The way people use Microsoft Word largely hasn’t changed much since the product initially launched. However, since Office 2003, Microsoft Office application and Word in particular have become more integrated with other applications and the cloud.
If your usage of Microsoft Word largely hasn’t changed much in the past few years even though you and/or your employer are upgrading to Office 2010 then there are some underutilized features you might be missing but could benefit your work.
Publishing Visio drawings (*.vdw files) to SharePoint 2010 using Visio Services is one of the best things to come out of SharePoint 2010. I’ve dealt with large scale Visio drawing libraries on past contracts and know firsthand how cumbersome it can be to share Visio drawings with other people who don’t have access to Visio on their PC. Besides, Visio Services are another tool to democratize project management data because accessing Visio drawings via Web browser is a much friendlier than through Adobe Acrobat much less the Visio application itself.
Visio Services can also refresh the data and recalculate the visuals of a Visio drawings hosted on a Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 site refresh connections to various data sources and to update affected data graphics and text fields.
In a new series of articles, I am going to explain a Social Computing Deployment Process. As the roll out of SharePoint My Sites and social computing tools progresses, a certain maturity needs to happen for the business and end user community to realize the benefits of social computing within the enterprise. This Social Computing Deployment Process includes the following phases:
In this article, I will walk you through a potential rollout phase for moving an organization to a more social SharePoint.
I am happy to be seeing news pop up again about an impending release of Microsoft Office for iOS. Whether it is part of the ongoing rumors or not, I think as a technical writer, iOS user, and somebody who writes about tablet and smartphone topics that it is a real prudent move for Microsoft.
The release of OneNote for iOS and Lync for iOS shows that Microsoft gets iOS and mobile user experience when it comes to porting their apps to iOS. Office 2010 WebApps is another mature offering outside Microsoft’s traditional PC desktop comfort zone. While there is a growing list of capable Office productivity apps like iWork, DocsToGo, and CloudOn for iOS, companies can ill afford the issues that can sometimes arise when you send documents between mobile device and PC especially if an external customer is involved in the transaction. What mobile workers who require an Office suite on their iPad require is a seamless experience when interacting with documents, presentation decks, and spreadsheets.
Here is my (partial) wish list for a Microsoft Office for iOS release:
A marketing consultant friend of mine recently posed a challenge to me, how would I build a modular proposal template using Word 2010? The users of the template would be a sales team – all with varying MS Word skills – and the company has an evolving brand and ever-growing product line up. The client was also using Office 2010 and I was looking forward to getting a Word 2010 client project under my belt.
His client also was trying to get away from too much cutting and pasting across proposals and had an eye for more standardization in their proposal process. A master document approach never became part of the equation nor did too much inserting kung fu. Master Documents are an urban myth in the Microsoft World and anyway I like to keep things simple and easy to use especially if I am handing a document or template off to non-writers.
While Microsoft Word Track Changes and Comments are well known document review tools for editors and reviewers, Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 also has its own set of review tools you can use when you’re reviewing the next big client presentation. Like it or not, a lot of the civilized business world runs on PowerPoint presentations making it in everybody’s best interest to get reviewers using electronic review tools to review PowerPoint slides.
In this post, let’s take a look at those review tools:
One of the most useful – yet potentially embarrassing –features of Microsoft Word is Track Changes. Using the Track Changes feature lets you electronically markup your Word documents with edits, additions, and revisions. Think of it as an electronic red pen so to speak.
The potential embarrassment of the feature comes in when you don’t accept the Track Changes. Comments, edits, and revisions not fit for public consumption can leak out. Even if none of the comments are critical it is just plain sloppy to have a recipient open up a document that still contains markups.
Here is the advice I give people about using track changes:
Security and Privacy for Microsoft Office 2010 Users by Mitch Tulloch is a book I’ve been trying to find for years. Throughout my time as a technical writer, I’ve bumped into some minor to major security and privacy issues related to the development and distribution of Microsoft Office documents including some that caused a measure of embarrassment to people. By extension of my work as a technical writer, I’ve had to give both formal and one-on-one training about some of the topics in this book and can tell you it is easy to say it’s just Microsoft Office until something you don’t want to leak out gets out in one of your documents. read more
I’ve gained a new appreciation for giving presentations since I’ve been volunteering with my church’s Jobs Ministry especially since I now have presentations with no proprietary or otherwise confidential information not for public eyes. So I wanted to look into some options for publishing and sharing the slides from my presentations.
Social publishing sites like SlideShare and Scribd are great for publishing presentations because they offer up another vector for Internet users to find out about you and your message. These options also offer such a clean delivery when compared to just posting your PowerPoint slides online and expecting people to download them via a link.
Here are my impressions about some of the leading online publishing and sharing options:
One you get started with OneNote 2010 it can be hard to stop finding uses for it especially if you work in a writing and research heavy job like the one I do as a technical writer. This is why I always recommend getting a flexible organizational schema in place when you first start using the application. Tagging in OneNote enables you to put key terms on your OneNote pages that can help you better search for OneNote content.
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