IE 9 sports a new download manager, tools menu, command bar, status bar and favorites bar. If you’re wondering where all of these features are now located then check out this video from our TrainSignal Office Tutorials YouTube Channel. In the video you’ll also get to see a few hidden features in Internet Explorer 9. Enjoy!

Also, check out this list of New and Useful Keyboard Shortcuts for Internet Explorer 9 from the TechNet Magazine.

It’s been about a year since the public beta release of Office 2010, and since then we (Heather and Bill) have had the opportunity to become very acquainted with the new features of the core Office 2010 applications: Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word, while working on our Office 2010 training.

In that time, we’ve noticed that several of the new features have quickly become our favorites. So today we’d like to share our favorite new Office 2010 features with you. Enjoy!

Interface Improvements in Office 2010

The ribbon first appeared in Office 2007 which frustrated many users and drew many complaints. New to 2010, however, is the ability to customize the ribbon easily through your Options Pane and even add personalized tabs with the commands and features. The old office orb has also been replaced by the Backstage View which is a kind of enhanced file tab containing all commands related to your file as a whole.

Yes, it looks different. Yes, it will take some getting used to and a bit of training. But once that initial hurdle is overcome, finding and using commands in all of the Office applications is much faster overall.

Favorite New Features in Microsoft Access 2010

Access 2010 has quite a few new and redesigned features overall. One of the biggest boosts to productivity involves the incorporation of Intellisense to the Expression and Query Builders in Access. Intellisense works by helping users complete field names and expressions as they type, which saves a lot of time when writing expressions, not to mention reduces the margin of error when referencing objects.

There are also quite a few new form options and tools, one of which is the option to create a Web Browser Control which can link data stored in your database to data available on the web.

For example, in the above picture we have a database that lists different stocks by their symbol and in a form, we have a Web Browser control linking to Bing Finance where navigating to a new database record will update the stock displayed in the form’s browser control.

But a major change to Access 2010 lies in the macro designer. What was once a confusing table is now a more intuitive and fluid entry sheet:

Adding commands is easier and finding commands is faster, not to mention selecting a particular command highlights and displays additional controls for editing the command’s properties. Personally, this took a little time to get used to, but now we can’t imagine going back to old designer.

Learn more about new Access 2010 tools and features in our Access 2010 Training.

Favorite New Features in Microsoft Excel 2010

Excel has a few new features worth mentioning for those number crunchers out there who would like to display their data visually. Sparklines allow you to create a graphical representation of datasets in one easy-to-see cell.

In the above screenshot we have rows of data and off to the right of those rows is a Sparkline that represents the data to the left. And there are three different Sparklines that you can create: line, column, and win/loss.

If you’d like to see how these Sparklines were created, check out our demo on Excel Data Analysis: Visualize Data with Sparklines located at Train Signal’s Office YouTube channel.

Another great feature for PivotTable fans is a tool called Slicers. Slicers are a quick and easy way to filter by a specific PivotTable field. Slicers add additional filtering capabilities allowing you to quickly switch between different filter criteria.

So, rather than rearranging your PivotTable filter fields, you can simply click a button to adjust how your PivotTable is filtered.

Learn more about new Excel 2010 tools and features in our Excel 2010 Training.

Favorite New Features in Microsoft Outlook 2010

By far our favorite features in Outlook 2010 are:

1. the ability to group and view conversations together, no matter where the message is stored or filed
2. the enhanced Scheduling Assistant

The Conversations View is like most other views in Outlook. You can turn it on or off depending on your preference. When turning it on, however, you have additional options for how you’d like to view conversations. For example, you can choose to view messages stored from other folders, such as your sent folder, allowing you to keep Outlook’s folder structure intact while viewing all messages following one subject together.

Another great new feature, although it is not an entirely new feature, is the Room Finder and Suggested Times pane within the Scheduling Assistant.

Working in conjunction with Exchange 2010, this feature assists the meeting organizer in choosing a time when all participants are free or locating an available room.

Learn more about new Outlook 2010 tools and features in our Outlook 2010 Training.

Favorite New Features in Microsoft PowerPoint 2010

With 60+ new and enhanced features in PowerPoint 2010, it is really hard to pick our favorites to showcase here. Maybe this will have to be another blog all by itself. But two features do stand out from the rest: the new Background Removal Tool for pictures (which is also available in Word 2010 and Excel as well), and the Create a Video feature.

