Default programs

I noticed something the other day and made a note to try and figure out when it started, and may be why. Basically, I figured out that around the time of the last patch Tuesday, which included a number of Office 2003 patches, the default program associated with all the Office file types (.doc, .xls, etc.) switched from the 2007 version of the software to to 2003 versions.

I'm assuming the patches ran enough of the Office 2003 installer along with them to cause that, because running a repair of Office 2007 beta switched them right back.


posted 11:15 PM | 0 comments | Links to this post

Sharing the knowledge

I first saw this at Marc Orchant's, links to Microsoft's Interactive "command reference guides", basically showing you where the commands in Office 2003 are located in 2007. He has links to guides for Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.

The Office Pioneer points out that while the preview attachment in Outlook is very cool, as I've talked about before, the fact that you can't copy and paste from that preview lessens to usability of it.

Lastly, Steven Vore points us to an article about how to minize the ribbon, and talks about how it seems much more menu like.


posted 10:07 PM | 0 comments | Links to this post

Back to my low expectations

When I wrote that the fact that IE7 and Outlook 2007 shared the data source for RSS feeds, and adding a feed in one would create a folder in the other to view the feed was cool, I was assuming it worked. Maybe in Vista it works, but in my experience with Windows XP it doesn't work at all like the documentation says it should. For example, Outlook's RSS information says this:

Whenever you see , or a similar icon, click that icon. Outlook 2007 will automatically subscribe you to that feed.

That's not at all my experience. First, when I go to the RSS Feeds folder, the page with the "sample feeds" doesn't work. All of those RSS icons point to the same page that doesn't exist (http://officebeta.iponet.net/client/). When I finally found the correct page there and click the RSS icon, it didn't subscribe me to the feed, quite the contrary. It proceeded to open the feed in IE7. Once that page opened I was offered the option, in IE, to subscribe to the feed. So I did.

Again, the official documentation then says:

When you use Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and Office Outlook 2007, you can add RSS Feeds from either program as well as view the feeds in either program.

I was prompted to save it to a "feeds" folder. That added it to my IE feeds. When I'm in IE and use the show feeds option, sure enough there it is. Nothing has changed at all in Outlook.

Something isn't working correctly. I don't know what it is.

Update: I found that I could use the Import/Export function to import the feeds from the system feeds list, which is where IE apparently saves them. That explains why nothing showed up in Outlook, but it's not exactly the promise of "subscribe in IE or Outlook and read them in either" is it?


posted 9:02 PM | 0 comments | Links to this post

Paul Thurrott's review

Paul has gotten back to writing his Office 2007 Beta reviews, part 2a about Word and part 2b about Outlook. They make for quite interesting reading. Paul has obviously spent a lot more time in Office 2007 than I've been able to and reading it taught me a few things about it that I wasn't even aware of.

For example, it didn't even occur to me that IE7 and Outlook 2007 would share the same data store for RSS feeds and that anything you subscribed to in one would be available in the other. That's a really good idea, one that never even occurred to me before. I'm not sure if that says something about my lack of imagination, or my low expecations when it comes to Microsoft and RSS, or both. :)

Anyway, go read the whole thing, there's a whole lot more! (First seen at Search.Subscribe.Share)


posted 9:32 PM | 0 comments | Links to this post