Here's the link to register and\or sign in: Tips and Tricks for Office 2008 for Mac: Incredible Documents Made Simple

If you're viewing the webcast from a Mac - Safari is your best bet for a browser that will enable you to access the meeting. And note -- if you get an error message that says your browser isn't compatible ... look on the page for a 're-enter meeting' button. If you see that button - you can ignore the error and just click that button to enter the meeting. It should work just fine ...

Look forward to seeing you there!

Happy Tuesday everyone!

If you're viewing the webcast from a Mac - Safari is your best bet for a browser that will enable you to access the meeting. And note -- if you get an error message that says your browser isn't compatible ... look on the page for a 're-enter meeting' button. If you see that button - you can ignore the error and just click that button to enter the meeting. It should work just fine ...

Hope to see you there!

Meanwhile - I'm giving two webcasts on Office for Mac 2008 that are coming up this week and next - one this Thursday on compatibility for documents between Office 2007 and Office 2008 ... and one next Tuesday on creating great documents with Office for Mac 2008.

As always, these sessions are free and available to everyone.

Note: If you're a Mac user - the LiveMeeting interface that's used for the webcast sessions can be picky in my experience about which browsers it lets you use on Mac, but the current version of Safari on Leopard does work (it's what I'll be using for the Mac side of the demos and I have tested it) ...

Hope to see you there! Here are the details...

June 19th (this Thursday) at 9a Pacific\12p Eastern\5p UK time ... Compatibility Tips for Office 2008 for Mac and the 2007 Office Release for Windows

June 24th (next Tuesday) at 9a Pacific\12p Eastern\5p UK time ... Tips and Tricks for Office 2008 for Mac: Incredible Documents Made Simple

Hope to see you there! Meanwhile, happy Monday everybody!

If you're in London, and you work in the legal community or other professional services fields, you may want to check out the UK Document Production group's Word Excellence Day next Tuesday, where myself and others will be presenting on various Office 2007 topics.

Meanwhile - if you send me a question in the next ten days or so, I'll reply to your email as soon as possible after Memorial Day. For an answer before then, check out the Genius Resources page on this blog for other resources where you may find an answer to your question.

Happy Thursday everyone ... and have a good week!

Well, I'm glad you asked ...

For advanced Office users, Open XML is the best thing to happen to Office since VBA ... and in some ways, it's even more important. So, if you can create great documents, make Excel charts dance, and make PowerPoint presentations that don't look like PowerPoint -- but you don't own Visual Studio, are not really sure what .Net actually is, and, if pressed, would probably say that C# is a musical term ... then this post is for you ...

So, what can you, the advanced user, really do?

- You can see and understand virtually everything that is stored in your document.
- You can troubleshoot documents more efficiently
- You can edit and format many aspects of documents, or groups of documents, more quickly and easily than from within Word, Excel, or PowerPoint
- You can extend and customize Word, Excel, and PowerPoint with such things as including a custom Ribbon in any document, template, or add-in; creating custom document themes, and creating custom SmartArt graphics...

... and then, of course, ...

Why advanced users?

If you are a software trainer, tech support professional, document production professional, or the go-to Office guru in your department, and you have any influence over more basic Office users - please DON'T send them into the XML. An end user never has to see or even know that Open XML is involved in their documents in order to do everything they need to get their work done. Just as it would be irresponsible to tell a basic user to write a macro in order to do something they can do from within the Office programs using the Ribbon or a keyboard shortcut - telling a basic user to go into the code behind their documents isn't going to do anyone any favors.

But, if you are an advanced user, knowledgeable about Word, Excel, and/or PowerPoint and able to confidently execute it's functionality to an advanced level (such as creating complex tables or working with field codes in Word ... creating nested functions and complex charts in Excel ... or customizing layouts and masters in PowerPoint) ... then Open XML just may be your new best friend. In fact, you may be amazed at how easy it can be.

For years I've recommended VBA as an essential tool for advanced users of Office - and many people - including some of those users and a lot of professional developers - have responded as if I was crazy. VBA is programming - OMG! - why would an end user ever want to go there? Why would anyone want them to?

Well - if something that normally takes you hours could take a few minutes ... if something you didn't think Office could do actually turned out to not only be possible but to be easy ... would that be crazy? Of course not. That's VBA - a language that advanced end users can master far more quickly than professional developers who don't know Office well - because much of the language is developed from the features you already know.