The Background Removal Tool allows users to click points or areas of a picture to remove and PowerPoint figures out which portions of the photograph to remove. It’s really that simple.

If you’d like to see the tool in action, just visit Train Signal’s Office YouTube Channel, and watch the video titled Remove Photo Backgrounds with PowerPoint 2010.

And if you think that is simple, creating a video is even easier. With previous version of PowerPoint, we had to rely on third-party PowerPoint-to-movie software to convert a PowerPoint presentation to a video file. The problem though was that many of this third party software couldn’t handle or properly render embed music or more advanced animations. Now with PowerPoint 2010, the ability to convert a presentation to a WMV file is native to the application.

Just jump to your File Tab, click Save & Send, click Create a video, and then Create Video. PowerPoint will then save your presentation as a WMV file, maintaining any timings and narrations you have set within the presentation. Alternatively, you can override those settings and choose how many seconds to spend on each slide. You even have the option to adjust the video quality, saving your presentation in HD, DVD, or Portable Device compatible resolutions.

And those are just some of highlights of PowerPoint 2010. If you’re interested in learning more about the new PowerPoint 2010 features and tools then take a look at our PowerPoint 2010 Training.

Favorite New Features in Microsoft Word 2010

And finally one great (and not often recognized) new addition to Word 2010 is the Navigation Pane (not to be confused with the former version’s Task Pane). The Navigation Pane is a window that you can use to jump to various sections of a Word document, search for keywords, or even navigate long documents by viewing page thumbnails (much like you can do in Adobe Reader).

The first tabbed area of the Navigation Pane creates a clickable outline based on your document’s heading styles. This allows you to jump to various sections of long documents easily. The second tab, as you can see from the above screenshot, gives you a birds-eye view of your document pages.

And finally, the last tab gives you a search bar where you can enter a word or phrase to search by. Then, Word displays every sentence in your document that uses that word or phrase, allowing you to click and jump to that particular area of your document.

Learn more about new Word 2010 tools and features in our Word 2010 Training.

What Are Your Favorite New Features in Office 2010?

Tell us what your favorite features in Office 2010 are. What do you like most in Office 2010? What has been a big time saver for you? What cool new feature would you show off to your friends?

Share your favorite Office 2010 features in the comments section below.

If you’ve ever had to take a group photo, you know how hard it is to get everyone in the photo smiling with eyes open all at the same time.

And if you watch TV, you’ve probably seen the “To the Cloud” Windows 7 commercial featuring the mom and dad with their unruly kids trying to get the perfect family photo. You know, the one where the mom is able to swap out a goofy picture of one of her kid’s heads for a nicer picture, basically so she can piece together a photo that she can share with the rest of the world (i.e. Facebook).

If you haven’t seen it, you can watch the video below (and make sure you read the comments on the video — really funny stuff!).

The commercial is great because it shows the potential of Windows 7 and cloud computing, but the one thing they don’t show or tell you is how the mom is able to edit the photo, or even what program she is using. All we know is that she is using Windows 7 and “the cloud.”

But have no fear, Bill and Heather are here! We’ve figured it out and will share the specifics in how to edit photos using free tools available through Windows Live Essentials 2011.

What you’ll need:

• Windows Vista with SP2 or either 32-bit or 64-bit versions of Windows 7
• A Working Internet connection, preferably high-speed

How To Download Windows Live Essentials 2011

To Download Windows Live Essentials, or most notably, Windows Live Photo Gallery, you’ll need to first open a web browser and navigate to the Windows Live Essentials 2011 download page.

1. Click on the blue Download Now button in the center of the web page.

2. When the File Download dialog box appears either click run, or save the file to your computer to run and install the Windows Live Essentials applications.

If you like, you can install all of Windows Live Essentials or pick and choose which programs to install. If you do not wish to install all the Windows Live Essentials programs make sure you at minimum install the Photo Gallery and Movie Maker applications.

3. Once you’ve selected the applications to install, click Install.

4. After the programs have installed, you will be prompted to restart your computer. Like always, you can choose to Restart Now or Restart Later.

Once your computer has restarted, you can begin using the Windows Live Photo Gallery to locate and edit your photos.

