Normallly when you open two PowerPoint documents they open in the same instance of PowerPoint.  This makes it difficult to compare two presentations.  The solution is simply to open another instance of PowerPoint by using a second user account.

In the Start menu, SHIFT-right click the PowerPoint icon, choose "Run As" and enter the details for the other user. You need to have Admin privileges to do this.
You will also find that the second instance saves by default to the second user’s "My Documents" but this can be changed in Tools > Options > Save tab.

I was then able to open separate PowerPoint presentations on each monitor!

While working at a customer site a couple of users reported Word 2007 has no page number gallery when you go Insert -> Page Numbers. After investigating I found that just deleting the Building Blocks.dotx file in their profile fixed the problem.

Windows XP Location:
c:\Documents and Settings\{your username}\Application Data\Microsoft\Document Building Blocks\1033\Building Blocks.dotx

Windows Vista & 7 Location:
c:\Users\{your username}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Document Building Blocks\1033\Building Blocks.dotx

I’ve been running the Office 2010 beta for a while, although I’ve seen this problem occur on Office 2007 as well. Periodically, I’ll lose my ability to select text with the mouse inside Outlook. It just simply won’t work. Closing and restarting Outlook always fixes the problem, but it’s an annoying problem to have to deal with. After some searching on the internet, a solution from Microsoft popped up. From http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940791 Read More...

Email usability: Best Practices for Microsoft Outlook 2007.  Here are three things that I would like to mention to help manage email.

1)  Set up a search folder and include many folders – inbox, rss feeds, mailing lists, Communicator conversations, etc.  This will put all items you need to consider in one place.

2)  Set up a rule to flag for follow up for all items.  Use the 4 D's for handling email: Delete it, Do it (respond, take action, file), Delegate it (forward it), or Defer it.  Once the email it taken care of, mark it complete.

3)  Use sorting and searching to find items.  You can click on the column headers to sort, then start typing the contents of the field and it will jump to those items.  An even better way (but requiring more typing) is searching.  Since our Exchange server indexes these items, searching is really fast.  You can enter search terms in the format keyword:value to find items.  For example, subject:"sql account" from:john, will find that email from John about that sql account.  To find the available keywords, search for help on “narrow your search” to find the topic “Learn to narrow your search criteria for better searches in Outlook”.  You can also search contacts and calendars. Read More...

Prior to deploying Office 2007 enterprise wide at one of our customer sites, we selected a cross-section of users to test various Office applications that were used within the organization. One particular user was complaining of a typing delay when using a particular database application in Access 2007. Since this user was using Access 2007 on a Terminal Server across a WAN link, my initial suspect was a slow  WAN connection. Upon reviewing the user’s setup I discovered that the user was using a thin client to first connect to a production Terminal Server then launching another RDP session to connect to the Office 2007 test Terminal Server, this could cause delays as well. After reconfiguring the user’s thin client to connect directly to the test Terminal Server the user still complained of typing delay. Since the user was located in at a WAN location in the same city as the data center, I had the user come to the data center to test the database application thereby taking any WAN slowness out of the equation. The typing delay still remained though. Read More...

If you’ve ever wanted to restore the original Outlook shortcut to the desktop, you’ve probably found that a normal shortcut that points to outlook.exe (the kind with an arrow on the icon) lacks some of the functionality that the original Outlook icon had (for instance the ability to edit your machines “Mail” settings by right clicking and choosing properties). To restore the Outlook original icon to the desktop, edit the registry as outlined in the following KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/238567

Normally, if you want to install Office Communicator Mobile on your phone you have to do so by running an MSI on you PC, then sync your phone to install the application through ActiveSync. If you prefer to just install directly from the .cab file, you can browse to www.getcomo.com (this is a Microsoft website) on your mobile phone, choose your phones OS, then install the .cab directly from the website, no PC or syncing involved!

Access keys provide a way to quickly use a command by pressing a few keys, no matter where you are in the program. Every command in Office Word 2007 can be accessed by using an access key. You can get to most commands by using two to five keystrokes. To discover and use an access key: Read More...

The Out of Office Assistant in Outlook 2007 is a bit more helpful in letting people inside the company know where you are. Microsoft has included a “Inside My Organization” and “Outside My Organization” message area. For example, if I were to set an Out of Office message for both internal and external, it would look like this: Read More...

As I was building a new laptop and begin to work with Office 2007 apps, I missed the little customizable toolbar. When I started looking for it I didn’t even know what it was called. I found out it is the “Quick Access Toolbar.” Also, the toolbar settings are stored in a file for each application, “Word.qat, Excel.qat, PowerPoint.qat (These are the apps I tested, maybe other Office 2007 apps too. OneNote does not have the Quick Access Toolbar.).”

If you save or can recover the *.qat files from your previous work environment you can save them to your new system and be good to go. Here are the file locations.

• For XP: C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Setting\Application Data\Microsoft\Office
• For Vista: C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office

During an audit I was working with a file from a regulating entity containing audit procedures.  The file had several  tables with form fields and was protected.

The "form fill" restriction was too limiting as I worked to record audit information in the document.  The longer I worked the more frustrated I became.  It would have been much more useful if I could “unprotect” the file.  I had heard others talking about scripts that could be used to discover the password, but I didn’t have access to any password discovery applications. Read More...

In Microsoft Office 2007, you can adjust the size of the menu "ribbon" (term used by Microsoft) at the top of Word, Excel, etc. by changing the font size of the "Menu" item under your Display properties.  Reducing the font size reduces not only the size of the font, but the size of the ribbon icons as well which give you more real estate when working in Office 2007 apps.  To get there, right-click on your Desktop -> Properties -> Appearance tab -> Advanced button -> choose "Menu" in the "Item" pull-down box -> change the "Size" pull-down box next to the Font name.  Note that since you are changing the general Display properties, the change will affect menus other than just Office.  Read More...