Third Of Five - just another voice in the Collective : Office 2007 (aka "Office 12")

Changing Default Control and Form/Report Settings

ThirdOfFive — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 19:00:00 GMT

This is one of those features that almost nobody knows about because it isn't very discoverable. In Access 2007 (and earlier), you can change the default property values for any new controls in a form or report. Here are the necessary steps:

Open/Create form or report in design mode;
Select the "Design" contextual tab (or the equivalent toolbar with the controls for Access 2003 and earlier);
Open the Property Sheet (using the Ribbon or hitting ALT+ENTER);
Notice that the property sheet caption says "Selection Type: Default <Control>";
Change the properties at will;

From this point on, any new controls you create will have its default properties set to what you customized.

It's worth mentioning that any changes you make will only exist in the context of this form or report alone. However, you can also create settings that apply to all newly created Forms and Report. For this purpose, follow the same steps 1-5 above, and do one more:

6. Save the Form or Reports with the name "Normal";

If there is a "Normal" (like Word's Normal.dot) form, all new forms will inherit its settings. The same goes for reports, but notice that form settings cannot be inherited by reports and vice-versa. Of course, if you delete the "Normal" form or report, you will not affect the default settings of the already created forms and reports since they already inherited them. Only newly form and reports from then on will not inherit the settings anymore.

This is a very neat feature to speed up creating a number of forms and reports that will use similarly set controls (or width/height even) without having to go through multiple copy and paste runs.

In case you are having issues installing Office 2007 Beta 2 Techinical Refresh (B2TR)

ThirdOfFive — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 02:00:00 GMT

For troubleshooting Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh (B2TR) installs, you might want to check out this Knowledge Base (KB) article.

The most common problem that I heard so far is the that to install the B2TR update, you need at least 2 gigabytes (GB) of free disk space.

Good luck!

Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh (B2TR) is out

ThirdOfFive — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 20:02:00 GMT

I haven't seen any news about this yet, but it's already available for download. Check out this post on some of the changes in B2TR.

2007 Microsoft Office system Beta 2 Technical Refresh

Important: Prior to applying this Beta 2 Technical Refresh update, you must have installed the Beta 2 version of the associated 2007 Office system product. You can't just download the refresh and install it standalone.

You might also be interested in the PDF/XPS add-in made available right now:

2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS

All of this downloads are listed here, alongside some other interesting downloads. Check it out!

Trying out Access 2007 without installing anything

ThirdOfFive — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 19:00:00 GMT

This is sort of old new by now, but in case you didn't give it a try yet (or couldn't because Microsoft's servers were too busy), you should use the Office 2007 Beta 2 Test Drive a try.

It is very cool way to try Access 2007 without having to worry about installing or downloading anything.

Access 2007 Beta 2 Misconception #2 - Ribbons morph completely depending on context

ThirdOfFive — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 19:00:00 GMT

Another misconception that I read is regarding the new Ribbon interface: some people apparently are expecting the tabs on the ribbon to change completly as the context changes.

This is very untrue: each of the tabs in the ribbon are pretty much fixed (I'm sure that there is the odd exception somewhere, but this is by-and-large true). Whatever menus, drop downs or buttons you see on it will not appear/disappear as you use the app.

What will happen is:

(1) Buttons/drop downs/menus will be enabled/disabled based on context (for example, the font size dropdown when you select an image control in form design in Access). Nothing new here, this already happened somewhat with traditional command bars.

(2) Contextual tabs will appear/disappear depending on context. What this means is that an entire tab will appear in some context (e.g. Form Design tab when in form design) or disappear. However, all other tabs will remain as they are - no controls will be hidden or shown.

An additional source of confusion is between the Ribbons and the mini-bars (aka floaties). Mini-bars are On-Object UI (OOUI) that appear near the mouse cursor when you hover over some special items in the app - such as attachment or rich text memo fields. Mini-Bars are completly independent of the Ribbon and are not dynamic as well - controls will not appear/disappear on it. Additionally, controls in the mini-bar generally are duplicated in the Ribbon: this is meant as a quick access OOUI.

In sum, do not confuse the Ribbon with the Windows 2000-style menus that will show/hide items "smartly". The ribbon is pretty much static at the chunk and control level, with contextual tabs being shown/hidden depending on context, but never the "main" tabs (such as the Home tab).

Office 2007 Beta 2 is out...

ThirdOfFive — Tue, 23 May 2006 20:00:00 GMT

As reported here and here (for now :) ).

This build is leaps and bounds faster and better than Beta 1 (or Beta 1 Technical Refresh, for that matter). Make sure to test out your solutions and be sure to use Microsoft' beta place support to ask and log any bugs that you might find.

It is really important for us to receive bug reports as soon as possible so we can act on them. Don't assume that just because you found something that looks weird somebody else will report - most likely they won't.

Particularly for Access 2007, make sure your apps look good and let us know of any deployment and solution blockers you're running into. Because Access is such a complex swiss-knife app used in so many ways (including really funky ways, such as Outlook-like apps created on top of Access), we really look back to hearing from you.

BTW, here's the link to get the Beta: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/getthebeta.mspx

Screenshots: Access 2007 (and other Office apps) running on Vista

ThirdOfFive — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 18:00:00 GMT

I bumped into this on the web and thought it would be interesting to share. This website has some screenshots of Office 2007 Beta1 Technical Refresh (no, it's not Beta2 but it's definetely cleaner than Beta1) running on Vista.

Here's the overall picture set: Office 2007 Beta1 TR Gallery.

As for Access 2007: Getting Started and Datasheet View. And yes, the blue-ness around some UI elements in both screens are elements that weren't yet refreshed to look good in Aero.

This plays an interesting contrast to the Luna (blue) screenshots that I (and Erik) have been posting.

Office 2007: See the new UI in action

ThirdOfFive — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 21:00:00 GMT

A video ("Welcome to the new Microsoft Office Interface") is now available with the new Office Ribbon in action. Take a look at it - it's pretty cool.

Nitpick: Access 2007 was not shown in it. But that's fine, we should save the best for later or it might seriously outshine Word, Excel and Powerpoint :). At least you get an idea of what it looks like and behaves.

Office 12 named 2007 Microsoft Office System

ThirdOfFive — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 19:59:00 GMT

In celebration, I'll update the category titles.

Here's the news: C|Net, Microsoft Watch, PC World, Info Week. Of course there is more, but how much more do you need on a name change? Sheesh.

and here's the official press release. The pricing page is to the point if you want the authorative answer to your questions:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/2007office/default.mspx

The quick summary is that prices will pretty much stay the same, but there will be additional products and offerings, particularly for Enterprise customers.

Performance: who cares? Apparently customers do.

ThirdOfFive — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 20:00:00 GMT

This is sort of old news (Performance Analysis: Office vs. OpenOffice [1] and [2]), but it was particularly cool to see how some of the performance work ends up getting such a visibility. Don't forget to read the comments up on slashdot - always fun.

In my past life I used to do a lot of performance-related work, so that's why I care :)