Sudhir Diddee, the author of the book, was kind enough to do a giveaway of his book on our blog AND he has provided us one of the chapters in his book to give away for free to our readers!

The free chapter is the first chapter in the book and covers some great Windows 7 tips and tricks that you might not know existed — like Windows Snap, Aero Shake, Sticky Notes, Quick Launch, the Problem Steps Recorder and how to connect to a Projector with a keyboard shortcut.

Download your free book chapter today!

Enter to Win a Free Signed Copy of the Book!

There’s still time to enter to win a signed copy of Sudhir Diddee’s Priceless Computer Tips at Your Fingertips. All you have to do is share your favorite Windows or Office shortcut, tip or trick in the comments section of this blog post before Monday, January 30^th.

Learn more and enter to win today!

Recently, I came across a great book that offers some very unique Windows 7 and Office 2010 tips that have proven to be huge time-savers for me.

The book, written by Sudhir Diddee who is a Microsoft employee, is titled Priceless Computer Tips at Your Fingertips and lists 99 tips on Windows, OneNote, Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint and more.

Each of the 99 tips is presented with a short scenario explaining the benefits of the tip and when and how to take advantage of it.

Increase Your Productivity with 99 Time-Saving Tips

If you’re wanting to be more productive — or you’d like to help someone else get more done — check out Sudhir’s book:

• Priceless Computer Tips at Your Fingertips – Kindle Edition
• Priceless Computer Tips at Your Fingertips – Nook Edition
• Priceless Computer Tips at Your Fingertips – Paperback Black & White Edition
• Priceless Computer Tips at Your Fingertips – Paperback Color Edition

Book Giveaway: Enter to Win Before January 30^th, 2012

Sudhir was kind enough to sign 3 copies of his new book (paperback color edition) and we will be giving them away on Tuesday, January 31^st 2012. Which means you have until then to submit your entry to win one of the books.

To enter to win all you have to do is leave a comment on this post with your favorite Windows or Office shortcut, tip or trick — something you use on a daily basis that helps you save time and be more productive.

Please read the official contest rules at the end of this post and best of luck!

My Favorite “Priceless Computer Tip”

Now, let me tell you about my favorite new tip.

While reading Sudhir’s book I came across tip #19 on setting up rules in Outlook 2010. Of course, I knew about this popular Outlook feature but never truly understood the benefit until reading this scenario and seeing how different rules can help organize my inbox for me. I get so much email, having to manage multiple inboxes, that I truly feel overwhelmed and keeping my inboxes empty has become mission impossible.

Here’s how Sudhir explains the benefits of Outlook rules in his book:

“One of the biggest problems people face is e-mail overload. However, most of the e-mail can be easily managed by setting rules where e-mails from certain people or teams can go directly into a particular folder. For example, e-mails from your manager can be routed into a separate folder. E-mails sent to you where you are in the “cc line” can go to a different folder, or your e-mail stock alerts can go to your investing folder.”

This short description is followed by detailed steps and diagrams that show you how to create and edit rules in Outlook.

After spending approximately 30 minutes setting up my Outlook rules I now get to save at least 30 minutes each day not having to organize my emails by priority before tackling the responses. My New Year’s resolution for 2012 is to keep up with my emails and I’m confident that this quick tip will help stay on top of my mail.

So, that’s my favorite new tip. What’s yours?

Official Contest Rules:

Please read through all of the official stuff below before entering:

No purchase necessary to enter or win. By entering you agree to our use of your name in any TrainSignal literature.

Binding Agreement
In order to enter TrainSignal’s Priceless Computer Tips at Your Fingertips Book Giveaway (the “Contest”), you must agree to these Official Contest Rules (the “Rules”); please read this entire document prior to entry to ensure you understand and agree. You agree that submission of an entry in the Contest constitutes agreement to the Rules. The Rules form a binding legal agreement between you and TrainSignal, Inc with respect to the Contest.

Eligibility
The Contest is open to all individuals 18 years and older. Current TrainSignal employees are not eligible. Only one entry per person, per day. In order for your entry to be eligible it must meet all of the requirements as listed above. Entries that do not include all of the requirements are deemed ineligible.

How to Enter
To enter the contest you must submit a comment listing your favorite Windows or Office tip, trick or shortcut. Any comments submitted that do not include this will not be eligible to win. You must submit your comment before January 22nd, 2012. Any entries received after the contest deadline will be deemed invalid.

Prizes
All Prizes are not redeemable in cash and must be accepted as awarded. By claiming the prize, the winner authorizes the use, without additional compensation of his or her name and municipality of residence for promotion and advertising purposes as deemed appropriate by TrainSignal, Inc. Any potential winner who cannot be contacted by email within 14 days of the first attempted notification will forfeit his/her prize.

Privacy
Participants agree that personal data including name, mailing address, phone number and email address will be collected and used for purposes of administering the Contest. If a Participant does not provide the required data when requested, the Participant’s Entry will be ineligible for any prizes. All personal data collected will be maintained in accordance with Train Signal’s Privacy Policy which all Participants should read and understand.

Contest Sponsor
The Contest is sponsored by TrainSignal, Inc, 152 W. Center Court, Schaumburg, Illinois 60462.

Tactically, the new Office 365 suite of online applications is an attempt to parry any momentum gained by Google’s online productivity suite known as Google Apps. Strategically, however, Office 365 is much more than that.

With Office 365, Microsoft has created a subscription-based software model that does not rely on intermediate resellers. Just as important, the ongoing fees charged by the Office 365 program gives the Redmond software company a way to smooth out its revenues.

Traditionally, Microsoft earnings have come in waves. A new product like Office 2010 is released, and the company’s revenues rise as users move to upgrade to the latest version. However, Microsoft has realized that its products are no longer must-upgrades for many businesses small and large. From large enterprises to small offices, business have been reluctant to be forced off what they currently have installed, particularly with the large number of companies and users that resisted the hated Windows Vista operating system. These users had little reason to upgrade what already worked on their years old installations, so they bought no new software from Microsoft.

The company faces a similar prospect in the future, even as businesses and users move to Windows 7 and Office 2010. Once they learn how to make the new software work for them, it’s likely they’ll refuse to upgrade for the next decade from what already works unless Microsoft develops the ever elusive “killer feature.”

With Office 365, the company has a solution. Now, users do not have to upgrade to new software in order to generate revenue for the company. Rather Microsoft can count on recurring revenue from every user of Office 365 on a regular basis.

Automatic, ongoing upgrades are handled by the company itself on the cloud. Users of Office 365 get access to the new features right away. Since they do not have to pay anything more than what they already are paying, users can take advantage of new features they want and ignore those they don’t. No longer does Microsoft have to justify Office suite upgrades with new and exciting killer features. Just staying one step ahead of the competition is enough.

Office 365 Applications

Microsoft Office 365 comes in two versions, Office 365 for professionals and Office 365 for small businesses. Personal users are theoretically supposed to just stick with Microsoft Office Web Apps, which are free. However, anyone willing to pay the subscription fee (it’s free during beta) can use Office 365 and its added features.

One of the big selling points for Office 365 is that both your data and your applications are stored online and accessible from almost any computer with an Internet connection.

Users have been keeping their documents online for years now, either by emailing themselves at an online email account or by more sophisticated online storage services like Dropbox or Microsoft’s own SkyDrive. What Office 365 brings to the table is anywhere access to not just data, but also current versions of your favorite applications. No more logging on to a temporary workstation only to find yourself in a time warp to Excel 2003 when you’ve gotten so productive using the features and interface improvements of Excel 2010.

The heart of Office 365 is the online version of Microsoft’s Office applications known as Office Web Apps. These online versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote have been available via Windows Live for personal use since last year. Office 365 builds on their success.

The Office 365 versions of these web apps, are powered by SharePoint Online and bring many of the collaboration features, including simultaneous editing, to the online versions, as well as integrating with any corporate SharePoint installation already in place.

Email and Calendar on Office 365

The email and calendar features of Office 365 may be the biggest news for small businesses.

