Hello everyone! Thank you for taking time to attend today's 2007 Office system webcast. If you didn't get a chance - check back here later this week for the link to the on-demand recording. Meanwhile, I promised attendees a bunch of additional resources for learning more about the 2007 Office system ... so here goes:
Get the Beta or Take the Test Drive ... keep in mind that this is beta software, still in development. If you don't have a computer where you can install the beta without having to use it for your mission-critical, daily production work, it's a good idea to take the online test drive instead of downloading the full product.
To get up-to-speed quickly in the new user interface, use the interactive command reference guides for switching from Office 2003 to Office 2007. Just click a command in a virtual 2003 window and you'll see where to find the command in 2007. Available for:
Word
Excel
PowerPoint
For a good, basic introduction to the new Office programs, try the up-to-speed training courses from Office Online training ... they're brief, self-paced, and easy to use:
Word
Excel
PowerPoint
Outlook
For a walk-through demo of the new Open XML file formats for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint - view my on-demand webcast: What you can do with the new XML file formats (level 300) Note that this is an advanced session, best for those who want to begin to learn about the guts of what's contained in an Office XML file, and what you can do with them.
If you prefer to read than to watch, or would like an additional resource as well on this subject - Office MVP Beth Melton has a good introduction to the XML file formats on the Office beta community site
I mentioned the Office Beta Community site a few times today for articles and other content as additional resources. Currently, I have articles on this site about getting up-to-speed with the new interface, new formatting capabiltiies in Outlook, and the new Calendar Printing Assistant for Outlook. Also, two more articles from me will be posting on that site shortly -- one about managing hidden data and metadata in Office 2007 documents ... and one for advanced users who want to begin customizing features such as themes, quick styles, and building blocks.
There are also a number of articles from other experts addressing some of the topics we looked at today and a number of others ... such as an entry-level overview of Themes from Beth Melton and an introduction to business intelligence capabilities in Excel from Excel MVP Curt Frye - talking a bit about Excel tables, conditional formatting, pivottables, and charts ... Here's the main articles page (updates every few weeks):
Office Beta Community Articles
I'm also giving a live chat next Tuesday at 11am Pacific (2pm Eastern) on protecting private content in your Office 2007 documents ... so please join that chat and fire away with any questions. Here's the page where you'll learn more info about upcoming Office beta community chats
Finally - click Links in the navigation pane on this blog for links to some of my favorite blogs about 2007 programs from members of the Microsoft Office team.
I think that's everything. If I promised something you don't see here, or if you have a question related to today's session (or anything on Office) ... post them here as comments and I'll respond asap.
Happy Tuesday everyone!
