Microsoft Office

After you get that all-important, rare interview, do follow up with a Thank You letter.

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.

From Microsoft Inside Office Online: Theyhave created a new Office Online Career Center and partnered with Monster.com to make the entire job hunting process - from planning your strategy to polishing your resume and submitting it for a position - as painless as possible.

Check out the video, where they walk Seattle’s Alycia Delmore through the process and help her get ready for her next job. Download a resume template and update your own. Look for a job in your area, and post your resume. They’ve even linked to career advice from Monster’s career experts. It’s all there on the page, and broken down in even greater detail in this article.

They didn’t forget those employers who might have openings, because as difficult as it is to find the right job, they know it’s also challenging to find the right candidate for an open position.

Finally, they know their resume templates are among the most popular templates on our site. Our hope is that this new Career Center helps you do more and we wish you luck in your search for a job.

Here’s Microsoft’s Office Online Career Center:

Four Steps to Online Job Search:

1. Start with a strategy
You can avoid anxiety about your job search by starting with a strategy — and we can put you on the fast track with a strategy that’s ready for you now. Monster.com and Office Online are teaming up to make the whole job search process faster and easier.

2. Search for available jobs
What are you looking for?

On Monster.com, you can find information on what employers are looking for in your field, such as finance career tips or information for technology jobs. Go to the Advice home page, scroll down to the View Information by Category section, and click the industry you want to know more about.

If you need to brush up on some of your Office skills, you can find free, self-paced training courses on Office Online.

3. Write your resume
Now that you’ve found a job you want to apply for — or you’ve learned more about the industry where you want to work — it’s time to dust off and brush up your resume.

You want your resume to look professional and to stand out. And you want it to be returned in Search results — right in front of anyone looking for the perfect candidate (that’s you).

Submit!
You’re ready to start your search officially.

If you created your resume using a Word 2007, template, take a moment to save a copy of your resume in .doc format. That’s the copy that you’ll submit to Monster.

Click the Submit button to submit your resume to Monster.com. You can submit it specifically to that job you saw earlier, and you can submit it generally for employers to find in their searches.

Follow up
You can use the Job search log template or the Interview/Resume Follow-Up Log template on Office Online to keep track of where you’ve sent resumes and follow-up letters, and where you’ve interviewed, as well as tracking the thank you letters you send after those interviews.

For more details, click the blue link above to access Microsoft’s Career Planning site.

Microsoft is looking for their newest office (tentatively called Office 2010) to work with other Office programs

Microsoft engineers at the Redmond campus are busy at work with the next iteration of Microsoft Office, tentitively called “Office 2010″.

The hints, innuendos and rumors that have been posted all over the internet (as well as this site) is looking to be more true than not.

The three year wait between Office products is on schedule, according to Ina Fried’s article (link above). The new software is to work with open formerly rival office programs, such as Open Office, Google Docs and the like.

Microsoft is also working to make Office 14 (Office 2010) work with Microsoft phones (and phones in development) and the new up and coming Office Web Aps, that will include Word, Excel and Powerpoint (the Campus’ office mainstay programs). These are to be accessible online, either from their Cloud, including Live Mesh, Windows Live SkyDrive, and Office Live Workspace. Though, I have seen a rumor that Microsoft may combine all their workspaces into one online application. They are already making changes to their Office Live Small Business framework.

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft combines Office 14 with web aps, fully compatible with Open Office, Google Docs and not only with Microsoft phones, but the iPhone, as was reported in the above article. As of now, there are compatibility issues with Microsoft Office 2007 and the above said issues, though Office 2007 Word does have a way to save in the 97-03 formats, I wonder if Office 2010 will have a similar venue, to ’save as’ OOo or google doc?

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!

The Microsoft Excel blog posted about using Excel and Word to print envelopes.

They give a pretty detailed explanation, complete with screenshots along the way. If you you use Mail Merge quite often (or need it once) this is a great tool. I, myself, do not have a lot of people (neither in my business life nor my personal life) to mail to. For those that have hundreds of people to send out cards, newsletters, notices or information, Mail Merge is a great way to set up printing and mailing.

You can even get a home United States Postal Service postage stamp machine for your home business and set up home pickup for bulk mailings. Just browse around on the United States Postal Service website for more information.

On the Excel blog, they cover how to:

Create a Table

The first step is to create a Table from the list of addresses.

