Archive for office application
Digsby Review- Faster & Feature Rich
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Digsby
If you’re a social maven with multiple email accounts, social media sites and IM accounts, give Digsby a try. If you use more than one computer, get a Digsby account and then you’ll never be parted from all your networking sites. Just sign into your Digsby account (requires a software install), and find out what’s happening across all your social networks.
Digsby rolled out a huge update in June, 2009. They promise they are lighter weight (consume about 50% less resources), and they’ve fixed many bugs.
I’ve had it on my work laptop for many months and just decided to install it on the family computer with the Windows 7 RC. It seems to be really snappy with Windows 7 on my older Dell.
Digsby seems to be covering all their bases with the social networks, email & IM. Here’s a list of what can be aggregated for you:
Social Networking
Facebook MySpace Twitter LinkedIn
Gmail Yahoo Mail Live/Hotmail AOL Mail IMAP POP
IM
Yahoo MSN Google Talk AIM ICQ Jabber
What’s To Like
- As long as I have Digsby installed, I can simply sign in once and have instant access to all my social media accounts
- With the addition of LinkedIn, Twitter, POP & IMAP mail, I can truly have everything aggregated in one desktop sidebar.
- I like the ability to turn on and off notifications – I usually leave them off as it’s too distracting to see so many pop-ups. But if you’re waiting for a particular message, it would be helpful.
- It is more lightweight on my systems – good news since I’ve got multiple things running at all times.
- Ability to post updates right from Digsby. I save some screen real estate and resources because I don’t have to log into LinkedIn or Twitter to see what’s happening or to post an update. This is a big plus.
Not To Like
I didn’t care for all the add-ons being pushed on me during the install. The Freeze search, the video player and maybe something else. For the unsuspecting person, I’m sure they just hit accept for all these things and then wonder where it came from. I wish this could be eliminated – but perhaps this is how they keep it free.
Still Figuring Out
POP Mail. Specifically I’m looking at getting an Outlook mail account from one computer to work on a different computer. I understand that if I have Outlook installed on both computers, but with different email accountson each computer, I can’t pull up an email. However, I can view a list of emails currently on that computer with a short preview.
Reading the Digsby forums, people were asking for Digsby to support accessing their webmail instead of a desktop client (like Outlook). They said that they had added this feature, so I looked in the advanced settings and saw that there is a place to cut and paste your webmail URLs (one for in-box and one for the compose box). I tried this, however, it crashed my Firefox browser! I got a Java applet error.
I will try it again and try it with IE to see if I get a different result. If any Digsby users out there are reading this – would like to get your experiences. I’ll post an update next week after I work on it more.
Microsoft Small Business Live & Outlook Connector
Posted by: | CommentsLast week, we explored enhancements Microsoft made to their Small Business Live Suite of products and offerings. Now, we’ll look at the relatively new Outlook Connector and the benefits of using this tool either with our business or personal lives and accounts.
If you are a *current live-mail or hotmail account holder and use either Outlook 2003 or 2007, you can bring your web-based email, calendar and contacts into your desktop Outlook client with Outlook Connector 12.1 Beta 2. From what I’ve read, this functionality (with the email accounts), is not new. The highly-touted feature is the new ability to bring multiple hotmail calendars into Outlook and either look at them side by side, or overlay them. So, if you have a work, personal, kid’s activity and other group calendar, you can overlay them to find open slots or conflicts.
I must confess here that so far I’ve not set up a Microsoft web-mail account. Never liked or wanted ‘hotmail’ in any of my email addresses. However, I will probably set up an account with Microsoft ‘live’. I have signed up for the Microsoft Small Business Account and have a Sky Drive and Shared Documents space already set up.
Here is a snapshot of how your E-Mail Live account would look in your Outlook:
Below is an excerpt from Microsoft you should read:
“Essentially, Outlook Connector 12.1 Beta 2 will synchronize email, contacts and calendars from accounts with the *latest versions of Windows Live Hotmail and Office Live Mail with Office Outlook 2003 and the 2007 Office System. One aspect has indeed evolved since version 12.0 of the Outlook Connector to 12.1 Beta 2, namely using the free Windows Live Calendar service instead of the MSN Calendaring service previously available only to MSN Premium accounts.
