsewhere. But it can also be a great way to test out how well they fit with your company — and if they’re a match, maybe someday you can offer them a full-time job yourself.

Are you contracting work out to freelancers?

From Office Online: Office is a treasure trove of hidden features that make everyday life easier. Although each version of Office has made improvements in helping users discover the available features, I find that some of my favorite features are still not well-known amongst friends and family.

#1: Format painter (Office)
The Format Painter tool replicates the formatting from one part of a document to another. So instead of manually redoing all the formatting yourself, you can use the Format Painter. First, select the text whose formatting you want to replicate. Then, click the Format Painter toolbar button. Finally, select the text you want to imbue with the format. For bonus points, you can double-click the Format Painter button to replicate the formatting to multiple areas of the document!

#2: Paragraph in/out/up/down (Office)
You can easily move a paragraph in four directions by pressing Alt+Shift+[Arrow]. To increase or decrease the indentation level of a paragraph or bullet point, press Alt+Shift+Right and Alt+Shift+Left respectively. To move a paragraph up or down, press Alt+Shift+Up or Alt+Shift+Down. This works especially well in PowerPoint, where it’s common to reorder bullet points or change indentation levels.

#3: Increase or decrease font size (Office)
To quickly increase the font size of selected text, press Ctrl+Shift+>. To decrease the size, press Ctrl+Shift+< . I find it easy to remember these keyboard shortcuts because the one with the greater-than symbol increases the font size while the less-than symbol decreases it.

#4: Quick Access Toolbar (Office)
Office 2007 has a Quick Access Toolbar that can be customized to include buttons for your favorite commands. The Quick Access Toolbar is in the top left corner of many Office applications. You customize it by clicking on the drop-arrow on its right.

#5: Fill handle (Excel)
Excel can auto-fill cells in eerily smart ways. Instead of manually typing a sequence in cells, you can simply type the first few values of the sequence and drag the fill handle to auto-fill the rest of the cells. The fill handle is the little black square at the lower right corner of a selected cell's border. Drag it to automatically fill adjacent cells.

If you drag the fill handle with only one cell selected, it will repeat that cell's value into adjacent cells. However, if you drag the fill handle with multiple cells selected, Excel is smart enough to figure out the series. For instance, in the following example, Excel will fill subsequent cells with the increasing series of odd numbers. This even works for other types of series, like dates and percentages.

(more…)

From the Microsoft Office Sharepoint Blog: So here it goes…. I’ll summarize four very different SharePoint offerings, some of them you probably weren’t even aware were based on SharePoint. Just for fun, I’ll call them Mini, Small, Medium, and Large-SharePoint.

Mini-SharePoint

Office Live Workspace, believe it or not, is built on SharePoint but highly customized and simplified for the end user. The idea is simple – create a workspace (which is like a folder), add files to it, then share it with others. Create and share Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, pictures, notes, and custom lists with anyone you want. Or use it to share files between work and home, which is a lot easier than emailing files back and forth.

I’ve created one workspace to share files with colleagues, another workspace to share photos with family, and a third workspace to organize forms and schedules for my vanpool.

Find out more at http://workspace.officelive.com

Small-SharePoint

Office Live Small Business is also built on SharePoint but highly customized with Web features, Web applications, and Web site tools. It includes a Web site, multiple email accounts, and Web applications ideal for the small business with up to 10 employees. The Web site features allow you to create a site without knowing a thing about HTML, Web design, or Web creation software. Use the included Web applications to manage and communicate with employees and customers. For simple file sharing, use the Office Live Workspace included with your account.

My goal this year is to move my mom’s real estate practice to the Web using this service.

Find out more at http://smallbusiness.officelive.com

Medium-SharePoint

SharePoint Online, along with Exchange Online, Communications Online, and Live Meeting make up the new Microsoft Online Services. Rather than installing and maintaining SharePoint Server, SQL Server, Exchange Server, and other server software in your office, just sign up for this business hosting solution and let Microsoft do the heavy IT lifting for you. The service can handle up to 500 individual PC users. Just launch a Web browser, and you have immediate access to your entire business environment.

I would highly recommend this service to any small business that has outgrown Office Live Small Business but is too small to manage a SharePoint deployment.

Find out more at http://www.microsoft.com/online

Large-SharePoint

SharePoint Server (Windows SharePoint Services and Office SharePoint Server). Last but not least, we have the actual SharePoint software in the box. For the large and enterprise organizations looking to deploy a completely customized and integrated content management solution across the organization, this is what you need. With SharePoint running on your corporate servers, you have complete control over your corporate Intranet, Extranet, and Internet presence, and you can build on the existing collaboration tools, managed business processes, and integration with Microsoft Office client applications.

This is what I use at work every day to communicate with colleagues, collaborate on projects, find critical business data, and actively monitor projects in my department and other departments.

Find out more at http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint

I hope this clarifies the various SharePoint offerings that you or your business can choose from.

From Inside Office Online blog: The October employment news was not good. Another 240,000 people lost their jobs. The unemployment rate reached a 14-year high of 6.5 percent, with 2.8 million more people unemployed than at this time last year. The double whammy of mortgage woes and unemployment is hitting home.