Define a Name for the Table

Excel allows you to define names that apply to a range of cells in the worksheet. When a name is defined for a Table in a worksheet, the name will update automatically as the table is resized to add or remove data. This is helpful in this case because I want to add and remove addresses during the process of printing envelopes.

Verify Addresses

After my Table is created and a name applied, I start going through the addresses to confirm which ones are correct. I do this by adding a new column to the Table for this year. To do this, just type 2008 in cell H2. The Table and the name that we defined will expand automatically. Once you have the new column, then you can type something in the column to indicate whether the address is correct. I used a “Y” in my list.

And much more. Click the link to learn how.

Templates can store styles, AutoText entries, AutoCorrect entries, macros, toolbars, custom menu settings, and shortcut keys. Loading a template makes it available as a global template that you can use while you work with documents based on any other template.

Add-ins are supplemental programs that you can install to extend the capabilities of Microsoft Office Word by adding custom commands and specialized features. An example of an add-in program might be a program designed and distributed by your company’s IT department to highlight company names in any document you open on your computer.

Load templates or add-ins
When you load a template or add-in, it remains loaded for the current Word session only. If you quit and then restart Word, the template or add-in is not automatically reloaded.

Click the Microsoft Office Button , and then click Word Options.
Click Add-Ins.
In the Manage list, select Word Add-ins, and then click Go.
Click the Templates tab.
Under Global templates and add-ins, select the check box next to the template or add-in that you want to load.
If the template or add-in you want does not appear in the box, click Add, switch to the folder that contains the template or add-in you want, click it, and then click OK.

Unload templates or add-ins
To conserve memory and increase the speed of Word, it’s a good idea to unload templates and add-in programs you don’t often use. When you unload a template or add-in that’s located in your Startup folder, Word unloads the template for the current Word session but automatically reloads it the next time you start Word. When you unload a template or add-in located in any other folder, it is unavailable until you reload it. To delete a template or add-in from Word, you must remove the template or add-in from the Templates and Add-ins dialog box.

Click the Microsoft Office Button , and then click Word Options.
Click Add-Ins.
In the Manage list, select Word Add-ins, and then click Go.
Click the Templates tab.
Do one of the following:
To unload a template or add-in but leave it under Global templates and add-ins, clear the check box next to the name of the item.
To unload a template or add-in and remove it from the box under Global templates and add-ins, click the item in the box, and then click Remove.

The Remove button is unavailable when the template you select is located in your Startup folder.
When you unload a template or add-in, you do not remove it from your computer — you only make it unavailable. Where you’ve stored the template or add-in determines whether it’s loaded when you start Word.

Make a template or add-in available whenever you start Word
To have a template or add-in available whenever you start Word, store the add-in or template in the Startup folder. By default, the Startup folder is located in one of the following folders:

Windows Vista
c:\Users\user name\AppData\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or Microsoft Windows XP
c:\Documents and Settings\user name\Application Data\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP
If the location of the Startup folder has changed, you can find it by doing the following:

Click the Microsoft Office Button , and then click Word Options.
Click Advanced.
Under General, click File Locations.
Save the template that you want available when you start Word to the location that is listed for Startup.

Find out how to use Microsoft Word to create a holiday letter to send to all your friends and family as well as mailing labels for a mass mailing. Also learn how to make holiday decorations with Word. Use this self-administered training packet.

After completing this course you will be able to:

Create and decorate a newsletter.
Create mailing labels for your envelopes.
Create some holiday decorations.

This course includes:

Three self-paced lessons and three practice sessions for hands-on experience.
A short test at the end of each lesson; tests are not scored.
A Quick Reference Card you can take away from the course.

The holidays are always a busy time of year. This time, get organized and let Word help you out.

Learn how to create and decorate fantastic newsletters that you can send in a mass mailing to your friends; run a mail merge to create labels for your envelopes; and have some fun making holiday decorations that you can get the whole family involved in.

This course contains details on using mail merge to create labels; for more information about mail merge, see Use mail merge for mass mailings and more.

Introducing DAISY, a technology that promises to revolutionize the reading experience for people who have print disabilities like blindness or dyslexia.

what is a DAISY book? Well the Consortium describes it as:

One or more digital audio files containing a human narration of part or all of the source text A marked-up file containing some or all of the text (strictly speaking, this marked-up text file is optional) A synchronization file to relate markings in the text file with time points in the audio file A navigation control file which enables the user to move smoothly between files while synchronization between text and audio is maintained
In short, the DAISY standard can be converted to a number of outputs including Braille, audio, and text synchronized with audio.