“In order to make sure that all of your calendar items on the MSN Calendar service are correctly migrated to the Windows Live Calendar, you should follow these steps: with Outlook Connector 12.0 installed, synchronize your calendar with the MSN Calendar service one last time. After synchronization is complete, do not create new items on the MSN Calendar site. If you do, you will have to synchronize again using Outlook Connector 12.0 before migrating to 12.1 Beta. Install Outlook Connector 12.1 Beta,” Roic added.
Microsoft Office Outlook Connector version 12.1 Beta 2 is available for download here. “
I’ve written previously on how I moved my Gmail account into my Outlook, so if I eventually added a live account, I wonder if this would crash my Outlook 2007? There would be a lot of activity in Outlook!
Contact Syncing With Office Life Small Business
If you use the Small Business Live features on-line, here’s a way to have your business contacts right in your Outlook client. They won’t inter-mingle with your other Outlook contacts, they will show up as business contacts in ‘Other Contacts’.
Below is a great excerpt from Microsoft on how to do this complete with snapshots:
If Outlook 2007 is installed on the computer that you use to access Office Live Small Business, you can find the option to connect Contact Manager to Outlook on the Actions menu on the actions bar in Contact Manager. When you connect Contact Manager to Outlook 2007, your customer, vendor, partner, and other key business contact information is always on hand.
After you click Connect to Outlook, you see an Outlook message box prompting you to connect this SharePoint contacts list to Outlook. Your Contact Manager database (in addition to other Office Live Small Business lists and libraries discussed in this article) is designed to sync effortlessly with Outlook 2007.
After you connect Contact Manager to Outlook, you can access the Contact Manager list in Outlook by clicking Contacts on the Navigation Pane. Contact Manager appears in the Navigation Pane under the heading Other Contacts, and is separate from your personal contacts, as shown here.
Notes
- If you do not see the Navigation Pane in Outlook, on the View menu, point to Navigation Pane, and then click Normal.
- By default, changes that you make to Contact Manager information in Outlook are updated in your Office Live Small Business account the next time Outlook performs an automatic Send/Receive.
- If you do not already use the Contact Manager tools in your Office Live Small Business account, see Focus your sales and marketing efforts using Contact Manager to learn more about what you can do with Contact Manager.
- To determine whether the version of Outlook that you use is Outlook 2007, do the following: In Outlook, on the Help menu, click About Microsoft Office Outlook. The dialog box that opens indicates which version of Outlook you are using.
Calendar Syncing with Outlook Connector:
The ability to bring your single or multiple live or hotmail calendars into your Outlook client was discussed above. Here’s a screenshot of how calendars can be displayed. If you have multiple calendars, just click the check-box next to the one(s) you want to display and you’ll have it! You can also share these calendars with others.
So-What Will Having This Do for Me?
- Ability to work off-line with your live or hotmail e-mail accounts. Write and read emails. The next time you’re on-line, everything should sync up and be up to date – on the web and on your desktop
- Same thing with calendars and contacts. Make updates and changes – they should all sync up upon re-connecting
- You can be more productive having your regular Outlook account and your web e-mail accounts in one place. No switching back and forth
- You can use the familiar and comforting Outlook interface
- If you installed the Business Connector application discussed in last week’s blog article, then you can also have off-line access to your business documents
Microsoft Small Business Live – Open, Share & Save Documents From Your Computer
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Microsoft has been refining and upgrading their ‘Live’ series of offerings the last few months. This article will focus on recently revamped ‘Microsoft Office Live – Small Business’. Just visit the Office Live site and you’ll be introduced to a cornucopia of options. You can set up a website, set up an e-commerce store, purchase a domain name and then set up various e-mail accounts using the new domain name. There is a contact manager, an e-mail marketing feature and newsletter creation and mailing (paid subscription for these).
We will focus on a free and very useful function I found while exploring this site—the ‘Share Documents’ feature. Looks like Microsoft is competing with Google here as they are offering a place to store, share and collaborate on Microsoft Office documents. From the above menu of items, click on the ‘Share Documents’ and you’ll be taken to your Workspace site where you can upload documents for sharing, collaboration or storage. Check this out for full details on everything you can do with your workspace.
I liked the fact that I can upload multiple documents at once by clicking one file, holding the shift and selecting consecutive files. It does not upload folders, however. Once I’ve gotten my documents uploaded, I can create different workspaces to share with different groups (or just a single person). It’s easy to move my documents to new workspaces and flag documents for sharing. As you’re setting up to share, you decide if the recipient will be an owner, editor or viewer. I really like the choice I have to send my invitation to someone and they don’t have to sign in or create an account to view the documents. Don’t you just hate getting something from someone and in order to see it, you have to get your own account!
