BUT - I just returned from a trip and, while going through mail and catching up on queries from the past week, I accidentally deleted two questions from folks and was unable to retrieve them.

If you sent me mail with an Office question in the past week or so -- and you didn't receive a reply today, but you do still need help -- will you please resend it?

Sorry for the bother! Thanks for asking :)

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Do feel free to use the Contact link and try me again. I will pay attention to the spam folder now that I know about the problem. I will be changing the contact email address as well when the site turns over ... and hopefully will have some better controls in place at that point as well.

So thank you for your patience. Don't give up on me :) I'm still here and I'm very happy to help!

For today's post, I'm starting with a basic Q&A to address some of the most common questions on the subject. Additional resources to learn more across the board are available at the end of the post …

Applies to products: PowerPoint 2010, Word 2010, Excel 2010, PowerPoint for Mac 2011, Word for Mac 2011, Excel for Mac 2011, PowerPoint 2007, Word 2007, and Excel 2007

What is a Microsoft Office theme?

A theme is a coordinated set of colors, fonts, and graphic effects that you can apply to an entire document, presentation, or workbook with a single click. The same themes work in PowerPoint, Word, and Excel (as well as Outlook and, in part, Access).

In PowerPoint, the theme also includes the slide master, set of slide layouts, and a set of slide background styles.

Once a theme is applied to a document or template, new content you add to that file automatically takes on theme formatting as applicable (such as matching fonts for text or matching colors for Office graphics.)

(Side note: you actually get the slide background styles gallery of the theme in Word and Excel as well, but for applying as shape fills.)

What is a Microsoft Office template?

There are several types of Microsoft Office templates but they all share the basic definition in common with most any other type of template you might know: something that you can reuse and customize, rather than starting from scratch.

You might use content templates (containing sample or boilerplate content), layout templates (containing sample layout structure to which you can add or customize content), design templates (those that provide a consistent look and feel to be applied to many different types of content), or a combination.

What is the relationship between themes and templates?

If you are using the current Microsoft Office file formats (the Office Open XML formats – the file formats introduced in Office 2007 that use four-character file extensions) then every PowerPoint, Word, and Excel document or template you create contains a theme – whether you choose to make use of that theme or not.

You can customize the theme within any document or template, and you can save just the theme for a document or template for use in other files.

How do you decide whether you need a theme or a template?

In PowerPoint, you get the design elements (master, layouts, colors, fonts, graphic effects) in both templates and themes, since every template contains a theme. So, you need a template only when you need sample on-slide content.

In Word or Excel, if you need any sample content, layouts, styles, or background graphics at all (any on-page or on-sheet content), you need a template. But your template includes the fonts, colors, and graphic formatting effects for a theme as well.

Why use themes?

Themes are an extremely important, extremely powerful, and easy to use formatting feature. They are fully customizable. They integrate with a tremendous amount of other functionality (such as Word or Excel styles, Word building blocks, and – as previously mentioned – most PowerPoint design elements).

Independent users – such as home users and students – enjoy using themes because it’s fast and easy to swap looks, customize your look, or mix and match different looks.

But one of the most important uses for themes in my experience is that they make it significantly easier for corporate users to implement company branding in documents, presentations, and workbooks . So, it’s easier for content created by people across the company to look consistent and professional.

Do you have to use themes in Microsoft Office documents and templates?

Do you have to use them? The short answer is definitely no. (Didn’t expect that, did you?)

Just because you get a theme in every document doesn’t mean you need it in every document. Like any feature of Office, use themes where they make sense for you – and that means where they save you time and/or improve your results. Yes, they make sense more often than not. But if you really have no use for any element of the theme that’s in your document or template, ignore it. Just be sure you really don’t need the theme before you choose to ignore …

In Word or Excel, if you are certain that you will never want to change fonts, use any color, or include any Microsoft Office graphics like shapes, charts, or SmartArt diagrams, then themes don’t make any difference to you. But, even if you don’t need those things now – if your document (or template) might need these things in the future, then setting up the theme will save you work and give you better results when the time comes.

In PowerPoint, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll often run into cases where you don’t need to care about the theme. If you’re creating just a one or two slide, text-only presentation and will never need to reuse those slides in any way; if that presentation doesn’t need any background design elements that are the same on more than one slide; and if you’ll never need to change fonts, colors, or include graphics - then you can just be on your way and do things manually on each slide.

But if even one of those things is not true and you still choose to ignore the master and other theme elements like colors, fonts, and graphic effects, than you are going to do far more work than necessary and probably not get nearly as good results if you don’t make use of the theme.