Powered by Microsoft Exchange Online, the Office 365 email and scheduling system offers much of the power and flexibility of a traditional Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange pairing.

The web interface is surprisingly similar to the familiar hard-drive installed version of Microsoft Outlook.  Important features like calendar sharing or seeing free and busy times on someone else’s calendar work just like they would on a corporate network with a full IT staff. The best part is that users with a locally installed copy of Microsoft Outlook can all use the Office 365 email and scheduling system as if it were an Exchange server relieving those businesses who only need an email system of having to install a server at all. (Those who do need an installed server should look at Microsoft Small Business Server 2011.)

Office 365 users each get up to 25-gigabytes of online storage per mailbox. There is a size limitation for sent mail of 25 MB, but most users will find that easy enough to work with.

Microsoft Lync Online

For true road warriors who are never in the office, or even a geographically dispersed team, Office 365 offers the powerful Lync Online tool. Lync provides secure instant messaging, video conferencing, and online meetings. Online meetings can be everything from just a bunch of people looking at webcams while having a meeting to full-scale presentations. Logged in users from remote locations can hear the discussion in the room, as well as see any audio or video presentations, all without installing yet another client software.

Users can even share their desktop with multiple users, perfect for training and technical support, as well as demos.

Office 365 Enterprise

Office 365 Enterprise is aimed at those environments where there is already an installed base of users, servers, and Microsoft products that need to be enhanced by Office 365.

Office 365 Enterprise offers Active Directory integration and email that connects with your existing Exchange Servers, among other things.

Office 365 Beta

The Office 365 Beta is limited to 25 users per account, and the only support offered is via the Microsoft Communities website. Once the beta period ends, users will automatically be migrated to the full-scale production environment. They’ll also have to start paying, but for now, Office 365 Beta is a great way to get a full suite of email and Office applications up and running in the cloud.

Some features sound really cool at first, but then finding a use for them in your day-to-day work is difficult or in some cases inappropriate. In those cases upgrading to the latest version just because there is a later version is not always a worthwhile venture.

It’s been close to a year since the public beta release of PowerPoint 2010, and throughout this past year I’ve been amazed by all the new features PowerPoint 2010 has to offer. With 60+ new and/or enhanced features I was quite curious which ones I’d actually use on a day-to-day basis and which ones would fade into the background.

And after looking back over the past year’s presentations, I’m happy to report that there are quite a few features that I actually use on a daily or weekly basis. So, I’ve tallied up those features and compiled my own “Top 10″ list to demonstrate why PowerPoint 2010 is well worth an upgrade.

No. 10: Customize the Ribbon

There are still mixed feelings about the new ribbon interface. Personally, I love the ribbon and feel that it is much easier to locate certain commands. But if you disagree, PowerPoint 2010 gives you the ability to create your own custom tabs filled with whatever tools and commands you use on a regular basis.

For example, I draw a lot of shapes and wanted all commands related to shapes in one tab. So I created a Shapes group with my frequently used shapes (rectangle, oval, triangle, and straight connectors), and an Edit Shapes groups filled with all kinds of editing options including hidden features such as the combine shapes tools. I also created a Format Shapes group, a Move Shapes group, and a Customize section with the Customize the Ribbon button added to it so when using my custom ribbon I realize I forgot to add a command, I can quickly jump to the PowerPoint options window to make my customizations.

But perhaps the best part of PowerPoint 2010 is the ability to Import and Export any Quick Access Toolbar or Ribbon customizations so that you can transfer your custom tabs and commands to other computers.

Click to read more information about how to customize the ribbon in Office 2010.

No. 9: Group Slides into Sections

Another great addition to PowerPoint 2010 is the ability to group slides into sections. And I’ve got to be honest; at first, I wasn’t that excited about sections and didn’t think it would be something I’d use very often. But after forcing myself to try it out on several of my presentations, I’m hooked.

Overall, this is a feature that I find very useful for longer presentations (think 50+ slides), of which I have many. With sections I can navigation the slide deck easily by collapsing or expanding sections from both the slide sorter view (pictured below) and the normal view through the navigation pane.

I can even rearrange, print, or apply themes or transitions by section.

No. 8: Improved Picture Crop

I had been using PowerPoint 2010 for a while before I realized just how cool the picture crop tool is now. You can now easily crop pictures by aspect ratio, a feature which is great if you work back and forth between widescreen (16:9 or 16:10) presentations and the standard 4:3 PowerPoint slide ratio.

Also if you have ever tried to use pictures as a shape background fill or in SmartArt, you may have been bothered by how earlier versions of PowerPoint stretch the images beyond recognition. Well, with PowerPoint 2010 you can now set and customize how an image will fill or fit into a shape.

Selecting Crop → Fill will make the picture cover the edges of the shape, and selecting Crop → Fit will make the picture’s edges fit inside of the shape. Even basic cropping is better. Now, with the crop tool activated, PowerPoint will still display the removed portions, just grayed out slightly — a great feature for seeing both the before and after all at once from one view.

No. 7: Broadcast Slideshow via the SkyDrive

Let’s face it, not everyone has SharePoint, so sharing documents and slideshows with people in other locations is still a bit tricky. Luckily, PowerPoint 2010 gives you the ability to broadcast your slideshow, allowing you to upload your presentation using the free PowerPoint Broadcast Service.

All you need is a Windows Live ID to sign in to send a private URL to remote users via email. And all that your remote viewers have to do is click the link to watch your presentation from most any Web browser.

Click here to view the step-by-step directions on how to save documents to the web with Office 2010 and Windows Live SkyDrive.

No. 6: Insert Video from Online Sites

In previous versions of PowerPoint, inserting video from online sites was a bit tricky and didn’t always work quite as you would expect it to. Now, with PowerPoint 2010 presenters can insert and play video from online sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, and Revver during a slide show. All you need to do is copy and paste the embed code into the insert video dialog box and PowerPoint does the rest.

NOTE: This does not technically embed the video into your presentation. You will require a high speed internet connection during your presentation to stream the videos.

No. 5: Save Presentation as a Video

For the past few years I’ve been using a variety of third-party applications all designed to convert a PowerPoint slide deck into a video; however, often with these third-party solutions I’d see a drop in quality or a disconnect between my slide animations and audio. With the release of PowerPoint 2010 I was very excited to see the innate ability to create a video and see that in doing so both audio and very complex animations keep their timings and synchronization.

You even have the ability to save in one of three possible sizes:

• Computer & HD (960 x 720),
• Internet & DVD (640 x 480),
• Portable Devices (320 x 240).

NOTE: Resolutions will vary depending on the size of your PowerPoint slides (Design → Page Setup → On Screen Show 4:3 or On Screen Show 16:9, etc.).

No. 4: Combine Shapes Tools

Often in PowerPoint I create my own graphics by drawing and grouping shapes together. Sometimes, however, rather than grouping shapes I always wished there was a way to join shapes or at minimum “cut” one shape out of another shape like you can do in other graphic programs. Well, now with PowerPoint 2010 you can join two or more shapes with either the Shape Union or Shape Combine tools, and even cut shapes using the Shape Intersect or Shape Subtract tools.

But you won’t find this handy tool on the ribbon. You’ll have to manually add this command to either your Quick Access Toolbar or to a custom tab on your ribbon. You can find Combine Shapes in the section “Commands not in the ribbon” from your PowerPoint Options screen (File → Options → Quick Access Toolbar → Choose commands from: | Commands Not in the Ribbon).

No. 3: Animation Painter

As a huge fan of the format painter, I was happy to see that the PowerPoint team decided to add an animation painter tool as well to PowerPoint 2010. Now, just like with formatting, you can copy and paste an object’s animations with just a quick click of a button. This isn’t by far the most exciting new feature, but I place it third in my list mainly because of how much I actually use this feature.

And granted, I do use more animations than the average PowerPoint user does, so my perspective on this feature might be a bit less than universal. But I’ve got to say that the animation painter has saved me a ton of time on the job in preparing presentations.