I like this interface much better than Google Docs. It seems to be more intuitive and just makes more sense, at least to me. Over on the right side of the document screen, you can check out the activity in your space. You can see who has made changes or uploaded any more documents – very handy. Click on the ‘Comment’ box and leave a note for a co-worker.
Microsoft has a collaboration feature they call ‘Shared View’. You can read more about this application, which you can download and use without using the Live Small Business site. Click on the ‘Share’ button and select the option to share your screen with someone. You’ll have to have the app installed on your computer—you’ll be prompted for what to do. After it’s installed, you can initiate a sharing session with anyone right from Word, Excel or PowerPoint – nice.
I’m saving the best for last! The coolest feature and a huge timesaver is that you can save a document directly to your on-line live workspace right from your local Microsoft Office application. This means when you’re working on a document in Word, Excel or PowerPoint, click the save button and you’ll have the option to save either to your local drive or your small business live workspace in the clouds. You do have to install this add-in to be able to do this. It works with Office 2003 & 2007. It’s really great – can’t do that with Google Docs!
I first set up a Windows Live Account before I set up the Small Business portion and I was pleased to discover that I can access either of these areas by going to http://home.live.com/ and signing in. I did notice once I get into the Small Business section and I’m in the documents section, I don’t find a way to navigate myself back to my top level, or home page. This is annoying. I wish they would have some menu items at the top to get me where I want to be!
Next week, we’ll look at the ‘Outlook Connector’ and what that can do.
Microsoft Outlook Mail Tools- Back-up & Repair PST/OST Files
Posted by: | CommentsSince I’m using Outlook all day, everyday, it seems inevitable that things will go wrong from time to time. Here are two tools I use to help keep things running smoothly and to back up my mail files:
Microsoft Back-up Tool
Microsoft In-Box Repair Tool
First, we’ll talk about the Back-up tool. I don’t know why Microsoft doesn’t include this tool when Outlook is installed (works with 2002, 2003 & 2007), but it doesn’t. So go here read through the brief instruction set and download and install the program.
Before getting the backup file download, you may have to install the anti-piracy plug-in (office genuine advantage tool), so Microsoft can assure themselves you aren’t a pirate.
After the download is complete, close Outlook and install the software. Then, after opening Outlook, go to the File menu and you’ll see a new menu item called “backup”.
Click on it and you’ll see the below box.
Here you can choose to backup your main pst file, your archive files and whatever other mail files you may have. You can choose how often to backup and where the backup will be stored. I would strongly suggest you backup these important files in a couple of places (using Carbonite, Mozy, or an external hard drive). If your hard drive goes down and that’s where your backup is, it won’t do you much good! Another thing to remember – the backup tool won’t
run unless you exit Outlook. So, if like me, you hardly ever close your Outlook, set a reminder to do so regularly so a backup can be made.
Microsoft In-Box Repair Tool
This second tool will scan and repair your mail file. Ever go to open Outlook and it just won’t open! It’s happened to me and it created quite a bit of anxiety! Whenever I get these lovely cryptic messages from Microsoft, I google them to see if anyone else out there has had the same problem and I can usually find the answer from a fellow blogger.
This tool does come installed with Outlook (2002, 2003, 2007), but is buried deep within your folder structure (see below for location). To use this tool, you will again have Outlook closed and then navigate to the correct folder and double click on either the application .ost or .pst to scan the file type you wish. Then, you’ll need to navigate to where your mail files resides and select that and then click ‘start’. The tool will begin running and go through the check. When it’s through it will let you know how many errors (if any), were found and then you have the option to back up your file before it does its repair. After the repair process is complete, start Outlook and see if your file will open.
I hope you’ll give these tools a workout. I’ve found them to come in pretty handy. It’s worth noting that if you don’t have a pst file that represents your outlook file, you won’t be able to restore your mail files. So it’s important to have regular mail backups in place. In addition to using the back-up tool, I use the free and popular Gmail IMAP feature so I can access my Outlook from either the web interface or my desktop client. I blogged about it here. Redundancy is good.
Below are detailed instructions on how to use the In-Box Repair tool (from Microsoft).
Quit Microsoft Outlook if it’s running.