How can we help?

Over the next several months we’ll be rolling out to you as much timely information about job skills as we can. We’ll cover honing your skills so you excel at the job you already have or have in mind, as well as tips for finding and landing the job you want. We’ll serve up everything from resume templates and training courses to clever (sometimes even extreme) job search strategies—including ones we’ve used ourselves.

If you’re hiring, we’ll also provide or point you to resources that can help you make sure you hire the right people the first time.

It won’t all be grim–even in the midst of a job crunch we have to laugh (sometimes ruefully) and celebrate. So we’ll do what we can to keep it light, too.

This will be an ongoing project–one in which many of us here at Office Online will take part. We’ll ask for your feedback as we go, so we can tailor what we deliver to the situations you actually face. I.e., reality.

For starters, what, in your experience, is the most frustrating thing about looking for work?

From Inside Office Online Blog: If you are anything like me the Halloween pumpkins are still on the front porch, so the winter holidays seem a long way off. But somehow every year they creep up on me and I find myself in a frantic cyclone of cards, wrapping paper, and postage stamps. Each fall I vow that I’ll start preparing earlier so I’ll have the time to enjoy what’s really important, which is spending time with family and friends.

This year we have a holiday page dedicated to helping you get it all done, spend less money, and create meaningful cards and gifts at home. In this year’s economic conditions, holiday spending will be a priority for a lot of people. Be careful not to overspend by using our holiday budget planner.

You can also save money creating personalized handmade gifts, cards, and photo albums. Every year I like to make photo calendars for my family that include pictures of things we’ve done together over the course of the previous year. These calendars are inexpensive, easy to make, and a great way to capture family memories.

When all your gifts are ready to wrap, here are three ways to enhance your packages. Then use Outlook to ship your gifts with FedEx QuickShip. With FedEx QuickShip, you can create and track U.S. shipments, get rates, schedule pickups, and find the nearest staffed FedEx location all from your home!

Now kick back and enjoy the holiday season!

From MSN Money: Have a tightwad’s Christmas

Try these ideas for keeping holiday spending under control, finding alternative gifts and making your hard-earned dollars go farther this year.

Money’s tight, the credit cards are maxed and you’re not much of a hand at making crafts anyone would want to receive.

So how do you manage holiday gifts without raiding your 401(k)?

First, the obvious. Before you buy the first present, make a list of everyone you’d like to buy a gift for and set a limit of how much you want to spend on each. Total those figures, then add in what you expect to spend for decorating, holiday clothes, tips, entertaining and travel.

Trim down and try something new
If the grand total is overwhelming, start trimming your list. Some ideas:

Agree to exchange cards instead of gifts with friends.

Have a potluck instead of an elaborate feast that requires you do all the work (and grocery shopping).

Make do with last year’s decorations and clothes, or swap with friends.

Persuade your extended family to draw names rather than have everyone buy everyone else a gift.

Boot the adults and give gifts only to the kids.

Once you’ve got the list, consider the following ideas to help you get the most bang for your holiday bucks and skip the expensive, last-minute rush at the mall:

Cruise the deal sites. Web sites like Ben’s Bargains, Deals of America, My Bargain Buddy and SlickDeals.net can alert you to killer bargains around the Web, such an Amazon.com Baby Store sale where a leopard-print fleece infant jacket could be found for $3 and a Dr. Seuss sun hat for $2.60. Another deal: a well-made acoustic guitar for $40, half the usual price, plus free shipping from Musician.com.

Home and Office Computer Users
Training materials from Microsoft Learning will help you use the enhanced intuitive design and improved features of the 2007 Microsoft Office system to get more out of the programs that you use every day. Find the resources—Microsoft E-Learning, classroom training, and books and training kits from Microsoft Press—that will help you start taking advantage of the new functionality in the 2007 Office system.

Microsoft E-Learning
If you learn best independently, Microsoft E-Learning courses provide a simple and effective way for you to learn at your own pace and on your own schedule. Take Microsoft E-Learning courses to improve your skills, prepare for a project, or earn certifications.

• View a list of Microsoft E-Learning courses on 2007 Office system applications in the Microsoft Learning Catalog

Books from Microsoft Press
Some of the biggest work challenges you face today—information overload, knowledge management, collaboration limitations, and localization issues—are directly addressed by new features in the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

• Find books from Microsoft Press

• View a list of Microsoft Press books about the 2007 Office system in the Microsoft Learning Catalog

Classroom training
Microsoft Certified Partners for Learning Solutions deliver Microsoft Learning training in a classroom environment. The training is facilitated by expert Microsoft Certified Trainers (MCTs).

• Locate a Learning Solutions partner near you

Microsoft Business Certification program
The Microsoft Business Certification program validates your job skills in using the 2007 Microsoft Office system, Microsoft Office SharePoint portal sites, and Windows Vista. Whether you want to stand out in the job market, improve and simplify your organization’s hiring processes, or empower your students to enter the workforce; the Microsoft Business Certification credential demonstrates that you have proven expertise that businesses will depend on.

• Learn more about the Microsoft Business Certification program

Free self-paced training courses for Office programs