No. 2: Bookmark and Trigger Audio and Video

Another great new feature in PowerPoint 2010 is the ability to create bookmarks inside media, allowing the presenter to skip or jump to a particular point within the media. But this feature really finds its power in the ability to trigger an animation to media bookmarks, which if you ever tried to sync animations to music you’ll understand why bookmark triggers are so cool.

Unfortunately, this feature is not one that translates well in blog format. So, watch this clip from my PowerPoint 2010 Training course to see what you can do with either video or audio bookmarks and triggers in PowerPoint 2010: Triggering Animations to Audio Bookmarks in PowerPoint 2010.

No. 1: Remove Background from a Picture

By far the most used feature (and therefore my most favorite feature) in PowerPoint 2010 is the background removal tool for pictures. As someone who has been using Photoshop to do exactly this for years, I welcome PowerPoint’s quick and easy-to-use tool.

All you have to do to remove the background is click the background removal tool (located on the Picture Tools | Format tab), which will open up a special tab on the ribbon:

Next, click on the Mark Areas to Remove button and then click on the areas of the photo you want to remove. Alternatively, you can click on the Mark Areas to Keep button and click on the areas of the photo you wish to keep. When finished, simply click the Keep Changes button on the background removal tool’s tab. And if you don’t believe that it is that easy, be sure to watch this tutorial on using the PowerPoint background removal tool.

I hope you enjoyed my very own top 10 list of the new PowerPoint 2010 features.

Where Do You Go From Here?

• For more free Office 2010 tutorials, please visit Train Signal’s Office YouTube Channel.
• For more extensive PowerPoint 2010 training, check out my full PowerPoint 2010 Training course.
• To share your thoughts on these or other new PowerPoint 2010 features, join the discussion Which is your favorite new feature of PowerPoint 2010 on LinkedIn.

They’ve been working with Microsoft Office for years and are excited to share their love and knowledge of Office through their courses, videos and articles.

In this exclusive video interview, Bill and Heather talk about their brand new Office 2010 Training Package (which includes training on Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Word and Outlook) and their favorite Office 2010 features and tools. They also talk about how their new training was designed and how to get the most from it.

So check out the video interview and learn more about our new Office 2010 training.

Learn Microsoft Office for Free

Recently, Heather and Bill launched a new YouTube channel dedicated entirely to Office Tutorials. The channel is barely a month old and already boasts over 60 how-to videos on Access, Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, IE9 and even Windows 7.

You can learn more about it, subscribe to the channel and watch the free Office videos here:
Train Signal Office Tutorials.

The People Pane allows you to integrate many of your favorite social media sites, such as Facebook, Linked In, and Myspace into your Exchange 2010 contacts list. It also provides you with a quick summary of your contact, including your conversations, meetings and other data relating to that person.

• Watch more free Office 2010 training videos on our Office Tutorials YouTube Channel
• Learn more about Outlook 2010 in our brand new Outlook 2010 Training

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.

The new collaboration features allow you to easily share your documents on the web and have multiple users edit documents at the same time with co-authoring. The Backstage view replaces the File menu putting all of your management tasks in one place to help you boost productivity. New visualization and graphic tools can help you manage, analyze and present data in meaningful ways. Office 2010 also offers a consistent look and feel when switching between applications, as the Ribbon user interface is now present in all the applications.

Microsoft Office 2010 Training Package

As the new features, tools and options in Office 2010 expand the power of each application, they also change the way we use them. That’s why our new Microsoft Office 2010 Training Package will help you take advantage of all the advanced features and tools available in Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Word.

Each of the Office 2010 training courses was designed as an easy to use training tool and powerful reference tool as well; the short, topic specific lessons allow you to quickly locate the features and tools you want to learn about. The package includes a total of 52 hours of hands-on Office 2010 training organized in 260 task-centric lessons.

The training is a perfect resource for busy office workers, home users, business users and anyone else who wants to master Office 2010 and use it with ease. Instructors and Microsoft Office Certified Masters, Heather Ackmann and Bill Kulterman use plenty of real world examples and helpful scenarios to help you learn and make sense of each application.

Become an Office 2010 Power User

See how you can improve communication and collaboration, increase productivity, and become an Office 2010 power user. Learn more about our brand new Microsoft Office 2010 Training Package and how it can help you get more done.

As a project manager, I have hired several individuals to work for my organization. In the process we shortlist people, conduct interviews, and during the discussions, put a score against each skill a candidate possesses. Core competencies have a higher rating, while secondary skills are placed on a different scale. In the end, all the scores are tallied, and the person with the maximum score gets hired.

Moral of the story: technical skills in the area of Microsoft Office do matter, even if they’re not the main job requirements. And validating those skills with the Microsoft Office Specialist Certifications shows hiring managers that you’re serious about your work and career.

Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) Certifications

The MOS certification is an old wine in a new casket.

It was previously referred to as the Microsoft Certified Application Specialist (MCAS), and a rebranding of the certification was performed to up the ante when Office 2007 was released. The Microsoft Certified Application Specialist certification name was somewhat ambiguous, and didn’t strike a chord with the information worker. One had to have prior knowledge of what the certification entailed, and only then it made sense.

The MCAS didn’t last too long; in June of 2010, with the release of Office 2010 the name Microsoft Office Specialist came back.

The MOS is a badge given to individuals who display prowess in one or more of the following Microsoft Office applications:

• Word
• Excel
• PowerPoint
• Outlook
• Access

There are also expert level MOS certifications for Microsoft Word and Excel, which require an additional exam. The top of the league MOS certification is the Microsoft Office Master, which requires passing Word Expert, Excel Expert, and PowerPoint along with a choice between Access and Outlook.

There are several tracks to choose from depending on the version of Microsoft Office you are targeting. The latest is the Microsoft Office Specialist Certification for Office 2010. Other tracks are based on Office 2007 and Vista, Office 2003, Office XP and Office 2000. My two cents – go for the latest one – Office 2010. Software packages grow obsolete in a blink of an eye, and over time, organizations move to the latest offering of Office, thus rendering the rest useless. This in fact applies to all facets of life, the new outgrows the old.

Microsoft Office Specialist Certifications for Office 2010

As the name implies, the MOS for Office 2010 is a certification to certify your proficiency in Office 2010 applications. Unlike its predecessors, there is no Windows component to the exam, although there are rumors that Windows 7 is likely to get added to the pack.

Individuals can get certified as specialists for the following Office 2010 applications:

• MS Office Word 2010
• MS Office Excel 2010
• MS Office PowerPoint 2010
• MS Office Outlook 2010
• MS Office Access 2010 *
• MS Office SharePoint 2010 *

At this point in time, the MOS exams for Access and SharePoint are still in development; the Access 2010 exam is expected to be available in March 2011 and the SharePoint 2010 exam in June 2011, according to Certiport, which administers the MOS exams. Exams for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook are available now.

The MOS Expert certifications for Word and Excel have been announced but the exams are also in development and are due in April 2011, according to Certiport.

Judging by the status of the exam development, I believe that we will have our first Microsoft Office 2010 Master available sometime this year, around June or July.

The MOS Office 2010 Exams

Unlike other Microsoft certifications, the MOS exams are not like the typical questions and answers exams. Instead, when you walk into the examination center, you will be asked to perform a series of tasks which would determine your proficiency with the given Microsoft Office application. This live examination is perhaps more fitting, and can ensure that you are put to the test.

The examination typically lasts an hour and a half, during which time the F1 key (which brings up the Help section) is disabled.

Certiport administers the Microsoft Office Specialist Certifications for Office 2010 and previous editions of the cert.

Job Opportunities for MOS Certified Professionals

When you complete any of the MOS certifications, a digital logo is made available to you by Microsoft and you’re permitted to embellish your resume with this logo. Not a bad deal, considering that potential employers will see your resume before anything else, including you.

If you were to complete one of the MOS Office 2010 certifications out of your own personal interest, you would be showing your prospective employer that you’re self motivated, driven and willing to go the extra mile to hone in your skills.

