Microsoft Office

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.

automate, script, hotkey, replace, auto replace, word, tags, auto

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!

robocopy, outlook, backup, pst, email backup, email storage, scripting, windows backup, microsoft office backup, outlook backup

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.

live meeting, conference, netmeeting, collaborate, office, microsoft, share

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.

office, creative commons, office plugin, cc, license, free, word, microsoft, microsoft office creative commons

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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So, you’ve been working on a document on Word, emailed a copy to yourself to work on it elsewhere, and when you got back to the original, you forgot to turn the “track changes” on. Now what?

You can either cut and paste the two versions together manually, or use one of three options provided to you by Microsoft Word. Today we’ll focus on just one of those.

This method allows you to compare the versions, merge them into another document, and then allow you to approve or reject them.

Results will vary, but this can be a good starting point. Check in tomorrow for the second version, using WinMerge.

word, microsoft, winmerge, compare, track changes

If you stick around the site long enough, you’ll find out that I’m a big fan of automation. It’s nice to be able to wake up in the morning, having my email already open and ready for me, Firefox loaded with all of my “morning stuff” opened and ready for me to read, and my streaming radio show, Lex and Terry, already playing.

So how do I do it? To create the script, open up Notepad (this will be your batch file when you’re all done).

Here’s my morning script:

• start firefox “http://www.netvibes.com?” “http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/” “http://lifehacker.com/” “http://www.foxnews.com/”
• start outlook

What “start” does, is simulate pressing the ‘Start’ button, then selecting ‘Run’ and typing in the command you want.

So, I’m starting Firefox with my morning reads open in tabs, then starting Outlook to have my email ready to go.

That’s it! Save the file with a .bat extension (when you save in notepad, enclose the filename in quotes or it wont work), save it to where your scripts are stored, and add it in the Scheduled Tasks.

productivity, automate, scripts, batch,

Everyone has been in the same situation. It’s 2am, you’re finishing up an {insert procastinated project}, and what happens? The computer crashes! Your saved file might work, but what if its corrupted, and you can’t get any recoverable data back? What if it wipes out your collection of family vacations? Sure, you “backup”, copying files to your thumbdrive, CD-R, or whatnot. But you need something more reliable so you can SET IT AND FORGET IT! -thx Ronco

Introducing: RoboCopy (Robust Copy)

RoboCopy is part of the Windows 2003 Resource Tools that can be installed on a Windows machine, and provides more functionality when it comes to copying files. Want to copy only newer files? Robocopy can do it. Want to remove files that are backed up that you deleted from the source? Check. Want to keep autoamte and keep track of what is going on? Ding ding ding ding ding!!!

So, what to do?

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Have a document that you need to zoom in and out of a lot to navigate? Until now, I would stop what I was doing, click on the ‘Zoom Scale’ window, change or type in what I needed, and go from there. BUT NO MORE! Just hold ‘Ctrl’, and then use your mouse wheel to zoom in and out.

quick, tip, zoom, mouse

If you’re like me, then you grew up in the days of green monochrome screens in the computer lab, 5 1/2″ floppies, and the good old keyboard. While the mouse helped revolutionize computers and multitasking, some of us are just keyboard ninjas. Launchy is just the sort of program to keep your HIYA’s up to snuff.

Basically, once you install it, you activate it using hotkeys. By default, the combination is “Alt Space”. It loads a little window at the bottom, and you start typing away. Since Launchy indexes your Start Menu by default (and any other directory and/or filetype you tell it to monitor), all it takes is a few strokes and your program is automatically selected. No more navigating through menu after menu looking for an app.

While it might not be of use to everyone, for me, its an office hack that I can’t live without.

productivity, launchy, keyboard, mouse, quicklaunch, quicksilver