Computer tips, tricks, tweaks, and hacks

According to early accounts, Microsoft’s new Office 2010 Web Apps are definitely worth checking out. Here’s a quick rundown of how you can put these free browser-based tools to work.

The Office 2010 Web Apps help create a seamless experience for you whether you are working at your desk, using your Windows-mobile smartphone at a coffeeshop, or toting your laptop from place to place. By saving your Office 2010 files to the Web, you can access and edit them using familiar tools. Here’s an introductory look at some things you can do with Office 2010 Web Apps.

Note: This article is also available as a PDF download.

1: Add files to Office 2010 Web Apps

The process of adding files to your Office 2010 Web Apps is pretty simple. First, you need a (free) Windows Live account, and you need to be a registered user of one of the Office 2010 versions. You can then log in. When the first window appears, click Add Files to choose the files you want to upload to the Web space.

2: Work on Office files from anywhere

Once a file is in your Windows Live SkyDrive account, you can open it, edit it, enhance it, and share it easily. The tools are almost identical to those you use in your desktop version of Office 2010 (some applications have fewer tools than the full program offers), and the program features work in the same way. Hover the mouse over the file you want and click Edit In Browser to begin working with the file online.

3: Create a new file

Not only can you add and edit files you’ve created on a desktop system, but you can also create new files in the Web Apps for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. After you log in to your Windows Live SkyDrive account, click the icon of the file you want to create on the right side of the browser window. You will be prompted to name and save the file. The program opens, displaying a new document, and you can choose a template, add content, and save and share the file as you ordinarily would (Figure A).

Figure A

You can add, edit, and enhance content in the Office 2010 Web Apps.

4: Use the Windows Live Sign-In Assistant

Windows Live offers a utility that signs you in automatically so that you don’t have to stop and log in each time you want to work with your Office 2010 Web App files. You will be prompted to install the Sign-In Assistant the first time you open a file in the Office 2010 Web Apps. Just click the link provided to start a wizard that walks you through the process of downloading and installing the tool.

5: Give users permission to share your files

The user permissions features in Windows Live SkyDrive lets you share your files with others. Create a folder to store the file by clicking New and choosing Folder. Add a name for the folder and click the Change link in the Share With selection (Figure B). Add the email addresses of those you want to share the file with or click Select From Your Contact List to display all your Windows Live contacts so that you can click the users you want to add. For each user, choose whether you want to assign the permissions that enable that person to add, edit, and delete files or simply view the files in the folder. Click Next to save your changes. The users you specified will be able to access the files you add to the folder you just created.

Figure B

You can share your folder and files with others in Windows Live SkyDrive.

6: Work collaboratively online

The Office 2010 Web Apps, including Word, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Excel, enable you to work online with others in real time. When you have given a user the necessary permissions for the file, the Office Web App lets you know when others are working with you in the file. You can click the lower-right corner of the status bar to display the list of others working in the file (Figure C).

Figure C

You can collaborative in real time in the Office 2010 Web Apps.

7: Download a file

You can move files from the online environment to your desktop and back. Hover the mouse over a file in the list in SkyDrive, click More, and then choose Download. You will be prompted to choose the folder where you want to store the file. While you’re working in a file in one of the Office Web Apps, you can click the File tab and choose the first option (which in Excel, for example, is Open In Excel) to open the file in your desktop application. When you save and close the file, any changes are synchronized with the online version.

8: Grab a snapshot of a workbook

If you want to download only a portion of the file you’re working on, you can click the File tab (in the Excel Web App) and choose Download A Snapshot. This downloads a copy of the workbook to your computer that includes only the values and the formatting so you can review the workbook as needed.

9: Get more room onscreen

Similar to the Ribbon controls in your desktop version of Office 2010, you can hide the Ribbon in the Office Web Apps by clicking the Minimize The Ribbon button on the far right side of the Ribbon. Return the Ribbon to normal display by clicking the Maximize The Ribbon button. In Word, you can also click the View tab and choose Reading View to hide the Ribbon and show the document in full-screen view. To return to editing the document, click Edit In Browser.