Personally, I would find Office far less usable without the Immediate Window - it is probably the Office feature I use most often. (For those who have never ventured into the VBA editor in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, the Immediate Window is a pane that lets you run one line of code to quickly execute a task or get information from a document.)

Well, as much as I - like many advanced users - have become dependent upon VBA to do my job properly ... I do have a new favorite thing in Office. With Open XML, I can understand my documents and the programs behind them to a level that I never could before. When you know how the software 'thinks' you can much more easily understand and interact with it.

So a few more examples to answer the question 'why advanced users?' ...

- With Open XML, there's no more wondering what potentially private information you may be sharing with your document - because you can know conclusively what is and is not there.
- Customization that you thought Office 2007 couldn't do ... such as setting the reflection on a graphic object to somehting other than one of the preset gallery options or creating a complete set of custom theme effects ... can actually be easy.
- And when I say that you can save time on many types of editing tasks ... what if, for example, without actually editing a single line of XML code - just by understanding the Open XML structure behind your document - you could do the following ...

Say that you have an image, such as a logo, that appears dozens of times throughout a document. You get a new logo and have to replace it before the document can go out. Wouldn't it be nice if, instead of pasting, placing, and formatting that image dozens of times ... you could just paste it once - just once - and Word would know everywhere to place it and retain all of the formatting information from the previous logo? Well, it can. That's the power of Open XML for the advanced user.

Do you need to buy software to do any of this?

The short answer is no, you almost certainly already have everything you need. Professional developers work with Open XML using professional developer tools, but you don't need them to do anything that I've mentioned in this post. You can edit Open XML in a simple text editor (such as Windows Notepad or Apple's Text Edit), you can view it in Internet Explorer (some other Web browsers will try to process the XML instead of displaying it), and once you understand a bit of XML structure, you can use free utilities to work with it more easily - such as the free structured XML editor from Microsoft called XML Notepad 2007 (that's a Windows-compatible tool, by the way).

In fact, once you understand the structure of the Open XML behind your Office documents, you can actually create a document entirely from scratch using nothing but a text editor and any ZIP compression utility that doesn't require you to extract files in order to access them (so - for example - the built-in compression tools that come with Windows will do the trick, but the archive utility that comes with the Mac OS will not).

Then, how do I get started?

Like all things new, start with the foundation. Every Open XML Format file is actually a compressed set of files and folders. Once you understand that structure (if you're already an advanced Office user, it will be easy) you'll have a much better time of things when you dive in.

There are lots of sources to get started. Many of them are targeted to developers, but not all - and even some that are targeted to developers are quite easy for us mortals to understand.

You can check out some of my content for options that are targeted to advanced users, including:

- If you have my Office 2007 book, Advanced Documents Inside Out, you have pretty detailed primers on Open XML
and VBA written for advanced users. Click my books here or in the navigation pane on this blog for more info on the book, including a look at the TOC.

- Check out the first in a series of (free) courses I'm writing for Office Online Training about Open XML (Exploring the Open XML File Formats) - this one is an introductory walk-through of the Open XML structure behind your documents. The second in the series - which includes several basic Open XML editing tasks - will be published soon ... and the third (most likely available in a couple of months) will be on the basics of customizing the Ribbon.

- Watch a webcast ... I've given webcasts on Open XML basics (and VBA basics, in case you're looking for that as well) ... here is a recent series of three ...

Advanced Tips & Tricks: Breaking Into Your Office Open XML Format Documents
Advanced Tips and Tricks: Using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) Every Day Is Easier Than You Think
Advanced Tips and Tricks: Customizing the Ribbon Using Office Open XML

... and if you've got at least some comfort level with Open XML and you're open to venturing into developer territory (they don't check membership cards :) ... here are some of my favorite resources:

- Probably the single most valuable tool to me when I was learning Open XML was a walk-through of the file format that included creating a Word document from scratch - from the marvelous Erika Ehrli, who is the manager of the Office Developer Center on MSDN ... The article is nearly two years old, and still one of the best on the subject - it's a great place to start Walkthrough: Word 2007 XML Format

- There are a tremendous amount of wonderful tools and information on the Office Developer Center about Open XML - most of it is geared toward professional developers and developer tools, but once you get comfortable with the basics, you may want to explore what's there and pick and choose for yourself.