As far as job opportunities, as I mentioned before, you cannot and should not hope to secure a job on the mastery of Office 2010 applications alone. The MOS certification will most likely not be helpful in getting into a new field or increasing your salary. Expertise in Office should be a secondary skill which will help you distinguish yourself from other job candidates and allow you to offer something extra. When a hiring manager sifts through resumes that list similar skills, education and experience, your MOS certification will help you stand out.

MOS Training

There are a number of books targeting the Microsoft Office 2010 applications. I generally start with the dummies guide and move up the ladder from there. You may not find a plethora of study guides for this certification as the format of the exam expects you to perform the functions in live environment, but most books targeting the applications will help you get started with Office 2010.

Train Signal has recently launched Office 2010 training, including:

• Excel 2010 Training
• Access 2010 Training
• PowerPoint 2010 Training
• Word 2010 Training

Outlook 2010 Training is currently in development and should be available later this year. Video training is a better option for those who are visual learners, and Train Signal’s courses utilize real life activities that one encounters working with Office.

If you’re interested in getting the MOS on Office 2007, there’s a Office 2007 Training and plenty of books available as well.

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

The exam is aimed towards IT professionals who deploy and maintain Windows 7 desktops equipped with Microsoft Office 2010 and who have a minimum of one year of experience managing Windows Desktop deployments, including Microsoft Office.

MCTS 70-681: Skills Measured

The 70-681 exam is split into four sections which are all fairly equal in value (or weight):

• Configuring a Deployment Infrastructure (24%)
• Creating and Configuring Images (25%)
• Deploying Windows 7 (27%)
• Configuring and Deploying Office 2010 (24%)

Let’s take a closer look at each of these four sections.

Configuring a Deployment Infrastructure

The Configuring a Deployment Infrastructure section mostly focuses on various configuration tools, especially the Microsoft Development Toolkit (MDT). Aside from the MDT, you’ll also be tested on network configuration, activation configuration in both Windows 7 and Office 2010 and the Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager’s Operating System Deployment (OSD) environment.

Here is a more complete list of topics covered in this section, as listed on Microsoft Learning:

• Configure the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) environment — including deployment database, deployment share, task sequences, and creating deployment points
• Configure networking for deployment — including Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), IP Helper, Windows Deployment Services, PXE boot, and multicast
• Configure activation — which includes Key Management Service (KMS), Multiple Activation Key (MAK), Volume Activation Management Tool (VAMT)
• Configure the Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager Operating System Deployment (OSD) environment — this includes SCCM and MDT integration, as well as building an operating system installation, a boot image and driver packages

Creating and Configuring Images

As you probably expected, this section is fairly self-explanatory. You’ll be tested on your knowledge in creating and capturing images, automating installation scripts, creating and customizing task sequences (especially for Office 2010), customizing standard operating system settings, adding applications to already existing images, and configuring for application compatibility.

Here is the detailed topic list from Microsoft Learning:

• Create and capture an image — modify a WIM file, modify a Windows PE boot image, and build a base image
• Create automated installation scripts — silent install scripts, unattended answer files, joining a domain, customizing user settings, and configuring auto-naming
• Create and customize task sequences — installation tasks for Office 2010 and additional applications
• Customize default operating system settings –environment settings, user settings, configuring local Group Policy, and Windows Internet Explorer settings
• Add applications to an image — modify or install on a base image
• Configure application compatibility — configuring applications for User Access Control (UAC) and creating and deploying shims

Deploying Windows 7

The next section deals with the different types of Windows 7 deployment methods, such as Lite Touch, Zero Touch, and possibly High Touch deployments (though High Touch deployments are not mentioned, it may be a good idea to read up on the method just in case.) Aside from the deployment methods themselves, you’ll also be tested on your ability to migrate user settings and data, configure security updates and other post-deployment tasks, and customize hardware settings like drivers, hardware-specific applications, and BitLocker Drive Encryption.

Here is the detailed list of topics for this section as listed on Microsoft Learning:

• Perform a Lite Touch Installation of Windows 7 — which includes staggered deployment and permissions
• Perform a Zero Touch Installation of Windows 7 — which includes permissions, configuring a task sequence and configuring scheduling
• Migrate user settings and data — including Windows Vista, Windows XP, local store vs. remote store
• Configure post–operating system deployment tasks — this includes configuring run-once scripts, identifying appropriate log files, as well as deploying language packs and security updates
• Customize hardware settings — including injecting drivers, installing hardware-specific applications, and configuring Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption

Configuring and Deploying Office 2010

At first, I thought this section was a bit simple and wondered why it took up a full 24% of the 70-681 exam. After going through the topics and reading up on Office deployment, I realized that it is actually quite involved.

This section includes configuring user-specific settings like languages and default locations, application-specific settings like add-ins, security settings, updates, and Key Management Services (KMS), and actual Office deployment. Office deployment is probably the most involved portion, since it includes not only clean installation deployment, but also upgrades.

Here is the detailed topic list from Microsoft Learning for this section:

• Configure Office 2010 user-specific settings — which includes configuring Microsoft Outlook settings, configuring Microsoft Office Communicator settings, setting display languages, editing languages, and setting default file locations
• Configure Office 2010 application-specific settings — which includes configuring compatibility settings, removing applications, adding language packs, configuring application add-ins, security settings, updates, and KMS
• Deploy Office 2010 — which includes clean install, Group Policy Startup script, installation package in SCCM, upgrading from Office 2003 and Office 2007 and migrating user settings

MCTS and MCITP Credit

Should you choose to take and pass this exam, you will earn credit towards two certifications. The first credit you’ll receive is for the Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) certification, which will be granted to you upon successfully passing the 70-681 exam.

The second credit you’ll receive is for the Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP): Enterprise Administrator, for which you will need to pass four additional exams to complete your MCITP certification; the exams include:

• Exam 70-640: Server 2008 Active Directory
• Exam 70-642: Server 2008 Network Infrastructure
• Exam 70-643: Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure
• Exam 70-647: Server 2008, Enterprise Administrator

Conclusion

This would be a great exam for someone who is looking to jump into a new career at a large business or corporation, or someone who already works for one and is planning to deploy Windows 7 and/or Office 2010 in a large-scale environment.  It’s also a great way to get started towards the MCITP: Enterprise Administrator certification.

When studying for the exam, be sure to include a few different training and practice methods. I always like to include at least two different methods of training for anything I research or train for to be sure I cover all of my bases. TrainSignal offers a great Windows 7 Deployment training course led by Rhonda Layfield that would compliment your exam preparation in a great way. Depending on what works best for you when training, you should also look in to exam-specific books, practice tests, or even actual classes to go along with the video trainings.

That’s all for now, good luck on your exam! (PS: Click here to check out the exam page on Microsoft Learning!)

I like the new interface but was having an annoying error every time I started any Office application. I was told that I needed to perform Office 2010 license activation over the Internet but when I did that, the activation would fail. The error was occurring because I had already activated Office using this key too many times.

The specific error that I kept getting was:

“Your copy of Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 cannot be activated because the specified product key has already been activated the maximum number of times permitted…”

Unfortunately, the activation wizard gave me no option to enter a new key, only to call Microsoft. I did, in fact, call Microsoft. I entered, over the phone, a zillion characters and was finally told (just by an automated system) that I need to buy another key. Arg! Still, I was given no obvious way to use a different key and I actually did have another license key that had remaining activations.

After some research, I ran across information on how to change my Office 2010 product activation key and was able to get rid of that annoying message when starting up any Office app (actually, I was told that the apps would stop working soon without proper activation).

In the video above, watch the original error message and how I changed my Office key, step by step, to solve the problem. Enjoy!

Geeks pride themselves on performing all actions through keyboard, without using a mouse or other optical input devices. In fact, I have seen a few who discuss different combinations in depth as though it is an ambiguous theological topic.

I am a semi-keyboarder and a Microsoft user. I have used Microsoft products since inception and the keyboard shortcuts have pretty much stayed constant throughout. With the addition of new products, new ones were added and few were modified.

The new kid in town, Microsoft Office 2010 inherits most of the keyboard shortcuts from its predecessor, Office 2007, with some enhancements of its own.

