Office Insider : Office Online

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.

Keep the kids busy with Easter craft ideas

StephB — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:37:39 GMT

The school holidays are upon us again, so here’s a couple of Easter projects to keep the kids occupied, without breaking the bank. It’s easy to find Easter craft themes and you can get hold of craft supplies such as coloured feathers, pom-poms and googly eyes easily and cheaply at local stationary suppliers. Time to get out that glitter and glue again!

Make an Easter basket

Turn an old ice-cream or yoghurt tub into an Easter basket. Cover with wrapping or craft paper and make a handle with ribbon or old fabric. To decorate, the kids can print out and colour in Easter clip art, and stick on sequins, feathers and coloured paper shapes. Line with shredded paper or coloured tissue and voila, a magnificent Easter basket ready to fill with Easter goodies. Use for an Easter egg hunt or fill with home-made biscuits or treats for a thoughtful present for relations.

Soup up Easter lunch

Make Easter lunch extra egg-citing (sorry) for the kids with a special Easter menu and place cards for each visitor. Stick the place cards to thin card for extra strength. If they’re feeling more adventurous start with one of the basic place card templates and enhance with Easter clip art, pens, craft feathers and lots of imagination.

Let me know if you have any more!

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 :).

Making thank-you cards easy

GillLeFevre — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:13:25 GMT

Embarrassing confession: for whatever reason, I always struggle with thank-you cards. My excuse is that the effort involved in getting Christmas cards out to family and friends around the world leaves me so exhausted that I can't even think about thank-you cards until February, by which time they're out of date and not worth doing.

This year, I've put Office Online on the case and as you'd expect, it's looking a lot easier!

First of all, there's a thank-you card template. There were hundreds of templates that came back when I searched for "thank you card" but this was the only one that had the quarter-fold approach that I was after. (Although I've just discovered there is also a similar photo greeting card available which is also quite handy.)

Yes, the template is a bit dated (and it certainly demonstrates how much Microsoft Office has improved the graphics in recent versions) but it's going to be fine as a starting point. I'm going to edit it so that the cover has a different graphic (probably a family Christmas photo) and being really efficient (ok, I mean really lazy!), I'll also look to use mail merge to customise the text for each recipient.

Then all I need to do is sign the cards and send them -- and even I can get that done before Blue Monday.

Most popular templates in 2008

GillLeFevre — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 15:55:23 GMT

So we've seen which how-to articles were the most popular this year, but what about templates? I'm a big fan of the free Office Online templates and regularly try to point out some of the hidden gems contained on the website, so I was really interested to see which templates have been downloaded the most over the year...

1. Fax cover sheet (Professional design)

2. Technology business brochure (2-pg, 11 x 17)

3. Memo (professional theme)

4. PTA agenda

5. Chronological CV (minimalist theme)

Then there were a couple of other examples in the top 20 that stood out... ranging from a 2008 event schedule planner (here's the 2009 version) to a checklist for your ideal dog.

Stay tuned for the most popular training courses from 2008...

Happy new year!

Dazzle with PowerPoint

GillLeFevre — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 17:43:16 GMT

We regularly say that there's so much good stuff on Office Online that it's hard to keep up with it all. So full marks to the PowerPoint blog team for spotting these amazing text and picture templates.

Here are a few of my favourites:

NB: Don't be disappointed if the download page on Office Online looks a little sparse. Each of the downloads has at least 15 different slides (plus instructions).

Most popular how-to articles in 2008

GillLeFevre — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 16:51:00 GMT

How do you know what you don't know... You need to know something exists in the first place, to know that you don't know anything about it...

Because of this conundrum, I'm always interested to see what people are searching for on Office Online -- and I almost always discover a new feature that I wasn't previously aware of. So as we get into "list season", I thought I'd share the 5 most popular how-to articles from Office Online.