10: Share your thoughts

Because the Office Web Apps are new, your feedback is especially important for helping developers fine-tune the workings of the programs. You can send feedback to Microsoft about your experience with the Web Apps by clicking the File tab and clicking Give Feedback. A Web form is displayed so that you can send comments (with or without your e-mail address). Whether your experience has been good or bad so far, sharing your experience will help improve the service for all users — so don’t hold back.

Katherine Murray is the author of Microsoft Office 2010 Plain & Simple (Microsoft Press, 2010), Microsoft Word 2010 Plain & Simple (Microsoft Press, 2010), and Microsoft Word 2010 Inside Out (Microsoft Press, 2010). You can reach Katherine through her blog, BlogOffice, or by e-mailing kmurray230@sbcglobal.net.

By Katherine Murray

Office 2010 has a lot going for it — including better customization options. Deb Shinder looks at some tricks for making the new version work the way you want it to.

The latest version of Microsoft Office has some nice new features and usability improvements, but for many of us, the default settings just don’t do the trick. As good as Office 2010 is, you can make it better by customizing configuration settings and installing a few add-ins. In this article, we’ll look at 10 ways you can make your Office 2010 experience a better one. Some of these are new to Office 2010 and some are tweaks that were around for previous editions of Office, but which many people never knew about.

Note: This article is also available as a PDF download.

1: Change the default color scheme

This has nothing to do with how the Office programs work, but everything to do with the environment in which you work with them. Some folks probably don’t care a whit, but to me the baby blue default color scheme in Office 2010 is distracting and actually reduces my productivity. I’m not really happy with either of the alternatives, either. The “black” is a muddy gray/dark tan color and it turns the folder pane and Today pane dark with white text, making it difficult to read. And the “silver” isn’t very silver; it’s more of a light gray. But I settled on silver as the easiest on my eyes and the least in-your- face choice.

To change the color scheme in any of the Office 2010 programs, click the File tab, click Options in the left pane, click General in the left Options pane and select Silver in the Color Scheme drop-down box (Figure A).

Figure A

You can change the distracting baby blue default color scheme to silver or black.

2: Customize the Ribbon

When the Ribbon was introduced in Office 2007, there was a tremendous outcry. Part of that was just the human aversion to learning something new, but even those of us (yes, I confess to being one of them) who liked the Ribbon had a complaint: Why couldn’t we customize it to fit the way we work?

Microsoft listened and, in Office 2010, added the capability to customize the Ribbon. This makes it much more useful and should alleviate some of the confusion among those upgrading from Office 2003. Now you can customize the Ribbon’s main tabs and tool tabs, as shown in Figure B.

Figure B

New to Office 2010 is the option to customize the Ribbon to your liking.

You can remove commands you rarely use or group them differently to suit the way you work. You can create a new tab on the Ribbon or add your favorite commands to a new group on an existing tab. You can also rename commands. And of course, there is a “reset” option so you can return the Ribbon to its default look. You can even export your custom Ribbon and then import it into another instance of Office 2010. So once you get it configured just right on your desktop machine, you don’t have to go through that whole customization process again for your laptop. This Office Watch article explains more about customizing the Ribbon.

3: Customize the Quick Access Toolbar

Much as I like my customized Ribbon, there are some commands that I want to have available regardless of which Ribbon tab I’m in. That’s where the Quick Access toolbar comes in handy. Many Office users seem to overlook this little gem, but it’s one of the first things I set up when I install any recent version of Office.

I have my own set of commands that I put on the Quick Access bar, including Save, Save As, Undo, Redo, Email, New Comment, and New Document. I also like to move the toolbar so that it’s under the Ribbon instead of above it, as shown in Figure C. To move or customize the Quick Access toolbar, right-click on it and choose the appropriate action.

