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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.

[updated 3-21 with on-demand link]

Hi, everyone! Thanks to everybody who attended today's webcast on the basics of Office Open XML. For those of you who wanted to but couldn't make it - here's the link to the on-demand recording:

Advanced Tips & Tricks: Breaking Into Your Office Open XML Format Documents (Level 300)

Meanwhile, I promised some additional resources - so here you go:

For those new to the 2007 release in general - you can use the Interactive Command Reference Guides on Office Online to help you find commands in the new versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint:

Word
Excel
PowerPoint

To install a custom 'Get Started' tab for Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, with access to the command reference guides and other resources, check these out:
Word
Excel
PowerPoint

For those who are ready to go with Office Open XML, here are a few additional resources:

Link to the downloads page for the full Ecma standards documentation for the Office Open XML Formats - about 6500 pages worth -- including an in-depth primer (written for programmers, so likely to be overwhelming to beginners, but certainly worth a look) ... [parts 1, 3, and 4 are likely to be the most useful]

An ongoing blog about the Open XML Formats - straight from the source - Brian Jones' Open XML blog

Another of the Open XML gurus behind the new file formats is Word team member Tristan Davis, who often contributes to the excellent blog produced by the Word team, which you'll find here.

For the folks who asked about Access ... as mentioned, Access doesn't use the new file formats. However, the Ribbon in Access is still extensible. Here's an article on that topic (note that this article is written for developers).

I also neglected to answer one question, which i didn't realize until after signing off from the session - my apologies. Someone asked the excellent question of how OLE objects are handled in Open XML Format files. When content is embedded from another program (such as embedding a Visio object in a Word document) the embedded content is stored in the destination document's ZIP package as a .bin (binary) file - with appropriate relationship and content type information added. If the embedded content is from another Open XML Format file (such as embedding one docx in another or a pptx in an xslx file), then the embedded Open XML Format file is stored in a folder called embeddings, which appears in the program-specific folder in the destination file's zip package. (for example - an embedded docx inside another docx would be stored as a complete .docx file inside the embeddings folder within the word folder of the destination document's ZIP package.)

If you need more detail about OLE objects in the Open XML Formats - please just email your question and I'll be happy to address it. If it's potentially applicable to lots of folks, I'll post it here.

More resources from me:

To sign up for the next webcast in this series (basics of using VBA every day), happening on April 3rd, click here.
[And look for the third installment in this series in May - which will cover customizing the Ribbon. If you didn't watch today's session and haven't yet worked with the XML in Open XML Format ZIP packages - check out the on-demand version of today's session before the May webcast on Ribbon customization if you can.]

And, for a detailed look at everything covered today and then some, along with sample files, exercises, and taking it further into editing XML parts, customizing the Ribbon, and binding data to Word content controls, check out the Open XML Essentials chapter (Chapter 22) in my new book, Advanced Microsoft Office Documents 2007 Edition Inside Out ... which also includes an extensive VBA primer (Chapter 21) written (as is the XML content) for advanced users and not for programmers ... and a chapter on using Open XML and VBA together to create add-ins (Chapter 23 - which includes how to add your own macros to the Ribbon). If you click the My Books link in the left-hand navigation pane on this blog, you can also find links to excerpts from the book - including the complete table of contents and a sample chapter.

Finally - please keep in mind that, if you have any questions from today's session or anything related to it that you didn't get to ask today - you can feel free to send me an email using a link at the bottom of this page.

I look forward to hearing from you and to seeing you at the next webcast on April 3rd!

Meanwhile, happy Tuesday everybody!

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