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TO ASK A QUESTION: If you have a question or need help with Office, please feel free to use the 'Click to Contact' link at the bottom of this page. You'll get a form that you can use to email a question to me. (I had been getting a ton of spam when accepting direct emails, so only emails that use this form will get through to me.)

Please be sure to mention the version of Office you are using when you send your question.

I answer all e-mails that I receive via this form, as long as they are polite :)

Since disabling comments on this site, I'm actually hearing from more of you with questions ... so, as it seems people prefer to email rather than comment, I'm going to leave comments disabled. As always, you can ask me any Office-related questions you have. If the question is outside of my expertise, I'll try to direct you to where you can get an answer.

Hi, everyone! Thanks to all of the MCTs who took the time to attend today's session! For those who wanted to but couldn't make it, the recording of the session will be made available wth your other summit resources.

Among those resources, as you may have already seen, is a list of links for this session - providing additional learning resources for the topics covered today. As promised, this post is to list those here as well along with a couple of other links promised during the session:

• Advanced Microsoft Office Documents 2007 Edition Inside Out (my book for Office 2007, which includes an Office Open XML primer and a VBA primer - both written for advanced users with no developer experience. Info for accessing free excerpts of both (which are on the MSDN Office Developer Center) is below.)

• Open XML I: Exploring the Office Open XML Formats

• Open XML II: Editing documents in the XML

• Using Office Open XML to Save Time Without Writing Code

• Using Office Open XML to Customize Document Formatting in the 2007 Office System

• A Guide to Customizing the Office 2007 Ribbon (as mentioned during the session - there are some excess line breaks in the markup posted in that article currently. For correct markup samples and a sample document that you can download to use along with that article - click here.)

• Creating Document Themes with the Open XML File Formats

• Open XML Theme Builder beta (you can download this tool (created by folks on the Office team) from Microsoft Connect. On the Help menu of the tool after it's installed, you'll see two guides - the themes SDK document that I wrote and a theme creation guide from the product team. Both give you much more information about using the theme builder tool and about creating custom themes from scratch.)

For additional resources - including the book excerpts mentioned above and articles with accompanying video demos for learning more about how to use VBA for tasks like troubleshooting documents, see the articles page on this blog (which also repeats some of the resources above).

... and if you are registered for the MCT summit, don't forget to attend tomorrow's advanced sneak peek at Office 2010. As I mentioned during the session today, Tjeerd Veninga from MS Learning will be giving you a preview of the very cool, very latest in Microsoft Office. Lots of great new things to discover, so don't miss it! That's at 7pm GMT on Friday the 19th.

Meanwhile, happy Thursday everybody!

Posted by Stephanie at 12:04 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Hi, everyone! Just a quick post this morning to mention to all Microsoft Certified Trainers, if you've not already registered for MCT Virtual Summit 2009, please do! And then, please join me on Thursday at 3pm GMT ... that's 10am Eastern, 7am Pacific (ouch :) ... etc... for a session on Office Open XML for trainers and advanced end users ... Take your Office 2007 documents to the next level using Office Open XML

Click here for more info on the summit, including registration.

I'm always psyched for an opportunity to demonstrate how far you can take your documents with Office Open XML and absolutely thrilled that the folks at MS Learning invited me to present at this very cool, global, 2-day event! This session should be a lot of fun. We'll look at ways to use Office Open XML with your Office 2007 or Office 2008 PowerPoint, Word, and Excel documents... to save time, troubleshoot, customize formatting beyond the capabilities that you see in the Office applications, and create custom content ... and, how you can do it all using nothing but a simple text editor (such as Windows Notepad or TextEdit on the Mac).

Look forward to seeing you there!

Meanwhile, happy Monday everybody!

Posted by Stephanie at 09:35 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Hi, everyone! If you use Office for Mac 2008, you probably know that you have the same new file formats as in Office 2007 for Windows ... the same document themes functionality ... same incredibly cool SmartArt graphics ... in fact, lots of the same great new functionality and formatting capabilities.

If you know that, you may also know that these new file formats are the Office Open XML Formats ... document formats based on the Open XML international document standard. And, there's a large array of Open XML learning resources for developers out there - not to mention the complete documentation of literally every bit of the structure that's under the hood of these babies.

But, this post is not about developer resources (mostly) and it's not about document standards. It's about what you, as advanced (or even just adventurous) users of Office for Mac 2008, can do with your documents.

If you're not a developer, it's possible that just about every learning resource you see about Open XML refers to Office 2007. But, if you're feeling like a forgotten stepchild, go ahead and wipe that pout off your face ... almost any resource that helps you learn about the Office Open XML Formats applies every bit as much to your Office 2008 documents as it does to Office 2007, whether or not it says so.

So, in this post, I'd like to give you three things:
- Information on what you need to do differently when working on the Mac OS rather than Windows, when you read instructions about accessing the XML behind your documents.
- A list of resources that are freely available online and can help you get started with learning Open XML basics. They'll also help you go further with tasks such as formatting Office graphics and themes.
- A few resources for those with developer experience or who already know some basics and would like to delve further into what you can do with Open XML.

How can you edit the XML behind your Office documents when working on Mac OS?

Every Office Open XML document is a compressed set of files and folders ... that is, it's a ZIP package. When working on Windows, you can change the file extension to .zip, extract all files, and then compress them gain. But, on Mac OS - if you use the built-in Archive utility to extract and then compress the package - you'll break your document with the hidden files that the OS adds into a compressed package (and Mac OS does not offer you a way to access those files.)