Figure C

A customized Ribbon still doesn’t take the place of the Quick Access toolbar.

4: Turn on Live Preview

Sometimes when you copy and paste material into an Office document, it doesn’t end up looking the way you thought it would. It can be difficult to know which of the Paste options (e.g., Keep Source Formatting, Merge Formatting, Keep Text Only) to use. Office 2010 helps to eliminate surprises by including the Live Preview feature, which lets you see exactly how copied content will look when you paste it in an Office application. When you right-click and hover the mouse pointer over each Paste option, you get a preview of what it will look like if you use that option to paste the content.

For some reason, the Live Preview feature is not enabled by default. To enable it, click File | Options and select the Enable Live Preview check box on the General page.

5: Tweak AutoCorrect options

AutoCorrect is a great feature that can save you a lot of time by correcting common typos automatically. However, it can also drive you crazy when it “corrects” what you intentionally typed. For example, by default when you type a word with two initial capital letters, Office corrects it by making the second letter lowercase. Most of the time, it’s a typo, and that’s what you want to happen. But what if you have a company name or product name that actually uses two initial capitals, such as TRick (a company named after someone named Thomas Rick)? Word will try to be helpful by changing it to “Trick.”

You could just patiently retype it the way you want it and Word will get the message and let it remain, but that takes extra time. You could turn off the TWo INitial Caps feature in the AutoCorrect settings, but then it wouldn’t correct the real typos of this nature. The best way to deal with it is to add an exception for TRick. Here’s how you do that:

1. Select Options in the left pane of the BackStage menu, then select Proofing.
2. Click the AutoCorrect Options button.
3. On the AutoCorrect tab, click the Exceptions button.
4. Click the INitial CAps tab and under Don’t Correct, type TRick and click Add, then click OK.

You can make exceptions for other types of corrections using the First Letter and Other Corrections tabs.

6: Create Quick Steps

One of the coolest new features in Outlook 2010 is Quick Steps. It allows you to create multi-step actions that you can apply to email messages. For example, I forward many messages to a particular person. Instead of having to click Forward, type in his name, and then click Send, I’ve created a Quick Step that lets me do all that by simply clicking a single button.

There is a wizard-type interface for creating a new Quick Step. Simply click Create New in the Quick Steps section of the Home tab and you’ll get the Edit Quick Step dialog box shown in Figure D.

Figure D

You can create Quick Steps to perform a multi-step action with one click.

6: Turn on Conversation view

In the beta version of Outlook 2010, the default arrangement for email messages was Conversation view. This view can make it easier to follow a discussion, as it consolidates all the messages in a conversation thread all into one nice package. In the final release, Conversation view was turned off by default. If you’d rather have it turned on, follow these steps:

1. In the left column heading at the top of your message list, right-click where it says Arrange By: Date.
2. Check the box that says Show As Conversations.

7: Install Social Connectors

The Outlook Social Connector (OSC) is built into Outlook 2010. It lets you install plug-ins that aggregate social networking information about your contacts in the People Pane at the bottom of an email message in the preview pane. Connector plug-ins bring in your contacts’ status updates and other information from social networking sites. The feature also displays other recent email conversations with that person, recent appointments, and the person’s profile picture. For more on how to use this feature, see Five tips for adding social media to Outlook 2010.

When Office 2010 was released in June, plug-ins were available only for LinkedIn and MySpace Microsoft has now added plug-ins for Windows Live Messenger and Facebook. It has also made the feature compatible with Outlook 2003 and 2007. This BNET article has the details.

8: Change default settings

No matter which version of Office you install, you should always go through the options and tweak the settings to suit yourself. In many cases, the defaults will work fine but in others, you’ll be happier with an alternative setting. For example, if Word’s grammar checker drives you batty (considering it’s often wrong, especially when it comes to complex sentences), you can turn it off by unchecking Mark Grammar Errors As You Type in the Proofing section of Word Options. You can also click the Settings button and specify which grammatical issues should be checked, as shown in Figure E.