- OpenXMLdeveloper.org is for all things Open XML. Again, it's definitely written by and for developers - but once you have the fundamentals down, when you're looking for an answer to something you're working on - you may be surprised at how much you can find here.

- How about going straight to the source? There are many bloggers and other online resources about Open XML. Some of my favorites to follow are folks who helped design Office Open XML, worked on the standards process, or continue to work on Open XML for Office (or a combination of these) ... check out blogs from the talented and charming Doug Mahugh and Brian Jones for starters and then take a look at the blogs they read for more expert resources.

As some of you know, I built the templates you'll see in Word 2008 and many of those in PowerPoint 2008, so I have been working with these programs for quite some time and I'm looking forward to the opportunity to share lots of tips!

If you'd like to get these sessions on your calendar before your busy June schedule starts to fill up, the links to where you can register are below. As with all Microsoft Office webcasts, these sessions are free and open to anyone. You can attend a LiveMeeting on either a PC or a Mac. If you've not attended a LiveMeeting before, on the PC you will get the option to install LiveMeeting on your computer or use the Web interface ... on the Mac you will always use the Web interface. When the dates get closer, I'll also post some info on which browsers work well with LiveMeeting on the Mac.

June 19th:
Compatibility Tips for Office 2008 for Mac and the 2007 Office Release for Windows

June 24th:
Tips and Tricks for Office 2008 for Mac: Incredible Documents Made Simple

Both of these sessions will be intermediate level (level 200).

Happy Friday and a great weekend everybody!

I send an email to the talented person who installs, updates, and designs all things blog-related for me... and then after sending that email - before she has a chance to reply - i think that maybe I should check with my hosting service just in case they changed something.

I full expect them to reply that they can't help me with anything to do with the configuration of my blog or MT (and I wouldn't blame them for it), but I figure it can't hurt to ask. Well, in about a minute after sending the service request email, I get a reply asking me for more information. That reply came from a support person whose name I recognized as someone who has helped me many times in the past.

Two exchanges of email in less than 5 minutes and the support agent doesn't give me info about the problem - that person went in and FIXED the problem for me. (Well, you guys know that or i wouldn't be able to do this post).

I've been with Total Choice Hosting for a couple of years now (I think it's been that long) ... and I've made many requests - from changing my account level several times for more or less space ... to requests for help when the site has had problems or I've had questions that I thought were site-related. Requests are always handled quickly - and expertly - and they just keep getting better. It really is unusual to encounter a company that does it's job that consistently well in all areas.

Perhaps I'm raving over-the-top because this morning's experience is in immediate contrast to the horrible support experience I just reported with a different company in my earlier rant post ... but I think the positives deserve more attention than the negatives in life ... and they often don't get it.

So, thanks to Total Choice Hosting ...

... and Happy Thursday, everyone!

Anyone who knows me or has read my blog for awhile knows that I don't write negative things about anyone or any company. It's not my style. This situation, however, is unbelievable - and I want to post it to warn others before they make a purchase they'll end up regretting.

Never in my experience with computer products have I ever had such a bad experience as I've just had with HP. And it wasn't 1 person, it was several people, at several levels, over a period of a month...

About a month ago, I realized that what initially appeared to be an Office 2007\Vista SP1 issue (crashing on exit) was actually just a conflict between my printer driver (Photosmart C4180) and Vista SP1. I reproduced the same issue on 4 separate computers by installing Vista SP1 where that printer was installed or installing the printer on an SP1 machine. Uninstall the printer and the issue goes away, 100%, every time.

So - I contacted HP to see if it was a known issue, if they had a fix for it yet - and if not, to report the issue and provide them with repro steps. Here's how that went:

1 - Call 1: the level 1 tech support said the Vista drivers on the site are old and he would transfer me to the department that could send me a CD with updated drivers. 1/2 hour on hold, provide nearly enough personal info to steal my identity, and the new person says the drivers on the CD are identical to those on the site. There's no point in sending me a CD and he can't help me.

2 - Call 2: the new level 1 tech support person says he doesn't know the solution. he puts me on hold to research (seems reasonable so far) and says he can't find anything but he's sure he's heard about it and wants to research. he tells me to give him a week to get back to me. I was impressed. BUT - It's been a month. He never called back. No longer so impressed.

