CoNetrix

Blog: Office 2010

A network support customer was having an issue on one PC that every time he opened Excel documents with graphs generated by data from worksheets, no graph would appear. However the same Excel document opened on any other PC would work fine. If other users logged into the affected system the graphs worked. I found that defect print drivers could cause this problem, so I changed his default printer and the graphs work. Changed it back and the graphs wouldn’t work. I then uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers for the default printer he was using and the problem was gone. So do not run out corrupt print drivers when troubleshooting Office 20XX problems.

General, Excel, Office 2010,
 

I recently upgraded my laptop to Windows 7 with Office 2010. After getting everything setup I was experiencing a problem with Outlook not reopening after I had previously had closed it. I would check the task manager and it would show to instances of Outloo.exe running. I would kill the one with the highest memory usage and Outlook would open. I began disabling and enabling Outlook add-ins until I found that the problem was caused by “OutlookChangeNotifier” which is installed with iTunes. Once that was disabled Outlook opened and closed without any problems.

General, iTunes, Outlook 2010, Office 2010,
 

One of the new features in Outlook 2010 that I absolutely love is the ability to create “Quick Steps.” At home, I’ve got several email accounts that download into Outlook. From those separate inboxes, I file them into folders kept completely offline. A problem that I run into is that when using the preview pane, the email isn’t marked as read (intentionally) unless I click off and back onto it. When I click-drag the email to a folder to file it, it keeps its unread status unless, once again, I click off and on. This is not a very efficient way for me to work and Quick Steps fix that.

When you create a new Quick Step, you can define a set of actions that this one button performs. [more]

As can be seen below, the following Quick Step will ask you which folder to move your email to and mark it as read.

You can create a shortcut and tooltips for these and add as many actions as you would like. Very helpful!
General, Outlook, Outlook 2010, Office 2010,
 

Microsoft Office Picture Manager (and iPhoto on the Mac) has a feature which helps organize digital photos.  In order to organize photos it is most helpful to be able to rename them, but renaming them is tedious if you have many photos.

If you are running Windows and have Microsoft Office 2007 installed the Picture Manager should be under All Programs -> Microsoft Office -> Microsoft Office Tools -> Microsoft Office Picture Manager.  In Microsoft Office Picture Manager all you have to do to easily rename photos is open a folder of photos, select more than one, right click on one of the selected photos and choose Rename.  A work panel will open which allows you to enter a name which will be applied to all the selected photos as well as options for defining sequential numbering. [more]

For us in the CoNetrix Information Security group, we have many site photos to store after an audit. This renaming feature allows us to organize the images by branch name (fcblfxx) with the application filling in the “xx.”  Quick and easy.   For personal photos naming will probably involve using a description of an event like “2010Christmasxx” or “10thBirthdayxx.”

General, Office 2007, Windows 7, Office 2010,
 

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 [more]

Problem Description:

You install an automatic update for Microsoft Office Word 2007 on a Windows Vista-based computer and then restart the computer. If Word 2007 was running when the computer was restarted, you experience one or more of the following symptoms:

  • The mouse does not work when you use Word.
  • You cannot open a Word document from the Search window in Windows Vista.
  • You cannot open a Word document from Windows Desktop Search.
  • Word crashes when you try to start or exit Word.
  • Word crashes when you open the Open dialog box.
  • Word crashes when you save a document.
  • Word crashes when you close a document.

The fix is simply to open the registry, browse to and delete the following registry subkey: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Data

Then close and restart your Word applications (Word, Outlook, etc.). So far, this seems to have fixed my problem, although I’m going to give it another week or two before I call it comfirmed.

Networking, Outlook, Word 2007, Office 2010, Office,
 

I’ve been a part of the Office 2010 Technical Preview program for a little while now and have been impressed with a few of the changes that have been made from Office 2007. I received an email last week saying that the Technical Preview is coming to a close this month (November) and will be transitioning to a Beta release. I don’t know if this will be a public Beta release or not, but I’m definitely excited to get a new build of Office 2010 installed for play… I mean, “testing.”

One of my favorite new additions is in OneNote 2010. You can now dock your notes to the desktop (as demonstrated in the two pictures below) which allows you to take notes while looking at other documents, webpages, etc. [more]

Networking, OneNote, Office 2010,