Let’s take a look at some of the most common and most useful keyboard shortcuts, the available shortcuts in the new Ribbon interface, how to customize the Ribbon interface and modify your shortcuts all in Office 2010.

Basic Office 2010 Keyboard Shortcuts

These are pretty basic. If you are a newbie to desktop publishing tools, you might be interested in running through the following combinations.

CTRL + C – copy selection

CTRL + V – paste selection

CTRL + X – cut selection

CTRL + Z – undo action

CTRL + Y – repeat action

CTRL + B – bold text

CTRL + I – italicize text

CTRL + U – underline text

CTRL + HOME – navigate to beginning of the document/sheet

CTRL + END – navigate to end of the document/sheet

CTRL + F – find text

CTRL + H – find and replace text

CTRL + K – add hyperlink to selection

CTRL + P – print document/sheet

CTRL + S – save document/sheet

F12 – save as document/sheet

Office 2010 Ribbon Interface

Microsoft brought in a new interface called the ribbon with Microsoft 2007. It replaced the legendary icons and the menu bar. The ribbon interface in 2007 was rigid, meaning you couldn’t customize it as you would have liked, unless you dug deeper into the XML files.

In Office 2010, the software giant has given the control to the user, which, according to me is the right way forward. If you look at the previous MS Office products, it always let you set your own icons, at desired positions. It could very well be that Microsoft was toying around with a new ribbon interface and didn’t want to take a chance by launching all possible features at once. And, they needed yet another feather for their future release – 2010.

Ribbon interface is based on tabs. Each menu item is a tab, and when active, it displays a set of icons. The image shown above is the ribbon interface used in Microsoft Excel 2010.

Keyboard Shortcuts Within the Office 2010 Ribbon Interface

I mentioned earlier that using shortcuts require some memory power, but for those who find it difficult to remember, Microsoft has offered an olive branch – with cheat sheets. Associated shortcuts (christened as KeyTips) are displayed on the screen by pressing the Alt key. The image below illustrates it.

Initially, KeyTips for tabs are visible. Hitting the corresponding tab KeyTip opens up an array of KeyTips for the individual commands.

Let’s say I am using Microsoft Word 2010 and I am in the middle of an article, and I want to insert a table. I will start with the Alt key. Tables come under Insert tab – KeyTip N.

I can see the KeyTip T against the Table command. Hitting T displays some more KeyTips that are associated with tables. At this juncture, I want to insert a table, KeyTip I it is.

If you are familiar with tables within MS Word, a command to insert a table throws a dialog box open in which you need to choose the number of columns and rows, along with the other options – which are generally kept at default.

To move between the options in a dialog without using a mouse is simple enough. Hit the Tab key to shift from field to another – direction is from left to right and top to bottom. Once you land the cursor in a field, enter desired numbers or change the options around using the arrow keys (radio buttons). I moved top to bottom by hitting Tab, and to move one step back, Shift+Tab will do the trick – right to left and bottom to top.

Customizing the Office 2010 Ribbon Interface

Microsoft Office 2010 not only displays the shortcut keys but it lets you create your own ribbon and design it with the commands of your choice, including the KeyTips. The feature of putting up icons of your choice existed in MS Offices prior to 2007, and is now reintroduced in the form of ribbons.

To create your own tab (ribbon), do the following:

Step 1: Click on File -> Options

Step 2: On the sidebar, locate and click Customize Ribbons

Step 3: You will find two sets of commands. The one on the left is the available commands that you can readily use, and the one on the right are your existing ribbons. You can either modify an existing tab or create a new one. I am going to run you through the process to create a new tab and load it with the buttons of your choice.

Step 4: Beneath the right set of commands, New Tab button is used to create a new tab and each functional item under it is called as a group. You can add commands from the left window and drag it into your new tab->group.

Step 5: Let’s say I want to create a new tab called Abs and want to have basic commands such as copy, paste and cut in it. I click on New Tab, and a tab named New Tab and a group named New Group appears in the right window. Highlight the New Tab and click on Rename to key in the name Abs. Drag the commands Copy, Paste and Cut from the left window onto the New Group (groups can renamed in similar fashion as well) one after another. Hit OK to save the changes you have made. Voila! A new tab is created with the commands of your choice.

Step 6: You can export the new tabs you have created, and all other settings you make to the ribbons by using the Import/Export option available in the same window. The output is an Office UI file which can be used on any machine running Microsoft Office 2010.

How to Modify Shortcuts in Office 2010

Step 1: KeyTips for tabs are allocated automatically by the software, including for the customized tabs. There is no option to change them. As seen in the image below, the new tab Abs is assigned Y.

Step 2: To assign a shortcut key to a command, Click on File -> Options -> Customize Ribbons and hit Customize beneath the left pane.

Step 3: Find the command in the right window which you wish to assign a new shortcut. I think we use the Paste command more than Print, and hence Paste should have the shortcut Ctrl+P. I am going to change it in my system. You should too.

Step 4: Locate the Paste command under the Home tab. You can see the existing shortcuts under Current keys and a blank field – Press new shortcut key.

Step 5: Move the cursor to Press new shortcut key and hit Ctrl+P. The new shortcut key appears and it also lets you know that it is currently assigned to Print. Assign to assign the new shortcut key for Paste command. Remember to go back over to the Print command and assign a new shortcut for the newly orphaned command.

Step 6: The shortcuts you assign can be set across the application or just the document you are working on. Save changes in option located in the same window gives you the choices of Normal and the document that is open. Selecting Normal will change the shortcut in the application, and selecting the document will affect the document alone.

While huge improvements have been made since the first release of Microsoft Office, the truth is, there is no one configuration that works for everyone. We have seen customization options in the past, but it usually took quite a bit of trial and error before getting the right menu system without filling up your screen with toolbars.

In Office 2010, Microsoft has introduced the ribbon in all of its applications, including Outlook and OneNote.

The ribbon is basically a standardized bar that holds all of your tools and actions. What I like most about the Office ribbon is that it is always the same size; I always had trouble getting all of my tools to fit just right in past versions of Microsoft Office; with the ribbon, if you add too many tools to one tab, they are condensed into a drop-down style box.

Office 2010 Ribbon: Initial Thoughts

To be completely honest, I wasn’t very excited about the method Microsoft decided to use to customize the ribbon. The interface seems clunky and complicated, a huge contrast compared to the clean ribbon interface. However, it is manageable and does what it’s supposed to. Once you get the hang of the customization menu structure, it’s actually not that hard to manage.

Customizing the Office 2010 Ribbon: Getting Started

You can start customizing your ribbon by right clicking anywhere on the ribbon, and choosing “Customize the ribbon …” You can alternatively click on “File -> Options -> Customize Ribbon.” But I find the first method to be faster and easier to remember.

After clicking, you’ll be taken to a customization interface similar to this one. (There may be slight differences based on what product you are customizing for.)

This is where things start to look complicated, so let’s take a look at what’s shown here. On the left, you’ll see Microsoft Office’s general configuration tabs, since we’re only working on the ribbon, we don’t have to worry about any of these.

On the right, we have to sections. The section on the right is your current ribbon. The section on the left is where all of the possible commands, tools, and actions are stored. So the way customizing works so far, is you choose a tool on the left, click on “Add > >” in the center, and it will be added to your ribbon. To remove a tool, click on a tool already on your ribbon on the right, and click on “< < Remove” in the center.

From Menus to Ribbons

You might be thinking to yourself, “My ribbon is linear, this is a menu structure …” To better understand the menu structure, we’ll take a look at how they relate to the ribbon itself. The menu structure in the customization interface is 3 layers deep, the first layer is the tab, the second layer is the group, and the third layer is the tool.

If you take a look at this comparison, you’ll see how the menu structure relates to the ribbon. In red is the tab, in green is the group, and in blue is the tool. You can also add a deeper layer, turning a tool into a drop-down menu, as you can see with the “Paste” tool.

Making the Office 2010 Ribbon Yours

Now that I’ve explained how the customization interface works, let’s get into the customizations themselves. I find it easiest to take one tab at a time. It’s important to note that you cannot modify pre-existing tabs, so the best thing to do would be to disable the first tab, and create your own to replace it.