Instead - use a utility that enables you to extract, edit, and replace files in the ZIP package without expanding and compressing it - so no files get added into the package. There are at least a few of these for Mac ... one that I like is Better Zip.

Additionally - just as many resources for Office 2007 indicate that you can edit the XML parts in a document package using just Windows Notepad - you can do the same using the TextEdit utility in the Mac OS. To see the XML with structure (just a viewer, not an editor), you can also open document parts in a Web browser (Office 2007 resources often recommend opening those parts in a browser, such as Internet Explorer, for a structured view, if editing the file in an unstructured text editor). However - not all browsers work for this purpose. Safari doesn't, for example. However,when you just need to see the XML markup for the body of a document part, Firefox does ...open the part from File, Open File in Firefox to view the structured Open XML markup.

Okay ... that should give you enough info to work around differences in instructions when reading the Open XML learning resources in this list. If I've missed anything ... please use the Click to Contact link below and let me know!

Open XML Resources for Office 2008 users

You can use all of the resources in this list ... even if they explicitly refer to Office 2007 without mentioning Office 2008.

Open XML I: Exploring the Office Open XML Formats
Open XML II: Editing documents in the XML

You can take these free, Office Online Trainig courses from your browser in Mac OS. You may not get the audio - but all of the audio text is written on each screen, so you won't lose any of the value. The only thing you can't do is the in-course practice sessions. HOWEVER, the folks at Office Online Training have generously allowed me to post all of the practice files with instructions for using them with Office 2008, so that you can get 100% of the benefits of those courses. [Since these are courses that I wrote, I'll post the practice files on my Tutorials page alongside the course links. I'll get the practice files posted by about 6/15.]

Using Office Open XML to Customize Document Formatting in the 2007 Office System
Using Office Open XML to Save Time Without Writing Code

The two preceding links are for articles on MSDN that I wrote specifically for advanced Office users. Even where Office 2007 is mentioned in the title, you'll see an "applies to" list in the article introduction that indicates that the Open XML content in these articles also applies to Office 2008. (Note: the article on customizing document formatting focuses on graphics formatting including tips for using Open XML to customize SmartArt as well.)

Getting More from Document Themes in the 2007 Office System with Office Open XML
Creating Document Themes with the Office Open XML Formats

Again, ignore the reference to Office 2007 in the title - these are for you, too. For these links on document themes, if you're quite new to themes and how they relate to Open XML - start with the first. For those who are comfortable jumping into the how-to, go straight to the second. Note that the second assumes at least some knowledge of basic Open XML.

Also for themes, in the last article above, you'll learn about the Open XML Theme Builder - a tool created by folks on the Win Office team that essentially provides an interface for creating custom theme effects without having to write the XML. Well, that tool is currently a beta and publicly avaliable ... but you do need access to a Windows-based machine (or virtual machine) to run it. Available from the Help menu in that tool is a document called the Document Themes SDK that I wrote along with a Theme Creation Guide that's from the Win PowerPoint team. Although some of the content in those documents refers to the Theme Builder specifically, much of the content gives you best practices and a deep-dive into the details of what makes up a theme. So, you may find those documents very beneficial even if you don't use the Open XML Theme Builder (though, if you've got access to Windows, I recommend it -- it can be a huge timesaver and everything you can do in that tool is 100% compatible with themes you create for Office for Mac 2008). Click here to access the beta site, where you can download the Theme Builder tool with its included documentation.

A few Open XML developer resources

OpenXMLDeveloper.org - all things Open XML, including access to the complete specification documents (of which there are several thousand pages ... so you won't run out of reading anytime soon :)

The Open XML Formats Resource Center on the MSDN Office Developer Center. This site is a huge wealth of resources, including lots of developer learning tools, the Open XML Format SDK (which is for developers), access to some really great blogs and additional sites, and more... [Note that although a lot of the downloads are Windows-based tools, you won't quickly run out of resources that you can use to learn more for working with Open XML in Mac Office as well.]

Experienced Open XML developers who want access to the specification documents with some guidance from the experts might want to check out the Document Interop Initiative Web site where you can find the standards documentation with implementer notes. Learn more about that here.

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That's all for today. Happy Monday everybody!

Posted by Stephanie at 08:46 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Hi, everyone! Lots of new content online to tell you about today ...

My second Office Open XML course for Office Online Training is now available here: Open XML II: Editing documents in the XML. Learn the basics of how to edit text and formatting in the XML, replace image files, and safely remove a document part.

Additionally, I recently posted about a bunch of new articles on the MSDN Office Developer Center on various Open XML and VBA topics for power users. Eight of those articles now have accompanying screencast demos ... which you can access from a link that follows the first heading in each of the following articles:

Using Office Open XML to Customize Document Formatting in the 2007 Office System

Using Office Open XML to Save Time Without Writing Code

Troubleshooting Word 2007 Documents More Easily Using VBA

Using VBA to Access Document Content in the 2007 Office System

Using VBA to Control Built-In Commands in the 2007 Office System

Using VBA to Format Long Documents in the 2007 Office System in a Fraction of the Time

Extending Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007 with a Single Line of VBA Code

Exploring the Dynamic World of Word 2007

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That's all for now!

Have a happy Wednesday everybody!

Posted by Stephanie at 09:57 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

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