Ready to learn more about working with themes and templates,such as how to create or customize them? Check out these additional resources:

• If you have my Office 2010 book - Documents, Presentations, and Workbooks (which also covers Office for Mac 2011 and this topic applies to both), get a detailed tutorial on the basics of themes and how to create/customize them in Chapter 5, learn more about PowerPoint-specific theme elements in Chapter 13, and get a detailed overview of Microsoft Office template types in Chapter 22. Learn more about that book here. And if you click the book thumbnail it will take you to the Amazon.com page, where you can search inside and review the table of contents in detail.

• I definitely recommend a look at PowerPoint MVP Echo Swinford’s blog. She's also published an article on this topic here and you can get more information on her site about her upcoming book on the subject as well.

• If you're a developer or a confident power user and you want to know more about the guts of a theme and how to customize those parts that you can’t customize from within the Office programs, check out a white paper I wrote for the MSDN Office Developer Center … it’s an advanced-level walkthrough on the subject. It was written for Office 2007 but still applies to 2010 (or Mac 2011). (Note that it refers to the free Open XML Theme Builder tool which appears to be unavailable at the link provided at the moment. As soon as I find out if it will be back online and available for download, I’ll update this information.)

Hope this is helpful! Don't forget that you can email your questions to me at the contact link provided below ... and in the meantime ... happy Friday everyone!

I realized recently that I've even been bad about replying to people's questions -- so if I missed yours and you still need help, please resend it. I've now slated a reminder for a couple of times per week to respond to those questions. So you might not get an answer right when you send the question (depending upon how our schedules happen to coincide), but you will get one.

Thanks for the understanding, folks. As things calm down, I'll get back to posting more ...

Meanwhile, Happy Monday everybody! (and to those in beautiful NYC today, happy early Spring!)

Bon anniversaire Monsieur de Voltaire!

Today marks the 317th anniversary of Mr. Arouet's birth ...

(and for those who might have hoped this post was the webcast follow-up that I promised to do, that will come as soon as I have the URL for the recording from Friday's Excel webcast :)

Entre-temps, bonne soirée tout le monde!

You can learn more about it and register here: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/e/2001

You can also check out more upcoming sessions (including the rest of this series) and archived webcasts you might have missed, here: http://oreilly.com/webcasts/microsoft/index.html

Hope to see you on Friday ... and meanwhile, happy Monday everybody!

I believe everyone who asked a question during the session has had them answered ... if I'm wrong, feel free to use the contact link at the bottom of this page to send me mail.

If you missed the session or would like to revisit any part of it, the on-demand recording is now available here.

In the answer to one question, I promised to post a link here as well to some articles and sample documents available on Office.com that speak to the issue of drafting content and then handling formatting/layout. There are three documents at the link that follows with related articles that are focused on making your documents more visually effective ... an approach that absolutely requires that you have the content first. It's not about design or formatting for the sake of design. Effective document design is all about helping convey your content most effectively. Check them out here - and feel free to send questions to me on them as well ...

As mentioned during the Word session, my next webcast will be on Friday, October 21st ... Create better PowerPoint 2010 presentations more easily. I hope you'll join me!

And meanwhile, happy Thursday everybody!

It turns out, in fact, that when I got cut off right before the end of the session, it was because my building was testing backup generators as part of their hurricane prep. So, I apologize for missing the promised shortcuts and the Q&A session ... but I have now replied by mail to everyone who posted a question - or at least I believe so. That said - if you posted a question and never got an answer ... you can resend it to me using the contact form on this site. And, if you've had questions that have arisen since the session - feel free to send those as well.

All of my recommended links from that session - and many more - are available on the links page on this site. And you can check out the Help with Office option in the site menu for links to many articles on a wide range of Office topics.

If you missed the session or want to review it, it's now available on the O'Reillly You Tube webcast archives. (your flash player needs to be up-to-date to see this correctly, by the way)

Note that it is free to view (just as it is free to attend these events live) -- however, I've just learned that if you're interested in viewing O'Reilly webcast recordings that are more than 3 months old, there is a fee for many of those -So, if - down the road - you're ever going to do that for one of my O'Reilly webcasts (this is NOT the case for Microsoft webcasts I've given in the past), please email me first to let me know what it is you want to get out of the session, so that I can tell you if it's likely to be worthwhile for you.

In the meantime, please do sign up for my next webcast (these live webcasts are always free to attend and open to anyone) - which will be all about creating better documents more easily using Word 2010... that's on Sept 30th at 1pm US Eastern time... and you can check out all of my upcoming O'Reilly webcasts, along with all of their upcoming events, here. If you're scrolling through the list of all upcoming events and looking for mine - there is one from me each month through the end of this year.

