Alexander’s Blog

Microsoft has added new file formats to the 2007 versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to reduce file size, improve reliability, and enhance integration with external sources. To help ensure that you can exchange documents between Microsoft Office releases, Microsoft has developed a Compatibility Pack for the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats. By installing the Compatibility Pack (Beta 2 Technical Refresh) along side of Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you will be able open, edit, save, and create files using the robust file formats new to the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

After installing this pack, you will be able to use your existing version of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to open, edit, save, and create the file formats new to the 2007 versions of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. For example:

-You can open 2007 versions of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files by double-clicking them just as you do with your existing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.

- You can save 2007 versions of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files by clicking the Save button in your version of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.

-You can create 2007 versions of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files by opening a blank file and using the Save As command in your version of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.

You can download the compatibility pack here.

Microsoft Office Live Basics features all the basics you need to create your first Web site, including free hosting, Web site statistics, personalized domain name, and e-mail addresses. Microsoft Office Live Basics is currently a beta product but it is FREE during and after the beta. Here are the highlights of the product.

Easy-to-use Web site design tool
Get started fast with our easy-to-use Site Designer tool. Don’t worry —- it was designed with the small-business owner in mind, so you can quickly create your own Web site.

Free domain name and hosting
Select your own domain name (for example, www.northwindtraders.com) and let Microsoft keep your Web site up and running.

5 personalized e-mail accounts
Access your company e-mail using your personalized domain name (for example, jsmith@northwindtraders.com).

Storage and data transfer
More than enough space to promote every aspect of your business and plenty of bandwidth to allow lots of customers to visit your site.

Web site traffic analysis and reporting tools
View the success of your Web site with reporting that lets you see how often people visit your site, what pages they visit the most, and their system and browser information.

Support
Our online support pages are here to answer questions and help you get started by providing quick responses to your most frequent questions. One-on-one e-mail support is also available to address other questions.

Besides Live Basics, Microsoft also offers Live Collaboration and Live Essentials. Click here to compare the cost and features of all three products.

Microsoft will pump $500 million into marketing Windows Vista and Office 2007, the latest versions of the company’s dominant desktop PC operating system and suite of clerical programs.

That’s part of the message Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer delivered to senior executives of 500 companies who traveled to New York to hear an hour-long sales pitch about the upgrades, due out late this year. Ballmer’s theme: Vista and Office 2007 are packed with “people-ready” tools designed to boost efficiency and create revenue. “People do drive business outcomes. People, people, people,” said Ballmer, in his trademark, high-energy speaking style. “And software and technology need to be a tool right there in front of people every day.”

Vista and Office 2007 are designed to tie in with new Windows server programs as well as Windows Live, a new initiative now undergoing testing, which will consolidate Hotmail.com, MSN Messenger and other similar services Microsoft is developing. More info…

I ran into this situation when I was installing Office 2003 on Windows computer. I was prompted for SKU017.CAB file. Here’s what the error message looked like.

If you do a search on your computer, you may not find the SKU017.CAB, especially if you have deleted the MSOCache folder to save disk space. You won’t find SKU017.CAB on the source CD for Office 2003 either. Notice that the error message is asking for Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 CD and not for Microsoft Office 2003 CD. What’s not clear to a lot of people is that Microsoft Office 2003 Service Packs not only update the Office 2003 products but also Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft FrontPage 2003.

If you insert the source CD for Office FrontPage 2003, the Office 2003 setup will continue.

Redaction is the editing of a document to remove confidential information. Using this free add-on for Word, you can mark sections of your documents for redaction. You can then create another redacted version of the document that will hide the marked text. Confidential legal documents, insurance contracts and other confidential government documents are often redacted before they are made public.

Earlier this year, the U.S. military used the black highlighter feature in Microsoft Word to cover the sensitive material and then converted the document to PDF format. The general public was able to easily uncover the black highlighted text to reveal sensitive text. With this new redaction tool, all of us, including our military will be able to better protect sensitive documents.

What Can and Cannot Be Redacted?
The Redaction tool supports the redaction of text in:

- The body of your document
- Tables
- Headers
- Footers
- Endnotes
- Footnotes
- Fields
- Table of Contents
- Table of Authorities
- Index
- Table of Figures

The Redaction tool does not support redaction of:

- Graphics
- Comments
- Content in textboxes or frames

Creating a Redacted Document
To use this tool, select a word, sentence, or a paragraph that needs to be redacted. On the Redaction toolbar, click Mark. You’ll notice that the selection is shaded Gray-25%. Click Redact Document on the Readcation toolbar and you’ll see the following message.

Click Yes and the redacted selection will be shown as blacked out text in a new redacted document. Now you can save this new document for others. Your original document will still be available to you with the selected text grayed out so you know which text needs to be protected.

Troubleshooting Tips
While using the tool you want to make sure that if you have a large amount of data pasted in the Office Clipboard, clear it before using this tool or else it may have an affect on the performance of this tool. As a best practice, you want to make sure that the Gray-25% text shading is not used in a redacted document, or else you may end up redacting text accidentally. If you don’t see the Redaction toolbar, simply click Toolbars on the View menu, and then click Redaction. To install this tool, make sure that Word is not open, especially as an e-mail editor. You may see the following error.

If you use Microsoft Word as your e-mail editor, Word will stay in memory even after you close the actual program. Try closing Word, make sure that Outlook is also closed (if you are using Word as your e-mail editor) and if all else fails, go to the Task Manager and kill the WINWORD.EXE process.

Downloading Redaction Tool
This add-on for Word 2003 works on Windows 2000 SP3, Windows XP SP1, and Windows Server 2003. By the way, Microsoft doesn’t support this tool because it’s not part of Microsoft Office, so use it at your own risk. The tool is built on Microsoft .NET Framework so you might want to make sure that your computer has the latest security updates for the .NET Framework. Click here to download the tool.