Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

trio of what appear to be new, yet-to-be-patched flaws in Microsoft Office has surfaced, according to security researchers at McAfee. The vulnerabilities were reported in online security forums on Monday, according to a posting on the McAfee Avert Labs blog on Tuesday.

All but one of the flaws results in denial of service, meaning the application would crash, according to the blog post. “There is one heap-overflow flaw that might be exploited for code execution,” Karthik Raman, a McAfee researcher wrote on the blog on Tuesday. Typically such flaws are exploited by tricking a targeted victim into opening a rigged Office document.

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Tags: office

Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

Office 2007’s ribbon might make life simpler for those who have never used a computer before, but this big-button approach leaves some more experienced users with a touch of agita. The UI makes some features less visible and functional than before (for example, Styles in Microsoft Word), puts others several clicks farther away (such as E-mail), and makes certain features hard to use simultaneously even though they’re likely to be used together (such as Formatting and Reviewing).

Fortunately, the Quick Access Toolbar is insanely easy to customize. It starts with a click on the Down arrow at the right end of the Quick Access Toolbar itself.

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Tags: office

Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

Microsoft has started private testing of the next version of Office for the Macintosh, which is due out in the second half of the year. Office 2008 for Mac, as the product is known, helps bring the desktop suite back into compatibility with two key technologies.

First, the product is the first version of Office that runs natively on both Intel- and Power PC-based Macs. The new software also adds support for the XML file formats that Microsoft added to the Windows version of Office–Office 2007, which hit store shelves in January.

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Tags: mac, office, windows

Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

Microsoft Outlook has a vast base of users. There are some who love it, some who hate it but have to use it because it’s the cornerstone of their office’s information system, and some who are more or less indifferent. Outlook is a personal information manager (PIM) comprised of three major functions: e-mail, contact management, and scheduling. As it turns out, Windows Vista comes with all three of these PIM tricks built in to the OS. This raises a question: If you upgrade to Vista, do you need Outlook?

With years of hardcore Outlook dependence under our belts, we explored the possibilities. Having spent considerable time with Windows Vista sans Outlook, we can honestly say that it’s possible to live without the Microsoft Office PIM, but your success will vary based on what you actually need out of your information management software.

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Tags: office, software, vista, windows

Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

Microsoft Outlook has a vast base of users. There are some who love it, some who hate it but have to use it because it’s the cornerstone of their office’s information system, and some who are more or less indifferent. Outlook is a personal information manager (PIM) comprised of three major functions: e-mail, contact management, and scheduling. As it turns out, Windows Vista comes with all three of these PIM tricks built in to the OS. This raises a question: If you upgrade to Vista, do you need Outlook?

With years of hardcore Outlook dependence under our belts, we explored the possibilities. Having spent considerable time with Windows Vista sans Outlook, we can honestly say that it’s possible to live without the Microsoft Office PIM, but your success will vary based on what you actually need out of your information management software.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: office, vista, windows

Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

When I write a column, I almost never feel I have had enough time using the product under review. Even in the rare instance in which deadlines aren’t bearing down, I often realize later on that I’ve missed a fair amount. In the case of Microsoft’s Windows Vista, flaws that I thought would grow less annoying with extended use have actually become more troublesome.

Most of the time I spent testing Vista was with sluggish pre-release versions. I expected things to improve when I ran the finished software on PCs configured for the new Windows version. I now realize that Vista really is slow unless you throw a lot of hardware at it. Microsoft (MSFT) claims it will run with 512 megabytes of memory. I had recommended a minimum of a gigabyte, but 2 GB is more like it if you want snappy performance.

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Tags: office, software, vista, windows

Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

Excel’s PivotTable feature can handle this request, but you have to invoke it with an uncommon setting called Multiple Consolidation Ranges. This is only the second time I’ve needed that particular setting. First, let’s get all the required data into a single consolidation workbook. Rather than make copies, we’ll create links to the original data. Create a new workbook and insert a worksheet for each of the workbooks you want to consolidate. Click one worksheet tab, then Ctrl-Click the rest to select them all. Enter “Item” in cell A1 and “Source” in cell B1. Because the tabs are all selected, these entries will appear in every worksheet. Click a single tab to end the multiple selection.

Open the first of the source workbooks and highlight just the list of items. Copy it to the clipboard. Switch to the consolidation workbook and click in cell A2 of the corresponding worksheet.

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Tags: office

Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

Now that the Copyright Office has given a green light to unlock your GSM or iDen phone, you can save money on a new phone – provided you can find it unlocked, or unlock it yourself. Depending on your phone, you might be able to do that by punching in a code, by buying a cable, or by sending it to a professional unlocking service. This applies to Cingular, T-Mobile and Nextel phones; Sprint, Verizon and Alltel subscribers are out of luck, for reasons I’ll explain below.

If you’ve had a T-Mobile phone for 90 days, or you’ve run out of time on a Cingular contract, you can get an unlocking code just by calling your carrier. Tell your carrier’s customer service representative that you’re traveling abroad and want to use a foreign carrier’s SIM card. If they don’t give you the code, stick by your guns and ask for a manager.

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Tags: hardware, office

Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

Access 2007 has introduced 25 new AutoFormat themes to be used on forms and reports. AutoFormat themes can be used to give your applications and/or reports a more professional look and feel with little effort on your part. To utilize AutoFormat themes…

1. Open a Form or Report.
2. While in the Form designer (or Report designer), select the Format tab.
3. Click AutoFormat and select a theme.
4. AutoPreview will allow to see how your form (or report) will look with the applied theme.
5. After you have applied the theme you desire, save the form (or report).
info:http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2098/access_2007_autoformat_themes

Tags: office

Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

Trendlines are useful for revealing patterns or trends in your data. They are mostly used in XY scatter charts but are also useful in line, area, and bar charts. charts. To add a trendline to your chart, follow these instructions…

1. Select the chart.
2. Select the series you wish to use to create the trendline.
3. Go to Chart Tools, select the Layout tab and click Trendlines.
4. Select the type of relationship you are expecting the data to reveal, your choices are Linear, Exponential, Linear Forecast, or Two Period Moving Average. You can also select More Trendline Options to reveal even more types.
5. Right-click the newly created trendline and select Format Trendline. Use the Line Color, Line Style and Shadow sections to modify the look of the trendline.
6. Click Close.

info:http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2097/excel_2007_how_to_add_trendline_chart

Tags: office