www.itsnotcheating.com.au

If you are an Australian University or TAFE student then you could grab a bargin.  Microsoft are offering all eligible Australian Uni and TAFE students the opportunity to purchase the latest Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate edition for only $75 for life (or $25 for 1 year) which normally retails for around $1000.  So check out the It’s not cheating website for more details grab yourself a bargin.

Office DevCon 2007

 

I have just been told that the website for the inaugural Office DevCon is now live (http://www.block.net.au/devcon/index.htm).  This will be an excellent event with presenters from all around Australia attending. The event will be held 3-4 November 2007 at Microsoft’s North Ryde offices in Sydney.  Information about the event including agenda, speakers and registration can be found on the website.  Some of the speakers at the event will be Aaron Saikovski, Adam Cogan, Andrew Coates, Mick Badran and MOSSIG‘s very own Ed Richard.

Did you know? You can add another time zone to your Outlook calendar

I currently work for a company that operates over two time zones (Melbourne/Sydney and Adelaide).  Some times when we book meetings the time zone thing can throw some people off.  So it is good to see that Outlook 2007 now has the facility to add another time zone to your calendar.  Now you can see what time the meeting is scheduled for in both time zones.

To add another time zone, go to Tools | Options… in Outlook

On the Preferences tab, click on Calendar Options…

On the Calendar Options dialog, click on Time Zone…

On the Time Zone dialog enter MELB as your current Windows time zone Label, tick the Show an additional time zone check box, enter ADEL as the Label and choose (GMT+09:30) Adelaide as the Time zone. NB: You can replace use your own labels and choose your own time zones. Click OK three times.

Now you calendar shows both time zones.

Writing Complex Outlook Add-ins in .NET: Tell me your pain!

Paul Robinson a consultant with Microsoft Services in the UK has posted a request for information regarding your pain points, gotches, fixes and notes of interest around writing Outlook addins.

If you have anything you would like to mention then leave him a comment and I am sure that the information will makes it way to the product team in Redmond.

Most recent document sidebar gadget

I was looking through the Vista sidebar gadgets on live gallery and found this excellent gadget “Microsoft Office 2007 Recently Used Documents“.

“Quick and easy access to your most recently used Microsoft Office Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007 documents. This gadget lets you easily open, pin, or unpin the most recent items from your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint MRU. Requires Office 2007.”

I am using it now and have found it to be very useful, so I can recommend checking it out. Hopefully the list of files, which currently only support Word, Excel and PowerPoint will be expanded in the future.

RSS Feeds disappear from Outlook

I have been using Office 2007 since Beta 1 and have had no real issues with the product (stability at the start, but that is much better in the final release). I have been using the RSS features which are really cool but just this morning Outlook is not updating my RSS feeds. On further investigations Tools|Account Settings|RSS Feeds no longer contains a list of RSS Feeds. I now have to delete each RSS and re-add it manually (I didn’t have an OPML file – doh!).

For those of you that are using Office 2007 and the RSS feed feature, I recommend using the Import and Export feature to create an OPML file of your feeds occasionally (then you wont loose them like I did).

If anyone else has experienced this issue then let me know and if I find a fix to this issue I will update this post.

Microsoft Virtual Labs for Office System

Angus Logan has posted an excellent list of virtual labs for the office system, including Office 2007, WSSv3, MOSS 2007 and Groove. He also included a link to the virtual lab RSS feed so you can keep up to date as more virtual labs are released.

APAC SharePoint Conference

This exclusive Microsoft event is the third and final of three global SharePoint Conferences, following Seattle and Berlin. This world-class, two-day conference, to be held at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney from May 15-16, will showcase the latest innovations, features and functionality for the 2007 SharePoint products and technologies. The conference will provide an unprecedented opportunity for customers and partners in the Asia Pacific region to meet and network with Microsoft Office System product development teams, fellow IT professionals and architects, and partners.
With only 500 places available, this event is not to be missed!

Expert Presenters

SharePoint experts from the Asia Pacific region and members of the SharePoint product group such as Derek Burney (General Manager), Mike Fitzmaurice and Joel Oleson (both Senior Technical Product Managers), will provide attendees with technical information and demos for the latest release of SharePoint products and technologies: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, and Office SharePoint Designer 2007. And for the first time in Australia, information on Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 will be presented.

Brand New Deep Dive Content

Multiple tracks focused on specific solution technologies including Collaboration, Enterprise Search and Portals, Business Intelligence and Enterprise Content Management will be offered. Plus, there will be additional opportunities for attendees to learn about, and get hands on experience with, SharePoint products and technologies.

Technical “how to” breakout sessions covering subjects such as architecture, security, integration, deployment, migration, management and scalability, will help attendees develop, customise, integrate and build powerful, enterprise-ready solutions with SharePoint products and technologies.

Event Details
Dates: 15-16 May 2007
Venue: Hilton Hotel in Sydney, Australia
Cost: $549.00 for two days (includes registration, Welcome Night, conference sessions, and evening entertainment event)

Save the Date

Registrations for this conference will open soon (look for an announcement on this blog), and seats will be strictly limited. Block off May 15-16 on your calendar right now, so you won’t miss out!

What about Partner Sponsorship?

My company SDM is hoping to be a partner sponsor for this conference.

Local Speakers

I am currently in negotiations with Angus Logan to be one of the local speakers at the conference.

[As seen on Angus Logan's Blog and the SharePoint Team Blog]

Has Clippy been replaced with "Stapley"?

I previously posted about Clippy being retired from the Microsoft Office product. It looks like Google might be adding a new persona to their search engine, “Stapley”.

“It looks like you’re searching for porn!”

Clippy lives on

[Via: Ed Richard]

Now that Clippy has retired, it seems that he is busier now than ever. He seems to be making appearances in all sorts of things.

The Enchanted Office, is a comic strip that shows some of the reasons the interface in Office has been modified into the Ribbon. It is a good read (for a laugh) – and has quite a few parodies, just wait until page six with the “Oh my God, they killed Clippy! (…Kenny…)” reference.

Clippy has moved out of Word and is now living at http://thenewpaperclip.com/about/. The landing page also has an old cliché, “It looks like you have upgraded to Office 2007. Would you like some assistance?”

Clippy also made an appearance on “Drawn Together” on SBS the other night, “It looks like you are writting a suicide note. Would you like some assistance?”.

Lets stay tuned as you never know where that annoying little paper clip will turn up.

Enhance Office 2007 Installations

The Microsoft SharePoint product group have posted a great summary of community contributions around B2TR, especially the articles around enhancing the installation by slipstreaming the B2TR into the one installation meadia. This will save heaps of installation time for those numerous virtual server environment we all need to setup. http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2006/09/15/756692.aspx

Update: AVG email scanning and Outlook 2007

Previously I posted about AVG email scanning stripping out the content of emails when using Office Outlook 2007. Upon further investigations I have found that you don’t need to disable the email scanner entirely. Just go into the configuration section of the plugin and take off the Certify mail of both incoming and outgoing mail. That is what is causing the problem.

Antivirus (AVG) plugin not compatible with Outlook 2007

Having sent some emails using the new Outlook 2007 Beta 2, I noticed that they were being delivered with no content in the body. I determined that the AVG Anti-virus plug-in that scans incoming/outgoing emails is not Outlook 2007 Beta 2 aware and strips out all content coming in or going out. I have now disabled the plug-in in AVG and emails are flowing again.

If you use any other applications that use plug-ins for Outlook, you might wish to review that they are functioning as intended.

Office 2007 Packaging and Pricing

As reported by Stefan. Microsoft have just release pricing and packaging information regarding the new Office 2007.