1. Make text superscript or subscript

Office 2003 | Office 2007

2. Prompt to open a file as read-only

Office 2003 | Office 2007

3. Turn on or off overtype mode

Office 2003 | Office 2007

4. Using CC and Bcc when sending emails

Office 2003 | Office 2007

5. Enable support for other file formats, such as PDF

Office 2007

What are your favourite Office features?

...for Absolute Beginners

StephB — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:59:32 GMT

No, this isn't a post about that questionable '80s movie adaption of the classic British coming-of-age novel. However, if you're new to Word, Excel, Powerpoint or Outlook you might be interested to know about the new 'Novice' training content available on Office Online.

These colourful training articles have loads of screenshots, introducing you to using Word, Excel, Outlook and Powerpoint with simple step-by-step instructions.

Like it's 80's movie counterpart our Novice content has a strong cultural flavour, not young British but most definitely far Eastern. Which is no co-incidence, given that it was designed and written by Office Online Japan. Thank you Japan!

Unleash your creativity (and share it with the rest of us!)

StephB — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 13:48:50 GMT

A lot of Office Online visitors head for our Templates section to make everything from birthday invitations to school reports. If you’re super-creative (and I know you are) you can now share your masterpieces with our 4 million visitors a month by submitting your own templates. The process takes a few minutes but stick with it, at the end you’ll have the satisfaction of seeing your template listed alongside the professionally-designed templates on Office Online.

Here’s what you need to do;

1. Go to the ‘Templates’ page on Office Online.

2. Click the ‘Submit a Template’ link in the left-hand menu. You can also take a look at the recently submitted templates to see what others have submitted.

3. Check that your template meets the criteria shown on the next screen.

4. Log in using your Live ID.*
*Your Live ID is same login you use for Hotmail, Live mail, Live spaces and many other Microsoft services. If you don’t have one you can create one easily on the next page.

5. Choose a screen name. This will appear alongside any templates you submit.

6. Find the template you want to submit by clicking ‘Browse’ and navigating to where you’ve saved your template on your computer.

7. Add a descriptive name for your template.

8. Choose a category for your template. If the suggested categories don’t suit your template you can browse for a different category.

9. Add a description for your template. You don’t have to do this but if you add a good descriptive description (!) more people are likely to find your template when they search. Press ‘next’ and you’re nearly there.

10. On the next screen you can review what you’ve submitted. Once you’re happy, review the terms and conditions, choose ‘I agree’ to accept and then press the ‘Upload’ button.

11. That’s it! Your template should be visible in a couple of days, so be sure to check back to look for it.

Do you love Office Online?

StephB — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:34:00 GMT

So, this is my first ever blog post. A little lame perhaps, given that I’ve been working with the internet for… hmmm… around 12 years, but what can I say except ‘better late than never’! I have the great pleasure of managing the Office Online web site for the UK. There are many things that are fab about Office Online but here are my top 3;

· It’s free

· It’s actually very, very useful

· It has a great audience J

Despite the fact I spend my working week making decisions about the site, I never cease to be amazed by the depth of resources available on Office Online – and the creativity of the people who visit the site to use them! Did you know there are over 150,000 Clip Art, images and sounds, nearly 51,000 templates and around 850 training courses on Office Online UK? So whatever you’re trying to make or do with Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Publisher or any other Office application the chances are they’ll be something on Office Online to help.

I’d love to hear what you love (or don’t) about Office Online so don’t be shy, post a comment J.

Office Online fabulous-ness

GillLeFevre — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:42:41 GMT

Sometimes I think Office Online is one of Microsoft's best kept secrets. Sure, most people have used a help link at some point or other, but the wide range of additional resources that you can find on the site is usually overlooked.

Take templates. Increasingly the different Microsoft Office products are coming with a stack of templates, but you can always get more from Office Online. I had a look around for PowerPoint themes and the "Design Slides" were a terrific repository of different looks - great both to use directly and for inspiration for your own designs.

Here are a few of my favourites!

Classic photo album	Photo journal design template
Employee orientation presentation	Fireworks design template