Learning Office 2007

I’m always learning when it comes to the office suite. I consider myself a bit of an office power user but i’m always picking up new things it can do.

The single phrase i hear time and time again when i’m doing something in office and someone is watching is

“I didn’t know you could do that”

It’s usually just little things like being able to hide the ribbon (Ctrl+F1 helps here) or customising the quick access toolbar

So i noticed a couple of office demos appearing on the microsoft download site recently. Only a few to start with then a couple of days a go it threw up a ton of them. They are a series of videos that walk you through how to do specific tasks in Office 2007. Nothing too complex but knowledge is power and once users become more confident they’ll use more of the software

The links are below and i’ve categorised them to make it easier.

If you have a customer who is getting to grips with office you could download them all and stick them in a file share or on a sharepoint site 

If you’ve never used OneNote i’d recommened watching those

Note. The downloads are .exe files which you have to extract to get at the videos. Not a big deal but just an extra step you have to deal with

Office

Office 2007 Demo: Spice Up Your Text With SmartArt Graphics

2007 Office System Demo: Enable blocked macros

2007 Office System Demo: Apply Your Brand to Office Documents with Themes

Windows Vista and the 2007 Office System Demo: Better Together

Excel

Excel 2007 Demo: Analyze product sales with a PivotTable report

Excel 2007 Demo: Freeze or unfreeze rows and columns

Excel 2007 Demo: Hide or unhide rows and columns

Excel 2007 Demo: Data Takes Shape with Conditional Formatting

Excel 2007 Demo: Create Charts in Excel 2007

Word

Word 2007 Demo: Word 2007 — Work with Documents Created in Earlier Versions

Word 2007 Demo: Make Documents Look Great

Word 2007 Demo: Up to Speed with Word 2007

Word 2007 Demo (set of 2): Let Word manage your table of contents

Word 2007 Demo (set of 4): Create a set of labels with mail merge

Outlook 

Outlook 2007 Demo: Create and use an e-mail signature

Outlook 2007 Demo: Customize your calendar

OneNote

OneNote 2007 Demo: What is OneNote?

OneNote 2007 Demo: Organize, Search, and Find Information in a OneNote Notebook

OneNote 2007 Demo: Keep It Together with OneNote 2007

InfoPath

InfoPath 2007 Demo: View the Business Logic in an InfoPath 2007 Form Template

InfoPath 2007 Demo: Create reusable template parts

Sharepoint

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Demo: Tour a Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Site

Forms Server 2007 Demo: Deploy an Administrator-Approved Form Template

SharePoint Server 2007 Demo: Add a Library to a Records Center Site

Powerpoint

PowerPoint 2007 Demo: Up to Speed with PowerPoint 2007

PowerPoint 2007 Demo: Add animation and sound to text and objects

Project 2007 Demo: Add, hide, and show columns

Project

Publisher

Publisher 2007 Demo: Personalize Newsletters with E-Mail Merge

Visio

Visio 2007 Demo: Get a New Perspective on Data with PivotDiagrams

Visio 2007 Demo: Give Your Diagram a Makeover by Applying a Theme

Visio 2007 Demo: Build Your Visio Flowchart in No Time with AutoConnect

Visio 2007 Demo: Let Data Tell Its Story with Data Graphics

Access

Access 2007 Demo: Meet the Navigation Pane

That’s so 2007

2007 saw a lot of new trends come to the fore. However, with so many new and exciting ideas its difficult to figure out what’s useful

I was catching up on some reading and saw Steve Clayton’s post entitled “What is a blog?” which links to a rather cool video explaining what a blog is in plain english

The video was created by CommonCraft and they have some other really useful videos explaining other concepts

Some of the others i really liked, (this is my first attempt at embedding video so if your reading this via the feed and can’t see them jump onto the actual page)

Social Bookmarking in plain english – (think del.icio.us)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x66lV7GOcNU]

Social Networking in plain english (think facebook)

[youtube=http://www,youtube.com/watch?v=6a_KF7TYKVc]

and wikis in plain english (e.g wikipedia ,a sharepoint v.3 wiki, pbwiki, etc)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY]

Simple concepts made easier…YAY!

Whose the dummy now?

I’ve got a confession to make

I’ve always looked “down my nose” at the for dummies series of books

I judged the book by it’s cover and decided i wouldn’t learn anything from them without actually taking a proper look at the content

How wrong was i……

After my post last week that talked about giving up what was left in the developer part of me i went home and had a cry (not really but i’m going for dramatic effect) then remembered a post i’d seen called “How to learn any subject in seven days”

The basic idea is that you buy two books

The for dummies version and then something else that is a little more comprehensive

The first book eases you into it and gives you enough knowledge to get going where you can then move onto the more detailed reference when your comfortable with the basics

I’ve actually tried to get into Visual Basic .Net several times but struggled with some concepts that are probably quite simple but i’d got the whole VB6 thing going on in my head (what do mean Using System.Web ?)

So I went to Amazon and got these two

Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition for Dummies

Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition for Dummies

Last night i installed Visual Web Developer and hit the first five chapters and it all fell into place

While i wont be coding the next ShockeyMonkey anytime soon i’ve made a start and i’ve got loads of ideas that i’m looking forward to trying out

I do sometimes struggle to find books that are pitched at the right level but this experience has given me a broader view

for dummies….i’m sorry, can we be friends?