You can rename a tab by clicking on the item and then clicking the “Rename” button below. Alternatively you can right click on the item and then click “Rename” from the drop down menu. Once you have your tab and group named, you can start dragging your favorite (most used) tools and actions into the group. Note that while you can drag tools into the ribbon menu to add a tool, you cannot drag them out to remove them. You must click on the “Remove” button in between the menus.

Types of Tools in Office 2010

You may notice that some tools contain small icons to the right of their names. These icons note special functions that the tool includes. (Shown below in green.)

There are four types of tools you’ll run across. The first is a tool with no icon; this type of tool is one that requires no other action, such as the “Bold” or “Italic” tools. The next is a tool with an arrow as an icon; these tools contain a drop down menu with special options, such as the “Breaks” tool. The next type of tool has the same arrow, but this time with a small line before it; this type of tool contains multiple levels of options available. The final tool type contains an icon with a typing curser and a down arrow; this type of tool will have a user editable drop down menu, for example, the “Font Size” tool allows for both drop down options, and user input.

Working Across Computers

After reading through, you’ll probably realize that customizing is a lot of work. It would be really inconvenient to have to make these same modifications on multiple computers you own, or even just on your personal and work machines. Luckily, on the bottom right hand side of the customization page, you’ll notice an “Import/Export” function. You can use this to not only export from one machine and import on another, but you can also use exported ribbons as a backup method just in case you lose your current settings.

Conclusion

While I do think that the customization interface chosen for Microsoft Office 2010 is a bit crowded, it does the job quite well. If you set aside some time to customize your ribbon, you’ll save loads of time searching for tools in the future.

What are Data Macros?

Data macros are portable, secure and scalable for a server/service environment. Data macros can even survive the trip to the web if you choose to convert your database to a web database.

Data Macros can be used for a variety of purposes. Everything from tracking when a record was last modified (something that I demonstrate how to do in my new Access 2010 Training course) or deleted to preventing blank values if a certain condition is not met.

Today we’ll take a look at the steps it takes to create data macros in Access 2010 and I’ll also show you how to paste macros into a text editor as XML.

How to Create Data Macros in Access 2010

1. Open a table to Design View and in the Table Tools Design Tab, in the Field, Record & Table Events Group, click on the button “Create Data Macros.”

2. Click on a Table Event to launch your Macro Builder.

3. Next, write your macro and save.

Note: Data macros cannot process multi-valued or attachment data-types.

Did You Know?

You can also paste macros into a text editor as XML, making it easy to edit or even share macros with others.

1. Simply open and select your macro (if selected, a gray box will appear around the actions).

2. Right-click and choose Copy.

3. Open a text editor like Notepad and paste.

Learn More about Access 2010 in Train Signal’s Access 2010 Training

Today we are announcing the release of our Access 2010 training, the first course in our Microsoft Office 2010 training lineup. The new course is designed for office workers who use Access on a daily basis and want to get their skills up to speed quickly and effectively.

Most Access training materials are very broad and general, and intended for a wide audience which makes learning tedious and time consuming. Train Signal’s Access 2010 training is focused on helping office workers get the skills they need to enter, retrieve and analyze data in existing databases, which is really what makes this course unique.

Learn how to query, retrieve and analyze data using queries and reports, build your own custom expressions using the many built in functions and how to take advantage of the new features of Access 2010.

Featuring almost 12 hours of instructor led training, the course covers how to create PivotTables and PivotCharts, how to find data using criteria, operators and wildcards and much more. For a complete outline and additional information take a look at our Access 2010 training page.

Get Up to Speed with Access 2010 Quickly and Effectively

• Are you looking for a quick way to master the new features of Access 2010?
• Would you like to create powerful PivotCharts and PivotTables to impress you boss?
• Want to learn how to effectively analyze and share data from your current database?

Now sure you can read a book, search for the information and follow the many online tutorials to try to learn all of this on your own – OR – you can watch an Access 2010 pro walk you through all of it and show you how to do everything step by step.

We’ll let you decide.

In the meantime, take a look at this demo video demonstrating a common pitfall when creating an aggregate query in Access 2010 and learn more about our brand new Access 2010 training.

From Microsoft Office Home and Student 2010 to Office Professional Plus 2010, Excel, along with Word, PowerPoint, and relative newcomer OneNote, is one of the Office apps that users will have installed regardless of what Office upgrade or new Office software package they buy. How much Excel actually gets used by those users depends a lot on just who uses that computer.

Most computer users are familiar with Microsoft Excel, even if the vast majority only make use of its most basic features. Technical support professionals from around the world can tell stories of watching as employees that they support using a calculator to add up a column of numbers in an Excel spreadsheet so that they can type the answer into the appropriate cell.

Fortunately, for most users, Excel has outgrown those days when its only utility to most was getting numbers lined up in rows and columns. Today, experts use Excel for so many complex functions that the big news of the Excel 2007 upgrade was that the spreadsheet could support even larger sizes of spreadsheets, up to 16,384 columns and over 1 million rows!

What does Microsoft Excel 2010 bring to the table for computer owners and businesses today? More usability, more functionality, and more speed and power.

New Excel 2010 Features from Microsoft Office 2010

Like Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel 2007 was delivered with the new Ribbon interface. While the main purpose of the Ribbon in MS Word was helping users discover and use functions that might be useful, most users of Excel already knew what the program could do.

While a MS Word user might never even wonder if the word processor could do a three-column layout that wraps around a centered image, users of Excel need specific functions in order to perform the calculations they need.

And while certain features may have been hidden from obvious view, an accountant building a spreadsheet knew before he even looked that the function to create an amortization table, or calculate the present value of money, or the future value of money, based on certain variables, was there in Excel. All they had to do was go find it.

While the Ribbon interface may not have exposed any, “I didn’t know I could do that,” features to spreadsheet users, it did make using those features much easier. The Ribbon decreased the number of clicks required to access virtually any function, graph, or sorting feature.

The real power of the Ribbon interface for Excel users, however, was the ability to make customizations. That way, a user who relies on Excel for its financial calculations and features can have those front and center, while another user whose primary requirement of Excel is generating meaningful statistics from large amounts of raw data, can have the statistical formulas positioned just one click away.

For users who did not upgrade to Office 2007, the redesigned Ribbon interface will be the biggest change in the new Excel version. However, users upgrading from Excel 2007, will notice some nice touches that have made the Ribbon even easier to read and use.

Under the hood, Excel gets more power and higher performance. Excel 2010 supports 64-bit environments. Microsoft claims that “strategic” improvements in Excel 2007’s multi-threaded architecture will bring even more benefit from increasingly common multicore processors. While no hard ceiling has been provided by Microsoft, the company states that Excel 2010 can handle file sizes larger than the previous 2-gigabyte limit.

Excel 2010 Sparklines

The biggest new feature in Excel 2010 that is getting a lot of buzz and promotion is something called Sparklines. Sparklines are small charts that fit inside of a single cell.

At first blush, this seems to be a rather meaningless feature, but a closer look reveals the ability to present data that has more impact and power than ever before. What may be the most overlooked power of Sparklines is the ability to subtly include an extra bit of data that provides a level of explanation and detail that is seldom reviewed in certain quarters (Senior Management, for example?)

Consider for example, this typical spreadsheet being used in a meeting with upper management. Somewhere during the presentation, the Executive Senior Vice President (or is it Senior Executive Vice President) of whatever, suddenly asks if these department sales numbers are higher than last year.

The presenter may or may not have this data. It might be in an index, or even on a later page, but the reality is that whatever the presenter says or whatever page or chart he directs everyone’s attention to next, only a small yes/no, higher/lower, number is likely to be absorbed and retained by attendees.

Expanding the current table to include more data is one option, but everyone knows that only so much can be absorbed at once, and large tables and complicated graphs tend to make people’s eyes glaze over.

Now, consider the same chart using Sparklines.