3 - Emailed support: I sent detailed, written repro steps on the issue. Conflict between HP driver and Vista SP1. Two days later, I got an email with a link to a MSFT KB article about crashing when an Office program opens - having nothing whatsoever to do with printers or with the issuer reported. I reply to that effect.

- I go back and forth with several replies over weeks ... each time getting another irrelevant link (getting so bad that the last one was a link to a KB article about problems opening Office documents in IE (yes, really, it was that bad). I repeatedly ask for the case to be escalated to level 2 and that request is repeatedly ignored.

4 - This morning I call HP support again, asking to talk to a manager. I no longer want to troubleshoot - I want to report the abominable support experience. After being put on hold several times, disconnected twice, I am told by two people (I called back again because I figured the first was just (*&! but no such luck) ... that they can't transfer me to a manager because my product is now out of warranty. It was IN warrantee when the case was opened. I explain this to them, explaining that I don't want tech support - i want a manager to report the issue to, and I'm told the same thing - only in-warrantee customers can talk to a manager, and the fact that the product was in warranty when the case was opened is not even acknowledged.

5 - I wait for HP's west coast corporate office to open for the day and call. I'm transfered to what I'm told is the highest level of customer contact. A case manager for multifunction machines such as mine. I explain the above and he tells me that what I'm asking is out of the scope of support and that the support staff was right to tell me that my product is out of warrantee and there's nothing they can do. I ask him if he realizes he's telling me that HP thinks it's acceptable to take so long addressing an issue that they can just wait for the product to go out of warranty and then say they can't help. He says that I'm putting words in his mouth and then he becomes rude. He tells me that he's the highest level of customer contact, so my only other option is to send a letter to the black hole, general mailbox of hte corporate office that transfered me to him or to email general customer support (i.e., back to level 1).

I realize that I am much better off buying a new product from a different company than trying to get any type of satisfaction from HP.

I called Canon pre-sales support to ask some information on a few models. After less than a minute on hold, a helpful person gave me all the information I needed. That's a good sign (I hope) ... fingers crossed ...

... and on to the good news for the day...

I have a few posts coming up in the next few days ... one rave and one rant to come shortly ... and then, this weekend, I'll start posting tips, tricks, and technical info once again and regularly. First post to be written this Sunday will be about all things Open XML for advanced end users... so please stay tuned.

Meanwhile - I'm delighted that many of you have continued to send questions throughout my quiet lack of posting here. I'm always happy to answer Office questions or help you get to the right place if I don't have the answer ... so keep 'em coming :)

... coming up now are my rant and rave ... why the best Web hosting service by far is Total Choice Hosting ... and why nobody should ever buy a product from HP again...

Meanwhile, happy Thursday everybody!

Advanced Tips and Tricks for Word 2007 Documents

At the end of that session, I promised some additional links specifically related to learning about Open XML and VBA. If you click the Genius Resources link at left, you'll find a ton of Office 2007 links for all levels - and the last section of those are next-level resources for Office, such as the marvelous Office Developer Center and Open XML Developer.org.

- As also mentioned, if you have my Office 2007 book - Advanced Documents Inside Out - that book contains extensive primers (written for advanced Office users, not for developers) on both Open XML and VBA basics.

Additionally, I have given webcasts on Open XML basics, VBA basics, and the basics of customizing the ribbon ... and here are the links to those recordings (like yesterday's session, these are all advanced (level 300) events:

Breaking Into Your Open XML Format Documents
Using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) Every Day Is Easier Than You Think
Customizing the Ribbon Using Open XML

Finally - I mentioned in yesterday's session that you can create an entire document theme from scratch, including theme effects. The tool I mentioned for helping to create theme effects without writing the XML is the Open XML Theme Builder that is freely available on CodePlex, thanks to some folks on the Office 2007 product team. If you are going to check it out and start building complete themes from scratch, the following article gives you some basic background on the components of themes and how theme effects translate from the choices you can make to what you see in the Office programs ... Behind the Scenes with Document Themes.

If I forgot to mention a resource I promised, or if you have questions that didn't get answered, you can (as always) use the Click to Contact link at the bottom of this page for a form that will enable you to send me your question or request by email. When my work schedule is hectic, it can take me a couple of days to reply ... but I reply to all polite e-mail messages that I receive :)

Happy Wednesday everybody!