And if you're interested in learning about my latest book - for Office 2010 and Office for Mac 2011 - you can find more info about it on my books page.

Meanwhile, happy Wednesday everyone!

Tips for creating better documents, presentations, and workbooks more easily ... Please check it out:

http://oreillynet.com/pub/e/1999

The next event will be on September 30th ... and will focus specifically on Word. Then, additional events will follow in October, November, and December, focusing - respectively - on PowerPoint, Excel, and Office extensibility.

Here's the link for the September event, if you'd like to check that one out as well: http://oreillynet.com/pub/e/2000

These events are hosted by O'Reilly. You can actually see more info on the whole series, register for any or all of the sessions, and see info on all upcoming O'Reilly webcasts here: http://oreilly.com/webcasts/

Note: Althought my newest book is for both Office 2010 and Office for Mac 2011, this particular webcast series focuses on Office 2010. However, though the demo will be only in Office 2010 - I will provide tips for Mac users as we go ... and of course, everyone is welcome to ask questions either at the session or via email from this blog at anytime after a session. And hopefully, I'll be able to add some Mac-specific events in the future as well.

Hope to see you all this Friday... and meanwhile, happy Wednesday everyone!

Word Web App has added co-authoring (simultaneous editing) ... and it works across, Word 2010, Word Web App, and Word for Mac 2011! Just spent a few minutes geeking out across a couple of computers ... and can confirm that it works pretty seamlessly in Word Web App in IE or Safari, while other editors are in the Web App, or in Word 2010 or 2011 on their desktop.

Author blocking is recognized, you get notification online when another editor joins, and changes sync on save just like in the client app. Conflict resolution even works seamlessly.

On my home (cable Internet) network, with wired connections on both computers I used for testing, there's well under a 1 minute delay for notifications. For example, I started editing in Word 2010 on my laptop from a different SkyDrive account and in about 30 seconds, I got a notification in Word Web App in Safari on my Mac desktop that my evil twin had started editing. And I could see where she was editing in the document as well. Not bad!

(note that the Web App doesn't tell you which other editor is editing a specific spot - just that someone else is there, so you can't edit right now ... but that's better than most online co-authoring scenarios)

Looks like this functionality is just in Word Web App on SkyDrive for now (i.e., not yet on SharePoint) ... but since that's the free version that's accessible to anyone, that's pretty darn cool.

If you've not yet explored Office Web Apps, go to docs.live.com to get started. (Btw - SkyDrive gives you 25GB of free storage space for your files as part of your free account. And it integrates with Hotmail if you've got a free Hotmail account, as well.)

And if you are new to all this, you might also want to know that you get simultaneous editing in Excel Web App (only in the Web App for Excel - not the desktop client) and OneNote Web App (which works across OneNote Web App, OneNote 2010, and OneNote for Windows Phone 7).... and that is for both SkyDrive and SharePoint users. And, on your desktop (but not yet on the Web) you get pretty rich co-authoring in PowerPoint 2010 and PowerPoint for Mac 2011 (as well as, of course, Word 2010 and 2011). To learn a bit more about co-authoring options across Office 2010 and Office for Mac 2011 ... check out a guest blog post from me on the MVP Award Program Blog from last December.)

That's it for today - back to work for me ... But more from me soon about upcoming content...

Meanwhile ... happy Friday everybody!

Office 2010 User Resources (this is a set of PDF documents that includes complete product guides as well as user getting started guides and brief overviews of top new features for all Office 2010 programs, as well as for Office Web Apps). In the product guides, you get a quick overview of new features, a deep dive page for each new feature (such as improvements in drawing tools that I didn't get to this morning - like the new Custom Shapes (Combine Shapes) tool that's not in the UI) ... and you also get a feature version comparison guide which might be useful. Additionally - remember the Power User Tips in the PowerPoint, Word, and Excel product guides that have more information that might be useful on some key new features and troubleshooting issues. For example - the PowerPoint power user tips include topics such as managing the recover unsaved versions feature and managing media.

Office 2010 menu to ribbon guides (flash-based interface that can make it so much easier for users coming from 2003 or earlier to learn the Office 2010 ribbon interface - and save them time searching for features)

Office 2007 interactive command reference guides (the same type of flash-based guides, but for those going from 2003 or earlier to Office 2007)

If you are interested in checking out my books for Office 2010 (enroute to stores now and just released in eBook format) or Office 2007, get more info and links on the books page of this site.

Additional resources discussed:
Download the document themes SDK
Download the Open XML Theme Builder
Article for VBA users on creating addins for Word/PowerPoint/Excel
Article for Office Open XML developers on creating custom SmartArt layouts

Thanks everybody! Hope to see you again soon ...