Figure E

Each Office 2010 application offers many configurable options you can tweak.

On the Save page, you might want to change the default setting so that the applications save documents in the older .doc, .xls, and .ppt formats instead of .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx if you often share documents with people who use Office 2003. You also might consider saving autorecovery information more often than every 10 minutes. If you’re a fast typist, you can create a lot of content in 10 minutes. You also may want to change default save locations.

The Advanced page gives you a plethora of options for editing, cutting and pasting, images, how document content is displayed, printing, and more. Want to be prompted before saving changes to the Normal template? There’s a check box for that.

10: Install add-ins

You can enhance the functionality of Office 2010 by installing add-ins for the specific functions your work requires. For example, I use Twitter extensively to announce the publication of my articles and point my followers to interesting or useful tech articles written by others. It’s much easier for me to tweet from Outlook than to open up the Twitter Web site, so I’ve installed Twinbox, an add-in that lets you create updates, receive updates from those you follow, and manage and search tweets the same way you search your Outlook mailbox.

The add-in behaves a little differently in Outlook 2010, compared to Outlook 2007. In the latter, Twinbox puts a toolbar in Outlook underneath the other toolbars. In Outlook 2010, the Ribbon contains an Add-ins tab. You’ll have to go there to find your Twinbox toolbar, shown in Figure F.

Figure F

Add-ins such as Twinbox can add to the functionality of Office applications.

You can manage add-ins with the Add-in Manager, which you’ll find in the Options dialog box for each application.

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By Debra Littlejohn Shinder

It’s no secret that today’s operating systems have their share of problems. Jack Wallen describes the issues that frustrate him the most (and he doesn’t spare Linux).

Everyone who has read my articles knows I champion a certain open source operating system. Does that mean I think it (Linux) is perfect? Not at all. In fact, at this point in my career I have issues with just about every operating system available. So in the spirit of fairness, I thought I would unleash on all of them and list my issues with every OS I’m currently using. These issues don’t deal with third-party software — just the operating system. That way, we’re playing as fair as possible.

Note: This article is also available as a PDF download.

1: Windows and its obfuscation

One of the things I really hate about Windows is the fact that it hides everything. You have a problem with something going on? Where do you look? If you are running a Server flavor of Windows, you could look in various notification alerts. But outside of that, bad things happen and Windows simply doesn’t want to let you know why. Yes, Windows 7 has the Action Center, but what good is that really? Why can’t Windows also offer standard text-based log files so the user can just load up a text reader and scroll through everything that has happened. Linux/UNIX can do this. OS X can do this. Why not Windows? I don’t want my operating system to hide everything from me. I want to know what is going on, what has happened, and why something isn’t working.

2: OS X and its lack of flexibility

I used to think Windows was an inflexible operating system. But nothing really compares to the inflexibility of OS X. Now I understand that this was by design. After all, breaking something that won’t bend in the first place is a challenge. And OS X is a challenge to break. But assuming that every OS X user is on the same level is a mistake. Apple should enable those who want to make the OS do what THEY want and not what Steve Jobs wants. An operating system should work with you, not against you. And as user-friendly as OS X is, it tends to work against the user.

3: Linux and its lack of standards

There is a reason the Linux Standards Base was created: To standardize many (if not most) of the aspects of the Linux operating system. But so far, the LSB has failed. This, of course, is not a failure on the part of the LSB as much as it is the developers of the distribution itself. And this inability to reach any collective conclusion on standards is hurting the Linux operating system. Linux needs standards so that software developers can more easily create software that will work cross-distribution. Believe it or not, this is really important to the continuing growth of Linux.

