Microsoft Office 2010 Technology Guarantee

Buy Office 2007 Today, Get Office 2010 Free

Today I received notice, via Amazon, that for a limited time Microsoft is offering a free upgrade deal. Purchase, install, and activate a qualifying Office 2007 product between March 5, 2010, and September 30, 2010, and you’ll be eligible to download Office 2010 at no additional cost. The Microsoft details page is here.

I noted, also, that Amazon’s price for Home and Student Edition is very competitive, and I was pleased to see that the option to have it on disc was free too. The Amazon page is here.

Some thoughts on Office 2007/2010:
I have been using “the new Office” since the beta of Office 2007, and am currently running the beta of 2010. I find the modest improvements in 2010 quite nice, but since I am not doing a lot of “online collaboration”, nor in a true business environment (no cubicle for me), I am not able to leverage all of its advanced features.

I have no trouble with the “new” Ribbon menu bars, and I love being able to preview, and then apply, formatting ‘dynamically’. But – and this is a pretty big ‘but’ here – longtime users of Office (97 – 2003) do not always find the transition to the new menus so… pleasant. Fortunately, Microsoft provides many aids for easing the transition to the newer way, such as the Office 2010 menu to ribbon reference workbooks. There is a learning curve going from Office 2003/older, yes.

Copyright 2007-2010 © Tech Paul. All Rights Reserved. post to jaanix.

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Download The Latest Office Suite – Office 14

Folks, I have a “general policy” to avoid “beta” software.. even if it is “kewel” and even if it is free. (Beta, by it’s very definition, means “buggy“.) But Microsoft has become an exception to my “rule” about betas, as their most recent beta releases have proven remarkably stable and usable.

Microsoft’s latest “public beta” offering is a copy of the Professional Edition of Office 2010 (aka “Office 14”), and I have been using it for some time now. I am not a big Office user (I do most things “online”) but it seems to me that Office 2010 is a slightly smoother version of Office 2007 (ie, more “intuitive”).

The beta includes all the programs you would expect, and some bonus features as well. It expires in October of this year. At that time you will have the option to buy a license key, or you can simply uninstall it.

For those of you who would like to try the new Office, (without the cost or the commitment) and maybe meet the much talked about “ribbon” for the first time, click here for the official Microsoft download page.

Copyright 2007-2010 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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Open Office 2007 files with older versions*

A while ago I wrote about solving the problem of opening documents that Windows does not recognize, and used as an example two text documents received as email attachments (click here to read Cannot open attachment…help!). While the point of that article was how to identify unrecognized file types, the fact that I mentioned a .docx (a Word 2007 document) received the most attention from readers.

Tip of the day: Open Office 2007 documents with older versions of Office. Some time ago now, Microsoft released a new version of its Office suite, called Office 2007. Besides having a new “look” and new toolbars, this suite of programs uses a whole new format (a way of encoding) for the documents it produces, which Microsoft calls “Open XML” (for more on this, click here); and to signify this, has added an “x” to the file extension.. so the familiar “.doc” of MS Word has become “.docx”.

This change to the coding does improve the flexibility of the document, and “modernizes” the way machines interact with it, and yet allows Microsoft to maintain proprietary control.. thus ensuring that sales of Office continues. The trouble is, owners of MS Word cannot open the new .docx formats, which produces great dissatisfaction from folks who have shelled out the bucks to own the most commonly used word processor in the world. (And largely done so simply to be able to open other people’s documents.) It also smacks of forcing people to spend a couple hundred bucks to upgrade.

Microsoft swears this is not the intent. Of course they want you to upgrade, but to do so because of the improvements and new features. They do, in fact want current MS Office licensees to be able to read the new Open XML ‘standard’, and so they have made available a tool for the older versions of Office.. which is today’s free link.
As more and more people use the new 2007 suite, the more .docx’s you’re going to run across; so if you’re happy and comfortable with your current version, and aren’t ready to relearn the Excel and Word toolbar, relax. Keep reading and download the Microsoft Office compatibility tool.

[Note: If you are the one using Office 2007, and you know you’re going to be sending your document to folks who are using an older version, use “Save As” to save the file as a Office 97-2003 document (no “x”).]

Today’s free link: Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats. Open, edit, and save documents, workbooks, and presentations in the file formats new to Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007.

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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Opening old Word files after Office SP3

I look forward to the release of “Service Packs”. (Here is how Microsoft describes a Service Pack: “Service packs are the means by which product updates are distributed. Service packs may contain updates for system reliability, program compatibility, security, and more. All of these updates are conveniently bundled for easy downloading.“) I look forward to SP’s not only because they roll several Updates into one download, but Service Packs also (sometimes) include new products/features — such as, XP SP2 added the Security Center and a firewall.

And besides… I’m a “security guy.” I am all for getting patches (aka “Updates”) and have written many advice articles urging folks to thwart hacker vulnerability exploits and to keep their software updated; most recently, https://techpaul.wordpress.com/2007/11/23/learn-to-love-the-pop-up/. If there’s a patch, I say “get it!”