Run the Inbox Repair Tool
1. Click Start and point to Find, or Search, depending upon your operating system.
2. In the Search for files or folders named box, type scanpst.exe.
3. Double click the Scanpst.exe file to open the program.
4. Type the path and file name of the pst file, or click Browse to locate the file using the windows file system.
5. Click Start.
Sometimes many errors will be found and you’ll have the option to back-up your file before repairing. After the repair process (usually very fast), start Outlook again and hopefully, your file will open for you.
At the Microsoft link given above, continue reading for instructions and information on more detailed information if you need to do additional repair work on your mail file.
Outlook Tips – Customizing Views and Message Folder Count
Posted by: | CommentsI use Outlook 2007 and really like the upgraded look and what it can do for me. It can be a powerful allay in getting and keeping me organized. I have a huge book on my desk I refer to called, “Outlook 2007 Inside Out” by Jim Boyce, Beth Sheresh & Doug Sheresh. It seems a week doesn’t go by that I need to refer to it because a client has an outlook issue going on.
Most of us are comfortable with the default layout of Outlook, but there are many customizable views you can set up. For example, I have mine set up with no auto-preview, but I have a a right-side autopane view turned on. So when I’m at my in-box and have my curser on a message, I can view it on the right side. This is but one way to customize your view. Play around with it – here’s how to do it:
Go to View>current view>define views. A table will open and from there you can click and customize how your message will appear. To dig deeper in this menu path, click on the ‘modify’ button and then ‘other settings’ – from there you can set the font size for viewing your emails (make it easy on your eyes!). There are options for the reading pane, auto-preview, setting column widths, etc.
If you need to make a quick setting adjustment –say you want to quickly see all the messages you haven’t read do this: View>current view>unread messages. Other choices from here include:
Autopreview
Last 7 days
Sent to
Message timeline (this puts all your message horizontally by date – looks impressive!)
Define views – more customization features here!
How many emails do I have in this folder?
Do you want to know how many emails are contained in each of your folders? Here’s how to do it:
Right-click on the folder and go to properties. You’ll see two radio buttons – one choice is to show the number of all items in the folder. The other is to show unread items in the folder. Select one and then you will see a number next to each folder you do this to. From this screen, you can also check on folder size –you don’t want them getting too bloated.
OpenOffice
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I’ve been playing with my EEE this past week and I mentioned in last week’s blog posting that I was going to try out OpenOffice to check out its features. That kind of fell by the wayside as I was checking out the features of the computer instead! So I’ve been looking at other blogs and reading what others are saying about it. Below are a couple of places that I’ve explored and they have some great observations and comments – so check it out.
This one talks about the upcoming 3.0 release and there are quite a few comments highlighting both the pros and cons of OpenOffice v. Microsoft office. These mainly focus on the Writer app within OpenOffice.
http://www.oooninja.com/2008/03/openofficeorg-30-new-features.html
This link takes you directly to the OpenOffice site where they have links to discuss the features of all the apps. Now this is for release 1.0, (version 2.4 was just released), but I found it a great starting place to get acquainted with all the products.
OpenOffice.org vs. Google Apps
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I blogged way last summer about Microsoft Office type replacements (see May & June, 2007 posts). Back then we discussed ThinkFree and Google Apps. Now I have a reason to really look at OpenOffice.org. I just ordered the extremely small and sweet Asus EEE computer and it comes loaded with OpenOffice.org. I’m very happy to be ‘forced’ to use both Linux and OpenOffice software! Now Microsoft still has a place in my life – on my business laptop!
Version 2.4 was released just last week and offers many enhancements to make working in the OpenOffice.org environment more robust and well, more Microsoft-y! You can read the release notes here: Reading through them, it seems that if you are a pretty experienced Office user (as I am), then you may think to yourself, “well, that’s nice that they’ve added a page down feature from within the print preview menu, but I think I’d expect that”. I’m not trying to belittle the enhancements – I’m sure my perspective would be different without my Microsoft background.
Since OpenOffice.org has been around for about 20 years now, there is an extensive and comprehensive help section complete with forums and user manuals. If you’re a group, you can even talk to them about coming to train your people.
Thinking of some differences between Google and Openoffice:
- Google apps is on-line – Openoffice isn’t. Advantage OpenOffice! (footnote:Google just announced they will have a way for users to download and work on documents offline. Only for docs – not the other apps)
- There’s a lag time when opening docs on-line vs. on your hard drive. Advantage OpenOffice
- Google docs are great for uploading and sharing in real time with someone else – not OpenOffice. Advantage Google Apps
- Google docs are available to you anywhere you have an internet connection. Not so for OpenOffice (unless you have off-site storage)
Suite Features:
OpenOffice Google Apps
Writer Docs
Calc Spreadsheet
Impress Presenter
Draw (drawings, flowcharts, etc.)
