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.