In this case, Sparklines were inserted for each department showing the historical sales numbers. These small charts add very little data, size, or complexity to the table. The value of these Sparkline charts is that now, when the same question is asked, although now there might not be a need to even ask the question, it becomes easier to convey more complicated answers such as, “The numbers for Patio & Garden are lower this year, however, they are still up considerably over the last few …”

The Sparklines make it more likely that more than “No” gets through to the audience.

Excel 2010 PivotCharts and PivotTables

Excel’s other flashy feature upgrades come from improvements to PivotCharts and PivotTables. While both have been in Excel in some form since Office 2003, new tools and add-ins make them both easier to user and easier to understand so that their power can be harnessed by more users.

Chief among these tools is The Slicer feature which allows PivotTables to be dynamically segmented via an easier to follow graphical interface.

Many of Excel 2010’s newest features revolve around Microsoft’s strategy to increase how users can work together as well as access documents from anywhere, as a means to blunt Google’s continuing efforts in this area. In this arena, Excel adds the “Excel Web App” which allows multiple users to edit the same spreadsheet simultaneously.

Excel also gains better integration with Microsoft SharePoint via SharePoint Server 2010 and Excel Services. Finally, like all of the Office 2010 applications a mobile version for cellphones. Excel Mobile 2010 will make spreadsheet data not only readable on your smartphone, but also provide both the ability to edit and create graphs from the data.

Power users and corporate users implementing Excel 2010 mobile and collaboration features are likely the only users to really notice much of a difference between Excel 2007 and Excel 2010. But, users coming from Excel 2003 and earlier will be in for a treat, and since Excel comes with every version of Office 2010, chances are good that most users will just take Excel along for the upgrade ride anyway.

Microsoft OneNote is a brilliant addition to Microsoft Office. It was originally introduced in Office 2003, but really became a stand out application in Office 2007.

The idea behind Microsoft OneNote is to create an electronic version of a notebook, and potentially, replace them altogether.

And in Microsoft Office 2010, OneNote does a bang up job.

Disclaimer: The author of this article LOVES OneNote! His objectivity has been shattered by an application that can find sources he used a year ago in seconds, that records his voice notes on the same page as his written notes, and has made the 60 lbs. of notebooks threatening a home office shelf less necessary. Oh, yeah, it also catalogs his PAPER-BASED notebooks.

Whether or not OneNote could replace paper notebooks is open to debate. Most writers, for example, have an ongoing love affair with notebooks of all kinds, so replacing them electronically is not an option. However, OneNote provides many wonderful features for anyone who fills notebooks with notes, information, data, snippets, quotes, appointments, and anything else that can be scribbled down onto a piece of paper.

What Is OneNote from Microsoft Office?

Let’s start at the beginning. Many users never tried OneNote, they may have never even installed it. The way Microsoft put together previous editions of Microsoft Office, you may have never seen the product before.

For example, in Office 2007, OneNote is included in the Office 2007 Home and Student and in Office 2007 Ultimate editions, but not in any of the more ubiquitous business editions. So, if you needed Outlook with your Office Suite (which is absent from Home & Office version), you have probably never seen OneNote before.

It looks like Microsoft has noticed that not just students take notes. According to the Microsoft Office 2010 website, OneNote 2010 is included not just in Office Home and Business 2010, but also in Office Professional 2010, and Office Professional Plus 2010.

So, what is OneNote?

The first question most people have when they see OneNote is why they shouldn’t just use something else for notes. Some people keep text files, others keep Word documents, some people (like me) send emails to themselves as a way to take and keep notes. While these solutions may work “good enough,” none of them is actually designed to keep and organize notes, which makes them clunky solutions at best, and electronic versions of the huge pile on the corner of the desk that has everything in it “somewhere.”

At first glance, OneNote can seem like a glorified word processor, but jump into the program’s features, and you’ll see that this isn’t just Microsoft Word with some extra buttons.

Using Microsoft Office OneNote to Organize, Store, and Create Notes

Perhaps no application benefitted more from the MS Office Ribbon Interface than Microsoft OneNote. OneNote 2007 was an example of what would happen if toolbars became self-aware and started replicating buttons without limit. While functions could still be accessed from the familiar nested menus, OneNote also offered a vast array of toolbars filled with tiny icons.

In fact, OneNote 2007 is an example of what Office applications might look like without the new ribbon design — tiny icons everywhere that only the most intrepid of users would ever find or fully understand.

Fortunately, OneNote 2010, like all the other Office 2010 applications, gets the full Ribbon style interface. The Ribbon provides easy access to some of the “little things” that makes OneNote such a powerful tool. The various drawing tools, as well as the audio and video tools, stay out of the way, but very accessible when the user needs them.

At its core, OneNote is a way to create and store words and text. In this way, it is a lot like Microsoft Word. However, what makes OneNote so powerful is its versatility. Freed from the constraints that the final output be able to occur as a paper printout, OneNote, like a paper notebook, can be kept as neat or as messy as the user desires.

Ignoring margins, inserting large graphics or hand-drawn doodles, and then resizing, moving, or erasing them is easy. Text can be kept neatly in rows and columns, or stuffed into the “margins” or even crammed between main elements. Users are given a free-form interface where there is no end of the page and individual items can be as big or as little as desired.

While this concept is not new, it has historically also not been easy to use. Typically, users had to create some sort of frame or box for whatever it was they wanted to input first. Clicking on an icon to create a text box, placing it in the right location, and then dragging around borders to what you hoped would be approximately the right size, all before typing in a single word, made such applications too cumbersome for all but the most dedicated to bother using for anything other than big important notes. The thing about notes, however, is that you never know which notes will end up being important.

OneNote solves this issue by just assuming that if you are typing, you want that text in a text box. It creates the frame on the fly on the current page. If you are pasting an image, the image is placed onto the page instantly. Any frame that is necessary is created automatically by OneNote. Providing a carte blanche interface like this usually leads to either a messy chaos, or a situation in which once something is created, it cannot be edited again. Neither is true with OneNote.

Each entry on a page gets an electronic box around it. This boundary disappears until the user activates it by moving the mouse over it, allowing for a clean look that duplicates the boxless layout of a real notebook with text written in or pictures drawn on the page.

Users can even choose to have ruled (lined) note pages or not. The boxes with information can be dragged and dropped anywhere on the page. They can be resized by a little or by a lot. If there is text inside, the text adjusts to the size of the box, word wrapping in new places with ease. Best of all, the box, or just some of its contents, can be selected for copying and pasting elsewhere.

While duplicating the ability to put stuff in a notebook is great, the real power of OneNote comes from all of the things it can do that a regular notebook cannot. The most obvious functionality in this regard is searching.

OneNote indexes every word of every note you take no matter how big or how small. That means that if you put the directions to Frank Smith’s house in your OneNote notebook and then don’t see him for four years, when you type frank smith house into a OneNote search, you’ll find those directions. Try that with a regular notebook, even if you are fastidious enough to organize them by date and subject matter.

Of course, almost everything can be searched these days thanks to Google Desktop Search and Windows 7 search and indexing features (unless you are one of those people that turns them off to save resources. Seriously, if you want to save RAM and disk space, uninstall Adobe Reader instead. You’ll come out ahead.). Fortunately, OneNote arrives with more power than just a search function.

What if you have a screenshot, or a photograph, or a graphic from a website pasted into OneNote as an image? How about some free, fast, and reasonably accurate (assuming normal, legible, lettering) text recognition? This recent screenshot from a website was taken with Screenshot Captor, resized, and then saved as a JPG file. When pasted into OneNote, it takes its rightful place as an image file in a notebook.

However, right click on the same graphic and an option to Copy Text from Image appears. When pasted to the right of the image, you can see how well OneNote does at this. Sure, there are a couple of typos, and it chokes on the ads and navigation around the text, but it sure beats typing it back into Word or something to get the text.

All this, and we haven’t even scratched the surface of how much OneNote can do. Draw freehand with your mouse or tablet and pen right onto any notebook page, even to circle or annotate an image or graphic. OneNote will also gladly add audio or video files to your notebook pages. It can even record the same right into a page!

Put your meeting notes or class notes into OneNote, and then record those extras things that you remembered but didn’t get down in your written notes.