4: Growing system requirements

This one has had me dumbfounded for a long time. It seems like the hardware/software relationship is such a parasitic exchange. You create faster hardware, and we’ll demand it be used. You create more demanding software, and we’ll create the hardware to push it. It’s a “you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours and everyone wins” situation. And everyone does win — except for the consumer. Yes, hardware is cheaper now. But for small businesses struggling to survive, having to dish out for new hardware every time a new release of the OS arrives is insane. Even Linux is starting to suffer from bloat requiring the users to have beefier hardware.

5: The ancient desktop metaphor

I have to say that this is going to change when GNOME 3 reaches its first official release. But overall, the current desktop metaphor, which has been around since the early days, is played out. Think about it in terms of mobile devices. Smart phone design is becoming very agile. The change in the “desktop” has been incredible over the last couple of years alone. Look at iOS and/or Android 2.0. The strides they have made in evolving the smart phone desktop is wondrous. The PC desktop? Not so much. It’s time for a change — a major change. Maybe GNOME 3 will lead the way for such a change.

6: Security

This one has to be pointed directly at Windows. I realize that a good portion of the security issues Windows suffers from involves third-party software. But because this is such a well-known issue, Microsoft should do something like pull an Apple and make sure all third-party developers follow stringent rules as well as require an approval process before software is allowed to be sold for the Windows operating systems. Why? Because virus, malware, spyware, and security issues are rampant on the Windows platform. Any chance Microsoft has to bolster the security of its flagship property would be seen as a major leap forward.

7: Drivers

I have a rather strange take on this one. I believe that every distributor of every operating system needs to come together to create some sort of consortium and strong-arm hardware manufacturers to get them to simply open up their specs. This would take so much of the guesswork out of developers’ hands. We all know that hardware manufacturers make zero profit from drivers. So why do they keep their drivers so close to the vest? Are they afraid another manufacturer will steal their secrets? That is laughable. Instead, the OS developers just let the hardware manufacturers do as they please. How much longer is this going to continue before something (or someone) snaps?

8: Updates

I don’t want to get up on my usual soapbox, but I have to say that the majority of Linux distributions handle updates far better than any other operating system. But they’re not perfect. In fact, I recently encountered an update for Ubuntu that broke a previously working piece of hardware. But Linux is far less guilty of updates causing issues. The standard Windows update model has caused plenty of headaches, rollbacks, data loss, and cash flow interruption. And Apple updates? Have you ever updated your iPhone OS? How much of a nightmare can that be? Although the Linux update model isn’t perfect, it’s at least a solid enough middle ground, which all other OSes can learn from.

9: Beta testing

Microsoft finally realized that the Linux testing process is actually a pretty good model to follow. So much so that it released the beta of Windows 7 into the wild and allowed the general public to kick the tires. Then of course, the general public had to purchase and reinstall the full version when it arrived. Why couldn’t the general public — those who helped beta-test the software– get a discount for their trouble as well as NOT HAVE TO REINSTALL? Wouldn’t that have been nice? And just why hasn’t Apple followed suit? I am not about to purchase an operating system not knowing whether it has been fully tested in the court of public opinion. For the last 12 years, I have been getting my OS for free. So if I am going to PAY for that OS, it better work well out of the box.

10: Marketing

Listen to me Linux (and listen well). If you are EVER going to take it up a notch, you are going to have to figure out a way to market yourself. Yes, word of mouth has done wonders for you to this point. But word of mouth can take you only so far. To get beyond what seems to be a stalling point, someone (hello Canonical!!) is going to have to step up and run some ads. And I’m not talking ads here on TechRepublic, or CCN.com, or CPU magazine. I’m talking TV ads. The only way you are ever going to be able to grab that market share crown from the reigning king is to get in front of those not already singing in the choir. It’s not about software. We all know your operating system is solid. It’s about PR, marketing, the campaign that makes everyone aware of your existence.

Other issues?

So that’s what really gets me going about operating systems. Not one of them is exempt. We’ve all experienced our personal hells with an OS now and then. What really irks you about an operating system?

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By Jack Wallen