Here's that link ... Introducing the Open XML File Formats ...

Happy Friday everyone!

I hope to catch up on those by tomorrow ... so if you don't see a reply from me by tomorrow, feel free to resend.

Meanwhile ... some new resources coming up ...

Please join me next Tuesday, March 18th for an advanced (level 300) Word 2007 documents webcast. As always, Microsoft Office webcasts are free and available to everyone ... so check it out! If you don't already have the 2007 version of Microsoft Office LIveMeeting installed - log in a few minutes early the day of the event to give yourself time to install and get it setup before the session begins (it's free as well, of course, but does take a few minutes).

Here's the link to register:

Advanced Tips & Tricks for Word 2007 Documents

... there will be more resource coming pretty fast and furiously over the next several weeks, including articles, training courses, and other hopefully interesting tidbits for both Office 2007 and Office 2008 ... so please stay tuned!! (I also intend to get my webcast archives updated on the 'help with Office' pages of this site very soon ... so if you're looking for a session you don't see, please drop me an email and I'll get you the link.)

Meanwhile, happy Thursday everybody!

I have received some of your questions in email and will reply to all of those tomorrow (Friday). If you still have a question to ask - just use the Click to Contact link at the bottom of this page to send me an email.

As for the resources ...

- As mentioned at the start of today's demo, if you have my Office 2007 book (Advanced Documents Inside Out), it contains instruction on how to do everything we looked at today, including a detailed primer on Open XML.
If you don't have the book ... you can get a sample chapter posted on my books page - which happens to be one of the topics addressed in today's webcast ... Content Controls. So - to check out that chapter and get more info - see the my books page at left, or click here.

- For a basic-level introduction to the Open XML Formats, including an introduction to what's contained in the ZIP package of an Open XML Format document - you can check out the first in a series of Open XML courses I'm writing for Office Online Training. It's free and available to anyone: Open XML I: Exploring the Open XML Formats
(The second course in that series - which walks you through basic editing tasks, including replacing images as I demonstrated today - is currently in editing and will hopefully be published pretty soon.)

- To learn more about Office developer technologies in general, including Open XML, check out the Office Developer Center on MSDN. This is a terrific site - it's directed at developers, but there are really good get started pages and a terrific interactive developer map to help you find information easily even if you're just dipping your toe into customization and extensibility options... Office Developer Center

- For a great many resources on new Office 2007 content on every level - check out the genius resources link in the left hand navigation pane on this page, or click here.

*************************************************

If you need an answer that you don't find at one of the links above - or need a resource for something I've not mentioned ... please use the click to contact link below and send me a request.

I also want to mention that we will be re-recording the webcast next week, and then updating the on-demand version you can watch online so that you can see the entire demo without the abrupt cut-off near the end. If you attended today's session, you should get an email when that's posted. But, I'll also post here to let you know when that is available.

Meanwhile - happy Thursday everyone!!

I've been in San Francisco this week, presenting at MacWorld 2008 about the brand new Office 2008 for Mac. Microsoft launched Office 2008 at the show this week and it's been so much fun to be a part of that. I've had the opportunity to meet many terrific people this week - and had a great time talking with Office users about the way they use the programs and what they can do with the new functionality.

I built the templates that you'll see in Word 2008 and many of the themes you'll see in PowerPoint and Office 2008 ... so I've been working in Office 2008 for quite awhile - and there are some pretty incredible new tools you may want to know about. Check out the Office for Mac website, mactopia.com, for info -- and to check out some of the presentations from MacWorld. The presentations I've been giving this week will be posted there soon, but some other really excellent presentations are already there.

Meanwhile ... you'll find more links about Office 2008 on my links page ... And for those of you who attended my Open XML FIle Formats or Beautiful Documents Made Simple presentations here at MacWorld and want to learn more about the Open XML FIle formats -- you can find links for that as well.

... I look forward to catching up on your questions as soon as I return. Meanwhile - happy Friday and happy weekend everybody!

I neglected to post that I'd be offline over the holidays, but so I was ... so if you have sent me a help request using the Click To Contact form and it went unanswered, feel free to resend it. I do think I've caught up now, and believe I caught everyone ... but in case I did miss you, go ahead and ping me again.

I'll post something more interesting as soon as I can :) Meanwhile - HAPPY MONDAY everybody!