Give OneNote a try and you’ll find plenty to like. The first time you go back into the application thinking, “I’m pretty sure I saved something about that somewhere,” you’ll be hooked.

While some users make extensive use of Excel, Access, PowerPoint, and other Office apps, virtually every computer user makes use of a word processor, and the most ubiquitous word processing application in the world is Microsoft Word.

That is why when Microsoft releases a new version of Office, it is the functionality and performance of Word that often drives initial public opinion and acceptance of the overall upgrade.

It is, therefore, somewhat telling that Microsoft decided to include MS Word among those applications that got the new Ribbon interface in Microsoft Office 2007. It is just as telling that Microsoft did not include the Ribbon interface on Microsoft Outlook in Office 2007, which is used extensively in corporate environments.

Between those two applications, Microsoft got perhaps the biggest possible side-by-side test of Ribbon versus no Ribbon in the business setting. Office 2010 will include the Ribbon interface on all products, including Outlook 2010, so it is clear to see what Microsoft thought of how well the Ribbon worked.

Word 2010: Ribbon User Interface Updated

While Word got the new ribbon look in Office 2007, that upgrade was not the type of universal upgrade that past versions of Office were. For many users Word 2010 Beta will be their first look at the new Ribbon interface. They will benefit from the lessons learned in Office 2007 and Word 2007.

For example, Word 2007 uses the Office Icon in the place of the File menu. However, that proved confusing to a generation of users already very used to the File menu. So, the File Menu is back for Word 2010.

The purpose of the Ribbon interface was to reduce the complexity of finding and navigating the ever growing list of features in the Microsoft Office Suite applications, including MS Word. One of the strange things that Microsoft noticed over the years was that it got a high number of requests for features in Word that were already in the product. The company concluded that most users simply did not know what they could and could not do in Word past the basic, long-established features.

When Microsoft attempted to code usability into the standard menu system by including popular or most commonly used features on the main level of the menus, too much was left two, three, or even four clicks deep in the menu structure. The Ribbon allowed for many of those features to be made more accessible or even visible from the main editing screen. As a result, many users will find “new” features in Word 2010 Beta that have actually been there for a long time.

Best Word 2010 Features New and Old

• The Ribbon

Obviously, the Ribbon will cause some issues in the beginning for new users, but once you get used to it, it not only accomplishes the goal of making features more discoverable, it makes working with them faster and easier too.

Everything from bullets, to outlines, to fonts, and colors are faster and easier, which means you are more likely to use them. (Word is still annoyingly inept at getting an outline to do what you want it to do, however.)

Under the old Word menu system, most people just stuck with bold, underline, and italics. If it was really necessary, a color or highlight might be thrown in, but that was it. With headings and other formats now just a click away, users are more likely to use multiple headings (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.). The headings themselves aren’t the good part; the good part is not having to do something extreme to make sure that really important heading stands out from the normal headings like having it Bolded, Underlined, and Italicized, with Title Caps and an Exclamation Point!

•Super Easy Customization

One of the things Word always brought to the table over smaller “easier” word processing programs was the ability to customize it to the user’s needs. Unfortunately, that customization was one of the features that was too hidden, or too complex to use. I’ve watched as attorneys borrowed the receptionist’s computer so that they could type a regular document without the legal dictionary, grammar checker, and customized auto-formatting on, instead of using the customization features.

In Word 2010, one of the easiest customizations is also the most helpful. Every user needs Word for a different reason. Whether it is writing papers for school, typing up letters, doing mailings, or drafting legislation — different people need Word to do different things. Thanks to the Quick Access Toolbar, Word can do what YOU need it to do, fast and easy.

Just click the drop down arrow and choose whichever commands and icons you want to have displayed. You can even move it above or below the Ribbon with a single click based on your preference. As a writer I do a lot of “seeing what it would look like,” before deciding whether to keep it, so my QAT has Undo and Redo on it, plus New, Open, Save, Print Preview, and Print, just because I’m so used to them.

By using the QAT, I don’t have to care about where Microsoft put the Save button in the default setup (on the Office Backstage view that appears when you click File), because it is right where I want it in MY setup.

• Improved Pasting

One thing that has always been tricky in Microsoft Word is copying and pasting, if what is being pasted is not unformatted text or from another Office Document. Savvy users got used to Right-Clicking in order to bring up the menu to paste plain text, but that often cost as much time in reformatting as it saved.

This glitch alone drove me to figure out and eventually use Microsoft OneNote, which handles Paste from anything flawlessly.

With the new paste function, by default three different paste options show up. That wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but it also comes with a live in-text preview of what it will look like. Just hover the mouse over one of the pasting options and Word will show what the document will look like if that option is selected. If the full-format paste is too messed up, check use of the other options.

Either way, users will now know which paste method is best for each situation BEFORE pasting. (Maybe I won’t need those Undo / Redo buttons so much anymore.)

• Better Printing and File Options

The ability to do a print preview or change to landscape or portrait has been in Word forever, but it has always been just a little bit harder to do than it should be. Word 2010 eliminates this issue forever.

Click File -> Print (or CTRL-P) and you automatically get a Print Preview in addition to easy access to all the most common printing options all within Word. Finally, you won’t have to click Printer Properties to make simple changes. You can change orientation, paper size, collating options, and more from one screen regardless of what printer or driver you have installed. You can even change the margins and other layout features from the same screen without “going back” into the main Word editing screen.

What’s New in Word 2010 Beta?

• Search

Improvements in MS Word 2010 search functionality aren’t flash, but there are so very useful.

The find feature on Word was just fine for shorter documents but scrolling through the highlighted results in a 300 page manuscript wasn’t fun. Better highlighting and a table of contents style bar down the side of the results make it easier than ever to find what you actually want.

• Co-Authoring

One of the new features that Microsoft is heavily touting for Word 2010 is simultaneous collaboration. Previously, if you tried to access a Word document that someone else had open, you got a message about the file being locked and having to open it in Read-Only mode.

Recent Microsoft and third-party collaboration tools allowed documents or sections to be worked on at the same time by both users with each user’s changes being reincorporated together into the original file after each user was finished.

What Microsoft Word 2010 co-authoring feature does is allow multiple users to be simultaneously editing the file at the same time, with both edits appearing on both screens in real time. In other words, while I’m typing this sentence here, someone could be changing the paragraph’s heading, and I could see those changes as they were making them.

If you are thinking that this feature sounds creepy and distracting, you aren’t wrong, on shorter documents at least. The idea of someone hitting backspace to change the sentence directly above the one you are typing is indeed both distracting and a little bit unsettling. (Ghosts in the machine, anyone?)

However, on larger documents like a documentation manual or quarterly report, users are less likely to be editing close enough together for both to show on the screen at once. But, when User A goes to reference a page number that changed just seconds ago due to some additions by User B, User A will scroll over and find the current real-time page number and not what the page number was when the file was opened.

• Images and Graphics

Another update in MS Word 2010 is better handling, usage, and creation of graphics and images. SmartArt Graphics allow users to create simple charts or graphs inside of Word, directly from their text. No more need to load up Visio just to create a simple three step diagram.

Also, image editing features have been improved and updated. Things like adding shadows, watermarks, and rotating images can all be done inside of Word. You can even adjust the color saturation and temperature of pictures for optimal printing without having to launch an external image editor.

• Screenshot Tool

Word also comes with a new screenshot tool built-in which is sure to be an enormous boon to the technical documentation crowd, as well as those who use screenshots or snapshots of websites as collateral in their documents.

Microsoft Word definitely doesn’t have a big flashy update from Office 2007 to Office 2010, but if you are migrating from Office 2000, prepare to be amazed. For users of Office 2007, your reason to upgrade to 2010 will have to come from another MS Office application.

There are 15 dates and locations to choose from around the US:

The sessions include information on planning, implementation, deployment and much more:

For more information and to register for one of the Office 2010 Launch Events visit www.microsoft.com/business/2010events.

And if you can’t attend any of the live events in person, check out the virtual Office 2010 launch event on May 12th .