It's an update and expansion on the coverage from my 2007 book - and it's for users of both Office 2010 and Office for Mac 2011.

Hopefully, the 864 pages of that book provide a good enough excuse for how quiet this blog has been - but then it's far from a secret that I'm about the worst blogger there is when it comes to updating this site with anything other than new publications. But do remember that the email link you see below remains open for Office questiions whether or not you see recent posts here.

Meanwhile, though - if you've sent me a question in the past few weeks and it's not been answered, please do send it again now if you still need help and I will respond now that I can once again see daylight :)

And happy Monday everybody!

Creating Custom SmartArt Layouts using Office Open XML

Creating VBA Add-Ins

Both of these articles apply to folks who work on both Office for Windows and Office for Mac. They are written for Office 2010 and Office for Mac 2011. The SmartArt article mentions Office 2010 and Office 2007 in the title - but differences for Mac folks are addressed throughout as applicable. The SmartArt tasks will work in 2007 and later on Win and 2008 and later on Mac.

For the VBA Add-Ins article, it was also written for Office 2010 and Office for Mac 2011 ... but content can apply to Office 2007 as well. (Not to 2008 on Mac, since VBA was on holiday for that version).

Meanwhile, I'm currently finishing up the manuscript for my upcoming book on advanced document production for Office 2010 and Office 2011 - covering documents, presentations, workbooks, as well as basic VBA and OOXML. Will update you with a publication date when I have one. Meanwhile, the advance page is up on Amazon (though the title got a bit messed up on that page and will hopefully be fixed soon).

And, as always, please do send me your Microsoft Office questions through this blog. Just please be patient with replies. I am swamped between writing and project work - and will be offline for some business travel a bit over the next month as well.

Meanwhile, Happy Monday everybody!

So, I'll take the opportunity, in his honor, to update you on the real scoop with why this blog has been so neglected. Where the heck have I been? Why have my occassional posts for the past year and a half or so just promised more posts ... those that never came? Do I still monitor and reply to incoming questions?

... I've just been super swamped with new versions of Office coming out for both platforms this year. Work has been great and crazy and that is happily still the case. But, it doesn't give me time for stuff like posting new tips ...

... I do still monitor and respond to Office questions - but to be honest, I've missed a lot recently. I will try to be better about it - I really do want your questions - so if you still need an answer to one that you sent and never heard back on, please resend. I don't plan to go back to comb through what I might have missed, but I will try to be better going forward.

... and do keep an eye because I will be posting about new publications at least in the near future. I'm currently working on a new book about Office document production that will cover both Office 2010 and Office for Mac 2011. And there will be a couple of fun (I hope :) new papers from me on the Office Developer Center soon. Meanwhile, I have updated my articles page on this blog with a few new articles (updates to previous articles, mostly) for Office 2010. So, check that out when you have a chance.

And for those of you who do or might need to send an Office question ... I'll leave you with a few reminder notes below.

Meanwhile, happy Bday, Mr. V! And happy Sunday everybody!

Just a reminder for when you email:

I am not a Microsoft employee and I do not represent Microsoft. I cannot submit your bugs or your wishlist items and I am not the best place to vent about what you don't like. (though if you think something is a bug, it might not be - so feel free to send your questions on that, in case I can help you with a solution)

I am a Microsoft Office MVP, and like all Microsoft MVPs - when I do things such as answer questions here, I am an independent volunteer. I am not compensated, it is not part of any job description. I just really enjoy doing it - and am sorry that I've let it slip a bit lately - but please be respectful of the fact that you are writing to an independent volunteer. I feel bad even having to say something like this - almost everyone who writes is SO nice. But occassionally, somebody is rude, demanding, or expects me to be their regular personal help desk ... and, well, that's just not cool.

Just one other thing .. if you have already received a reply from me at some point, meaning that you have the email address I use for this blog ... keep in mind that address automatically deletes any mail that contains any type of attachment - so if you attach anything, I won't even know you sent mail. This is both for my security and to protect your proprietary content. Just describe your issue - don't send the file.

And please don't let the admonishment above keep you from writing. If you're one of the good guys, it's not meant for you. I really do want your questions :)

I'll get to some tech tips and favorite features within the next week or so. But meanwhile - the product guides for all Office 2010 applications are available for download from Microsoft.com ... check them out and see what's new for yourself:

You can download them all in XPS format and most are also available in PDF format:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=e690baf0-9b9a-4c47-88da-3a84f3e9b247

... I believe, however, that I am all caught up on questions e-mailed through this blog. So, if I missed yours - please send again. I might have missed a couple during super busy times ... it wasn't intentional.

Meanwhile ... happy Monday everybody!