I provide technical support for several hundred users both locally and remotely. In an ideal world they would have all their software repositories nice and organised.

Example: Envelopes with usernames containing all the CD’s, Licenses and Product keys that belong to that particular PC.

Sadly life isn’t like that and I am usually under pressure to quickly rebuild and redeploy on the same hardware say after a Hard Disk problem or Virus/Malware attack.

So today’s tech tip is for a download that exposes the current machines product keys.

On my USB key I keep install repositories for common software installations, I then grab the product keys from current machine using keyfinder (link below) and save time by not having to root about the customers cupboards.

Link: http://magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/

Microsoft Works, now at version 9.0 is still shipped on millions of PC’s a year.

Works is a basic Word Processor and Spreadsheet like application that is typically supplied at a very low cost.

So you may occasionally encountering a files created in its proprietary file format:-

.wks = Spreadsheet

.wps = Word Processor

Microsoft provide a download on the link below that will allow you to open, edit and save documents in this format. Once installed you will have additional Save as Type options to support the Works file formats.

Your version of Microsoft Office needs to be 2003 or above.

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/products/works/downloads.mspx#Works6.0Conv

This is basically a rental/subscription model with an annual price of $69.99 a year and appears to be US only.

The package consists of Microsoft Office Home and Student and Windows Live OneCare.

OneCare is Microsoft’s security suite.

The $69.99 fee allows for installation on 3 PC’s.

Clearly this them tipping their toe into the rental/subscription market.

Office 2007 Home and Student consists of:

Word 2007
PowerPoint 2007
Excel 2007
OneNote 2007

But Not Outlook 2007, the thinking is you can just use a free online e-mail service like Live mail or Google’s Gmail.

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/jul08/07-02EquiptPR.mspx

Microsoft have updated their main Outlook 2007 Troubleshooting document.

The Symptoms

You may experience one or more of the following performance issues in Outlook 2007:

• Outlook 2007 is slower than earlier versions of Microsoft Office Outlook.
• Outlook 2007 is slower than expected.
• Outlook 2007 is slower than expected when you access your mailbox.
• Outlook 2007 appears to be unresponsive.
• Outlook 2007 appears to stop responding for a long time.

Link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940226/

Microsoft today opened their dedicated UK online store selling retail Windows and Office products.

This is a good news / bad news story.

The good news is you can now download at the point of sale. So if you need Office 2007 at 3am, well now you can.

The bad news is their online store prices are ridiculous.

Example: Microsoft Office 2007 Professional

Microsoft UK Online Store £449.99 for Download

However…..

Amazon.co.uk Boxed Retail Product is £349.98 (Sold by Amazon)

This is such a crazy world. The company that makes the software can’t sell it cheaper than a competing Internet retailer based on a non physical product.

Microsoft then have the front to charge you extra for shipping and handling if you want a backup DVD of your software.

I find it more or less impossible to recommend anyone purchase from the Microsoft online store based on their pricing model.

Pay more get less, this is borderline moronic.

No doubt there is some anti competitive shenanigans Microsoft has to observe, but really why bother. Another boxed ticked at Microsoft HQ I guess.

Link: https://emea.microsoftstore.com/UK/

PS

If you believe in conspiracy theories this news story is running in the the same news cycle  as Adobe announce a new online collaboration suite  over at www.acrobat.com

Check out this write up

Link: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/adobe_launches_online_office_suite.php

I’m not kidding about the conspiracy either I monitor several Microsoft UK employees blogs and each one of them posted about the Microsoft online store one after each other like dominoes.

Yesterday I posted about Outlook 2007 search on Windows XP.

At some point I ended up checking out Microsoft’s Outlook Team Blog I have to say I was really impressed with the amount of good quality  posts and tips.

The page does take some time to load as its choc full of images and it does seem to have a bias towards Outlook 2007 (the latest version) however its well worth checking out.

Link: http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/default.aspx

The Access 2007 runtime allows you to deploy a database application designed in Access 2007  to people without Access 2007 on their computer.

In the old days you had to purchase the Microsoft Office Developer edition for access to this.

This is now free (see link below).

I am an Access developer and I will be honest I have only ported my own internal invoicing database over to Access 2007. I just cant get on with the new UI.

That issue aside the free Access 2007 Runtime is bonus for developers.

Link: Access 2007 Runtime Download

Microsoft Office 2003 was removed from retail and OEM channels in June of 2007.

Now this presents a problem for businesses that want or need to maintain file compatibility within their organisation.

In Feb 2008 nearly all residual stock of Office 2003 has now been sold and it is very difficult finding any legal source.

There is one final route that you can follow if you need Office 2003 and this is via a Microsoft Volume License agreement.

What you need to know about entry level volume license agreements.

1) You need to order a minimum of 5 licenses.

2) In this case you would need to order Office 2007 and downgrade to Office2003.

3) You order the license agreement from a reseller.

If you are used to getting your Microsoft Office software with a new PC the license cost may startle you. A single Office 2003 Pro License is about £350ish plus you need to Order the CD media and remember a minimum order of 5 is required.

Tip: My advice is avoid anywhere like eBay or anyone who seems to have a never ending supply of this product.  There is a possibility that it will be fake.

I did some research on eBay yesterday and found someone selling multiple copies of Office 2003, and out of curiosity I looked at their other items which were all designer handbags. Need I say more.

Getting a Volume License agreement is the only sensible path forward for business at this late date.

I was in a meeting the other day and the Marketing Manager of the company had a Microsoft Word 2007 document on screen and his laptop was connected to a projector.

The problem was the text in the document was too small to read easily.

Now in Microsoft Word 2007 you have a couple of ways of dealing with this.

One is to use the slider (at the bottom right hand side of the screen)

This control just zooms into your document. if you have a long slim document you still have to scroll up and down.

The problem with using the slider is unless you have a mouse connected you end up making big jumps from 100% to 164% but with a mouse you can gently move the slider in 8% increments until you find the desired zoom.

The other is to view the entire document on screen. This feature now lives on the View Tab> Full Screen Reading. As shown in the Clip at the top of the post..

In Word 2003 you can find the same feature in View > Full Screen.

I cannot wait until the day all our software lives running on web servers and some poor web admin has to take care of the security updating, because running a Windows Vista/Office 2007 PC requires quite a lot of Windows Updating/Rebooting to keep it going.

In total my laptop has received 156 important updates via Windows Update, each was classed as “important”. So I haven’t counted the optional or recommended ones.

A quick word about my Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 1 Deployment experience.

I downloaded and installed the Office 2007 SP1 yesterday morning. The install ran fine and I worked quite happily in Office 2007 for the rest of the day.

At the end of the day I noticed that this months Windows Updates were out and I noticed that the Office 2007 SP1 was listed as important. Mmmm I thought I already have that installed.

For the hell of it I just clicked to install all the “important” updates (like a user would) to see if Windows Vista would spot that the Office 2007 SP1 was already installed. NOPE. It download the 200mb+ Service pack again and installed the Office 2007 SP1 over the SP1 I installed earlier in the day.

In related news Windows Vista SP1 RC1 is now available for public download. I have decided to be a sensible chap and not install the RC1 on my work laptop. I will try it out on a test machine in the next few weeks.