How to Swap Faces Using Windows Live Photo Gallery

When you open Windows Live Photo Gallery for the first time, the photo gallery will quickly locate all image files on your computer and list those images by folder in the navigation pane to the left.

1. Navigate to the folder which contains the photos you’d like to edit or “swap faces.”

2. Select the photos you wish to work with. To select multiple photos, hold down the shift key and click the individual photos you want. You must select at least two photos. You can work with up to 10 photos. If you try to edit more than ten, you will receive the following message:

Now here’s where it gets tricky. The photos you select must, and I mean MUST, have the same background and lighting. It’s best if the photos were taken using a tripod because the slightest movement or change in the environment will affect if, or at minimum, how well these following steps work.

If you watch the video, you will notice that the family is using a tripod. Also notice the background. They are all sitting on the sofa where nothing in the peripheral of the photo is likely to move. Keep that in mind as you work with the following steps.

3. In the Windows Live Photo Gallery ribbon, click on the Create tab and in the Tools group, click on the button named “Photo Fuse.” The Photo Gallery will then work to “align” the photos.

If the backgrounds do not match or aren’t similar enough, you will receive the following message.

Unfortunately, this message appears often, even when you do have the same subjects, similar lighting, and vantage points.

But, if you are fortunate enough to have taken photos where the subjects, lighting, and vantage points are similar enough, then you’ll see your screen switch to a view that looks like this:

4. From the Photo Fuse window you can drag the face selection box to the person you wish to swap out.

5. You can resize the face selection box by dragging the corner handlebars in or out.

6. Next, simply scroll through the “Which do you like best?” box and click on the face you’d like to use.

7. From there, you can select other individuals by clicking and dragging over their faces and repeating steps 5 and 6.

8. When you are finished editing the photo, click Save.

Ah, Windows gave me the co-workers that nature never could!

If you’d like to see the above steps in action, be watch our YouTube video tutorial demoing the above process.

New to Office 2010 you can now save documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and even OneNote notebooks to the web so you can easily access your important files from anywhere. You can even make collaboration and co-authoring simple by sharing those documents with co-workers, friends, and family.

You’ve probably seen the Windows 7 “To The Cloud” commercial that shows off this feature; if you haven’t, you can take a look at it here:

To save a file to the web from Office 2010, you’ll need:

• Office 2010, either Word 2010, Excel 2010, PowerPoint 2010, or OneNote 2010
• A Windows Live Account (Hotmail, Messenger, or Xbox LIVE will work to login as well)
• And, of course, a working Internet connection

Now let’s go through the steps of saving your Office 2010 documents to the web. Below are 2 sets of instructions, one for saving Office 2010 Excel, PowerPoint and Word documents and the other for saving OneNote notebooks to the web.

How To Save Office 2010 Excel, PowerPoint, and Word Documents to the Web

1. Click on the File tab, located in the upper left-hand corner of your Office ribbon.

2. Navigate to the Save & Send menu and select Save to Web

3. Next, click the Sign In button to sign in to your SkyDrive account. You can use your Live ID, Hotmail, Messenger, or XBOX Live credentials to sign in. If you do not have any of these accounts, you can create one for free by clicking the link “Sign up for Windows Live SkyDrive.”

4. After you click the Sign In button, you will be prompted to enter you Windows Live ID credentials. If you like, you may also choose to check the box “Sign me in automatically” to save time later on having Office sign you in automatically whenever you open or use either Excel, Word, PowerPoint, or OneNote.

5. Click OK. After you’ve signed in, you will be able to view your available Personal and Shared Folders right from your desktop application.

6.To save your document to the SkyDrive, simply select a folder (or click New to create a new folder) and then click Save As.

Your document is now saved to the web and can be accessed from anywhere you have Internet access. You can continue working with the document from your desktop and when you save your changes, you may notice that the save icon looks a bit different.

That is just the application’s way of reminding you the document is saved to an Internet location, and not locally.

How To Save Office 2010 OneNote Notebooks to the Web

The steps for saving a OneNote Notebook to Windows Live SkyDrive are a bit different from the above steps.

1. First, you’ll need to create a new Web Notebook. From within OneNote, click on the File Tab and then click New.

2. From there, you’ll see three numbered sections. In the first section, you have three storage options: Web, Network, or My Computer. Select Web to save to your Windows Live Skydrive.