Base (database program)
There are so many comparisons that could be made. It comes down to what it is YOU need. If you don’t collaborate, you probably don’t need Google Apps. If you have some old computers around and would like to be able to do some word processing or calculating, OpenOffice.org would be perfect for that. OpenOffice also has a couple more packages than Google. However, neither of them have calendaring/email built right in and all in the same place.
I’ll post more after I get my EEE computer!
Who Needs Microsoft??
Posted by: | CommentsLast week, IBM launched Lotus Symphony, yet another free office application suite of products. Symphony consists of word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software that is downloaded and resides on the user’s desktop. This is a definite advantage over Google Apps and Think Free. I like to be able to bring up a document or work on a presentation without having to be on-line. IBM’s product is fully supporting of the Open Document Format (ODF).
Existing Microsoft documents can be imported and revised with the Symphony products. Documents can be saved in other formats, including pdf. You can read about it here: http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.jspa
Feel free to take the video tour of the products. I did a partial tour of the presentation software and I could definitely feel the influence of “big blue”. The home page is spiffier than I had expected, but when I clicked into the download section, the colors were blue and IBM-ish – very buttoned down — totally different from the Google video I perused the week before! I’m not saying it’s bad or good — just different!
For you Linux users out there, there is a version of Symphony just for you – check it out! Plans are in the works to include Mac users in the future. All products are currently in beta and IBM has set up support forums, but no real support right now. I found that Ed Brill has been blogging on this regularly and you can see many user comments here: www.edbrill.com. Maybe some day IBM will add calendaring and contacts to their suite of products.
With all these choices, who needs Microsoft any more? If one of these free or low cost alternative application software companies can get some of the large corporations using these products, perhaps an impact can be made!
ibm.com/lotus/symphony
Google’s Presentation is “Suite”
Posted by: | CommentsGoogle completes its free suite of office products this week with the launch of Presentation –a product that competes with Microsoft’s popular PowerPoint software.
With this addition, Google Docs now offers, for free, a complete suite of office productivity products. All the software is web-based, nothing is downloaded to the user’s computer. As long as the user is on-line, Google products work fine.
I had to try it out. I created a new presentation, played around with the different themes, inserted different types of slides (title, bullet list, two column, etc.). A few shortcomings were that it didn’t have an option to insert a chart slide or a spreadsheet. It’s definitely a simpler product — not as many bells, whistles and options as PowerPoint, but that could be a plus for the novice user.
Presentation also allows the uploading and revision of .ppt files, so I uploaded a graphic-rich presentation and noticed quite a few slides that didn’t make the translation very well. If you have a mostly-text file, it should upload with few problems.
The feature especially touted by Google is the collaboration ability of having storage of documents on-line. If you are collaborating on a document with several people, it does alleviate the confusion of multiple versions of the same document out there. The document owner uploads the file and specifies who can access and make revisions. Google has a blog entry that announces Presentation along with a informative (and cute) video. See it here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/.
Google’s Presentation is “Suite”
Posted by: | CommentsGoogle completes its free suite of office products this week with the launch of Presentation –a product that competes with Microsoft’s popular PowerPoint software.
With this addition, Google Docs now offers, for free, a complete suite of office productivity products. All the software is web-based, nothing is downloaded to the user’s computer. As long as the user is on-line, Google products work fine.
I had to try it out. I created a new presentation, played around with the different themes, inserted different types of slides (title, bullet list, two column, etc.). A few shortcomings were that it didn’t have an option to insert a chart slide or a spreadsheet. It’s definitely a simpler product — not as many bells, whistles and options as PowerPoint, but that could be a plus for the novice user.
Presentation also allows the uploading and revision of .ppt files, so I uploaded a graphic-rich presentation and noticed quite a few slides that didn’t make the translation very well. If you have a mostly-text file, it should upload with few problems.
The feature especially touted by Google is the collaboration ability of having storage of documents on-line. If you are collaborating on a document with several people, it does alleviate the confusion of multiple versions of the same document out there. The document owner uploads the file and specifies who can access and make revisions. Google has a blog entry that announces Presentation along with a informative (and cute) video. See it here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/.