Three goals of interoperability
With the introduction of Open XML as the default format in Word 2007, we introduced the potential to do some really cool things with DAISY and further our commitment to interoperability. When we kicked this effort we had three goals in mind.

Our first goal was to reduce the barrier to creating DAISY XML and increase content availability. Prior to this translator, creating a basic DAISY XML file could be very difficult or costly. We wanted to put this capability in the hands the hundreds of millions of Word users around the world and make it as easy as creating any other document.

We also wanted to provide an additional reference implementation for Developers who want to harness the power of Open XML. This is a really important one to us. We are deeply committed to interoperability and are doing everything possible to prove it. It is an open source project and anyone in the developer community is more than free to use it as a reference or even extend it in to other products and on to other platforms (such as Linux).

Finally, we wanted to increase the visibility of DAISY and the benefit it can offer to a variety of users. The DAISY consortium and the digital talking book format are important activity hubs for users with disabilities around the world. When we talk about accessibility we tend to quickly gravitate to the extremes, such as blindness or paralysis. True enough, we have the most to learn from a technology perspective in these areas. However, we tend to forget that technologies like DAISY can help the hundreds of millions of people around the world with other disabilities such as dyslexia, illiteracy, or even things like vision loss brought on by aging.

“So, what are Building Blocks?”
In the simplest terms, Building Blocks are reusable chunks of a Word document. They can contain any thing a Word document can contain, including pictures, shapes, fields, and even other building blocks.

“Sounds a lot like AutoText, how is this different?”
In many ways, Building Blocks are an extension of AutoText. However, you can do a few things with building blocks that you can’t do with AutoText. My personal favorite is that you can define how building blocks insert. AutoText always inserts inline, but you can tell building blocks to insert in a new paragraph, or even on a new page.

A great example of this is when you are working on a paper, and you would like to add a cover page. Instead of scrolling to the top of the document, adding a page break and formatting your own cover page, you can simply go to the Insert ribbon and pick a cover page.

No matter where you are in your document, the cover page will get inserted at the beginning of the document, without messing up the formatting of the rest of your paper. In addition, if you right click on a cover page, you can insert it in all kind of other places too, like the beginning of the current section.

“They sound neat, but what would I use them for?”
Building blocks can be used to save anything that can be in a Word document. Personally, I like to use them for complicated things, like cover pages. Sometimes I spend a long time getting things just right, and I’d hate to have to do it again, so I save it as a building block. You can also use them to create powerful, multipurpose templates, but that is a topic for another post.

“Ok, I’m convinced, but it sounds like a lot of work to get started”
Actually, Word comes with more than 50 different building blocks designed by professionals here at Microsoft. If you visit the Insert ribbon, you can check out cover pages, text boxes, header, footers, and more.

That’s just a quick intro. Over the next month or so, I’ll cover quick ways to insert Building Blocks, using Building Blocks to make powerful templates, and more. If you want more information today, feel free to check-out these posts from Zeyad and Jonathan by clicking the link above and moving to the bottom of the post.

Find out how to use Microsoft Word to create a holiday letter to send to all your friends and family as well as mailing labels for a mass mailing. Also learn how to make holiday decorations with Word.

GOALS
After completing this course you will be able to:

Create and decorate a newsletter.
Create mailing labels for your envelopes.
Create some holiday decorations.

ABOUT THIS COURSE
This course includes:

Three self-paced lessons and three practice sessions for hands-on experience.
A short test at the end of each lesson; tests are not scored.
A Quick Reference Card you can take away from the course.

COURSE TEXT
The holidays are always a busy time of year. This time, get organized and let Word help you out.

Learn how to create and decorate fantastic newsletters that you can send in a mass mailing to your friends; run a mail merge to create labels for your envelopes; and have some fun making holiday decorations that you can get the whole family involved in.

To learn more about this course, read the overview in the center of this page or the table of contents in the left column. Then click Next to start the first lesson.

BEFORE YOU BEGIN
This course contains details on using mail merge to create labels; for more information about mail merge, see Use mail merge for mass mailings and more.

Many people try to keep in touch with friends and family during the holiday season. Writing a holiday newsletter is often a chore, but it can be fun if you use Word to lay it out, decorate it, and add pictures or family photos. You can also save time by using a ready-made template.