3. Next, give your notebook a unique name.

4. And finally, select the folder where you’d like the notebook saved to (or you can create a new folder as well) and click Create Notebook.

5. Afterwards, you will see a prompt asking if you’d like to send an email invite to share the Notebook with others.

6. To share the Notebook with others via an e-mail link, click the button E-mail a Link. Then an Outlook message will appear where you can add recipients from an Outlook address book or type in a new address.

Alternatively, if you do not wish to share the Notebook, you can select No, Thanks to return to your OneNote notebook and create as many sections and pages as you’d like.

Get More Office 2010 Tips and Tricks

To learn more about other new Office 2010 features, tips and tricks check out our Office 2010 articles, free videos and brand new Office 20201 training:

• Office 2010 Training
• Train Signal YouTube Channel
• Office 2010 articles and free videos

In this video, I’ll show you how to setup a new Home Group on your own home network, how to add PC’s to your Home Group and how to access printers and files through your Home Group.

Once you’ve mastered publishing photos to your Windows Live Photo Gallery, you’ll also learn how to take advantage of the different features of the gallery such as sharing, creating slideshows, deleting photos from within the gallery, and even ordering prints.

Related Videos

• Introduction to Windows Live Photo Gallery
• How to Tag Your Photos with Windows Live Photo Gallery
• How to Fix Your Photos with Windows Live Photo Gallery

We’ll also cover the benefits and added features gained by signing in to your Windows Live account when tagging photos in Windows Live Photo Gallery, like automatically pulling names from your online contact list.

Related Videos

• Introduction to Windows Live Photo Gallery
• How to Publish Your Photos with Windows Live Photo Gallery
• How to Fix Your Photos with Windows Live Photo Gallery

You’ll learn how to adjust the brightness, contrast, highlights, shadows, color correction, cropping, red eye, effects, and more using only the tools included with the Windows Live Photo Gallery. We’ll also go over each effect in detail so you know how to best utilize them when working with your photo collection.

Related Videos

• Introduction to Windows Live Photo Gallery
• How to Publish Your Photos with Windows Live Photo Gallery
• How to Tag Your Photos with Windows Live Photo Gallery

In this video, I’ll give you a short overview of some of the main features and bundled tools in Windows Live Photo Gallery. Once you’re done watching this video, I recommend checking out a few of my other free videos that provide a more in-depth look at Windows Live Photo Gallery for Windows 7.

Related Videos

• How to Publish Your Photos with Windows Live Photo Gallery
• How to Tag Your Photos with Windows Live Photo Gallery
• How to Fix Your Photos with Windows Live Photo Gallery

Learn more about the Microsoft Windows operating system with our Windows 7 Training courses.

In this video, I’ll show you how to avoid the headache by using a lesser-known feature built into Windows 7 — check boxes — to select specific files and folders from a directory.

In this video, you’ll learn about some of the ways Microsoft has changed the taskbar buttons in Windows 7, and some of the new features included, such as Windows 7 Aero Peek. I’ll also show you how to customize the way your taskbar buttons look and work to better suit your preferences.

Learn more about the Microsoft Windows operating system with our Windows 7 Training courses.

In this quick 2 minute video I show you how to change and customize your user account picture in Windows 7.

In this video I demonstrate how to find out what your default settings are, since they do vary among PCs and laptops. Then I show you how to change the different settings and how to create your own power plan.

Connecting to Public Wireless Networks is not difficult, and in this video I demonstrate how easy it is to connect to unsecured networks, which don’t require a password.

In this video I show you how to rename your computer to whatever you want it to be.

In this video I demonstrate how to properly uninstall different programs in Windows 7.

Let me show you how to identify which operating system you are currently running and which version of Windows 7 matches it. What we will look for is which edition we’re currently running and whether we have a 32 bit or a 64 bit system. This information will then identify which versions of Windows 7 we can choose from.

In this video I show you what UAC is and how to change the user account settings to something that is … well, less annoying.

In this video, I’ll show you step-by-step how to analyze and defragment your Windows 7 hard drive, and how to set defragmenting to a maintenance schedule to help keep your machine running at its best.

Using Disk Cleanup in Windows 7 you can easily get rid of these types of files, freeing up some valuable space and speeding up your system. In this video I show you how you can use Disk Cleanup on a regular basis to remove unnecessary files from your computer.