Office At Work : Office Live Workspace

Store your docs safely online

StephB — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:50:00 GMT

Have you ever lost a memory stick, had a laptop stolen or suffered a hard-drive failure? Yep – it’s likely the the answer is ‘yes’. An easy way to back up important files is to use an internet-based storage system like Office Live Workspace. You can back up your valuable documents to the web and then securely access them from any internet connected computer. That’s a PC or Mac running Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari.

And if you were wondering what happens to all those lost memory sticks… take a look at the video from one of the links below :)

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weSfAmonDgg
MSN video: http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-gb&vid=d0689630-1b1d-4876-af1b-8c65328a19b8
Office Live: http://ask.officelive.com/workspace/media/p/8573.aspx

Top tips for using Office 2007 on your netbook

StephB — Tue, 19 May 2009 11:34:54 GMT

I wanted to share this article which my colleague in Mexico, Adriana, recently published. Hope you find it useful :). Thanks Adriana!

First things first: Everything you need to know about installing Office 2007 on your netbook

Most netbooks come with a free 60-day trial of Office 2007 pre-installed, so if you want to try Office 2007 before you buy, you can activate the trial by double-clicking the ’60-day trial’ icon on the desktop.

When you decide to buy, you simply convert the pre-installed trial by following the links you will receive in follow-up emails. Alternatively, you can buy a boxed copy of your chosen Office suite from a local or online retailer. You just enter the product key that comes with the box to convert the trial to a fully licensed version.

Not all netbooks have a CD/DVD drive. If yours doesn’t, don’t worry, you can buy and download a copy of Office 2007 from Microsoft Store. You can also download the Office trial from Office Online.

Read more about how to get Office 2007 on your netbook

Performance

You do need to take into account the capacity and technical specification of your netbook. The netbook I tested had 512Mb RAM memory and 60GB hard drive. The ‘official’ minimum specification for Office 2007 is here. I installed Office Home and Student 2007.

Overall the experience with Office 2007 was good, and the applications all functioned well. After a few days of testing, the only slowness I noticed was when I has several applications with several windows each running, so it’s a good idea to remember to save and close documents as you go (a good habit anyway!).

The best thing come in small packages

Netbooks are - by their nature - smaller than standard laptops. This is great for portability but also means you might want to adopt a couple of tricks to make the most of the smaller screen area.

Zoom is your friend

Use the zoom function to view a smaller amount of your document at one time, for easier editing. You can also save zoom settings to suit your preferences.

Using the zoom function

Minimise the Office menu (Ribbon)

This function gives you a larger working area. To minimise or reset the menu (ribbon) just press Ctrl+F1.

You can also save time by becoming familiar with the Quick Access Toolbar

Save documents online and save space on your PC

Office Live Workspace is your No. 1 ally here. Don’t clog up your hard drive with documents and photos. Set up an Office Live Workspace instead. You can upload all your files so you can access them anytime over the internet, whether you’re using your netbook, work PC or an internet café on holiday. You can also choose to give access to some areas of your workspace, so friends or colleagues can download, edit and upload documents too.

What are you waiting for?

After you’ve installed Office 2007 on your netbook, visit our training portal to learn everything you need to get started with Office 2007, completely free, with our interactive training courses. If it’s the first time you’ve used Microsoft Office programs, don’t worry, I have something for you too. Learn how to take the first steps with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook 2007 here.

Spring comes to Office Online

StephB — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:07:56 GMT

Well it’s four days into March and I’m very happy to see the first of the spring flowers out in the garden and a hint of milder weather to come! We’re celebrating spring-time on Office Online with a bonanza of free resources for you to use and enjoy.

Planning a wedding?

Visit the Templates section for some really useful planning resources, including invitation templates and budget planners. There are lots of other templates you might want to use for your wedding from photo albums to place cards to gift trackers.
Set up an Office Live Workspace for your wedding planning, so you can share ideas and keep plans in sync with your fiance, relatives or bridesmaids. You can keep some folders private so you can keep share dress ideas with your girlfriends but keep them hidden from the groom, or keep those embarrassing baby pictures for the best man’s speech a surprise! After the wedding use your Workspace to share pictures and track your thank you notes.
Browse templates categories and wedding clip art for more DIY wedding ideas!

Make a Mothers Day surprise

Kids love making home-made Mothers Day cards – it’s a guaranteed hug and smile from Mum! Starting with a template from Office Online makes it easy to get results they (and you) will be really proud of :). See if Mum deserves a Mothers Day certificate for something a bit different!
Browse the Office Online clip art collections to illustrate their Mothers Day creations. Try flowers, Spring or hearts for starters.

Share your Spring creations

If you’re getting creative with Office and come up with any Spring gems don’t forget to upload and share your templates so other Office Online visitors can benefit from your skills :).

Take your Office with you

GillLeFevre — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:38:43 GMT

Today, an update on Office Live Workspace from Tim Kimber, UK Office Live Product Manager. (Plus, if you'd rather watch than read, check out these handy Getting Started videos.)

How Office Live Workspaces can take the hassle out of getting stuff done

Working with different people in different places can be fun, but it can also present challenges. Take this example: you’re working on a project with colleagues in other organisations. How do you share your important documents? Chances are it’s via email. Each one in the team makes their amendments or adds comments, and pings it on for everyone else to look at. And you’re the one who has to co-ordinate the changes, making sure nothing gets forgotten.

You save the files to your flash drive or email them to yourself so you can work on them out of the office. Stop right there! There is a better way to save your sanity and size of your inbox, and it’s called Office Live Workspace.

Creating a workspace is really quick and simple, and within minutes you have a central location for all your files, including Office, Excel and PowerPoint files. It’s easy to put all the key documents into the workspace, and you can then invite your colleagues to share. They don’t need their own account to work on the documents in the shared workspace. But you’re in control. As the owner of the workspace, you decide who can edit and who can read your files.

So now you’re waiting for some important updates to your shared project, and you have to leave the office. You get home and decide to see whether they’ve been done. By simply using your password-protected login, you can get into the workspace from any location as long as you have internet access. Is it ready yet? No need to phone and find out – just check the Activity pane and you’ll immediately see when the new version is there.

The next day you discover that some content was deleted and now it’s needed again. Not a problem. Office Live Workspace saves the old versions with the new one if it’s more than 12 hours since you edited something, or someone else makes changes. The content is easily restored. Phew!

If you need to look at a specific document frequently, you can bookmark it just as you do with web pages for fast access. And you can email those bookmarks to your team members so they get the benefit as well.

Working on more than one project at once with different groups is easy. Set up a workspace for each one, so you can really keep tabs on what’s going on across your whole workload. With 500Mb of space (which is around 1,000+ files) available, you won’t have to clog up your email with large presentations or spreadsheets ever again!

Isn’t this the way to go? Best of all, it’s absolutely free and you don’t need to download anything to use it. Sign up today and you could be using your Office Live Workspace in a few minutes!