Recently Microsoft released the third Service Pack for Office 2003 (SP3), and SP3 makes some rather significant changes to how Office 2003 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) behave: namely, it shuts off backwards compatibilty and you can no longer open (or Save) files saved in older versions of Office. Whoa!

What this means to you is, if you are tootling along with an older Version of Word (let’s just say, Word XP as a ‘for instance’) and you send a document to someone using a more current version (which most people are), they may not be able to open your file. Or, if you need to open a file you created some time ago with an old version of Excel (say, an old tax-expense spreadsheet), maybe from an old backup, but you have since upgraded to Office 2003, you will not be able to read your own file.
You will get, instead, an error message.

In short, Office will no longer do what it used to do, and you (may) have lost access to your own files.

My initial reaction to this was incredulity. A hallmark of Microsoft IS backwards compatibility (In fact, BC is a big reason why Vista failed to deliver all that was promised; they just couldn’t deliver the new features AND be backwards compatible.), and here they are –for the first time that I know of– turning off existing compatibility! And, they aren’t (really) asking our permission to do so, either.. but that’s a whole ‘nother topic.

The reason MS did this is for security, (Hey! I heard that.) and says this only affects really old file types, like pre-Word 97, (though I have read differently in various geek forums) and older Corel Draw, Lotus, Quattro, and dBase II files. And Microsoft points out that this change is the same as what was written as the defaults for Office 2007. So this probably will not affect you until you have some cause to dig out something you created a very long time ago.. but if it does:

Tip of the day: restore Office 2003’s ability to access old files only if it becomes necessary, and only restore the abilities you need. And then turn them off again.
Microsoft provides .reg file downloads to restore the functionality of certain areas of Office: use just the one you need. A .reg file modifies the Windows Registry (which is a serious issue) and so I highly recommend creating a System Restore point before making these types of changes. Close any open Office applications and…

1) Download the file to your desktop by choosing “Save” (do not “Open” or “Run”) when prompted, and selecting Desktop as the “Save file to…” location.
* To re-enable Word formats only, click here.
* To re-enable Excel formats only, click here.
* To re-enable PowerPoint formats only, click here.
* To re-enable CorelDraw formats only, click here.

2) Double-click on the new (download) .reg icon on your Desktop, and click on “Yes” to proceed.

3) Re-launch Word (or, Excel, or PowerPoint, as the case may be) and Open the old file(s) you need access to, and then “Save As” them to 2003 files (using the “Save As Type” drop-down arrow.)

4) Repeat the download/double-click procedure with the links below to re-enable the security shutdown.
* To re-block old Word formats only, click here.
* To re-block old Excel formats only, click here.
* To re-block old PowerPoint formats only, click here.
* To re-block old CorelDraw formats only, click here.

I feel compelled to mention to you (again) that another alternative is to use the Open Source suite of applications to access the old (and new) Microsoft Office files, and re-post it as..

Today’s free link: Open Office. From website: “OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute.”
*It is available in a “portable” version too.

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved.

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More on opening Office 2007 documents

Yesterday I wrote about solving the problem of opening documents that Windows does not recognize, and used as an example two text documents received as email attachments (click here to read Cannot open attachment…help!). While the point of that article was how to identify unrecognized file types, the fact that I mentioned a .docx (a Word 2007 document) received the most attention from readers.

Tip of the day: Open Office 2007 documents with older versions of Office. Microsoft released a new version of its Office suite, called Office 2007. Besides having a new “look” and new toolbars, this suite of programs uses a whole new format (a way of encoding) for the documents it produces, which Microsoft calls “Open XML” (for more on this, click here); and to signify this, has added an “x” to the file extension.. so the familiar “.doc” of MS Word has become “.docx”.

This change to the binary coding does improve the flexibility of the document, and “modernizes” the way machines interact with it, and yet allows Microsoft to maintain proprietary control.. thus ensuring that sales of Office continues. The trouble is, owners of MS Word cannot open the new .docx formats, which produces great dissatisfaction from folks who have shelled out the bucks to own the most commonly used word processor in the world. (And largely done so simply to be able to open other people’s documents.) It also smacks of forcing people to spend a couple hundred bucks to upgrade.

Microsoft swears this is not the intent. Of course they want you to upgrade, but to do so because of the improvements and new features. They do, in fact want current MS Office licensees to be able to read the new Open XML ‘standard’, and so they have made available a tool for the older versions of Office.. which is today’s free link.
As more and more people use the new 2007 suite, the more .docx’s you’re going to run across; so if you’re happy and comfortable with your current version, and aren’t ready to relearn Excel and Word, relax. Keep reading and download the Microsoft Office compatibility tool.

Today’s free link: Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats. Open, edit, and save documents, workbooks, and presentations in the file formats new to Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007.

Copyright 2007 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved

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