Office 2010

Error Opening Excel 2007 and 2010 Documents in SharePoint 2010

Last night we completed a SharePoint 2010 at work and after all the testing, we deemed the upgrade a success, however coming into the office this morning, we received reports from some users that they were unable to open some of their Excel spreadsheets stored in various Document Libraries.

After some diagnosis, it turned out that the problem only effected Office 2007 and Office 2010 XML format documents and that original format Excel documents from Office 2003 and documents saved in the 2003 format were unaffected.

After initially suspecting the problem to be linked to the new Excel Services Application in SharePoint 2010, I worked to resolve the configuration of the Excel Services Application which we had left previous un-configured due to it not being required currently, however the problem persisted.

Whilst searching TechNet for the error code we were receiving I encountered a page entitled “Configure the Default Behaviour for Browser-Enabled Documents” (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee837425.aspx) which details how to manage the behaviour of SharePoint for launching web compatible documents.

SharePoint 2010 features various web-enabled services and can be configured to use Office Web Apps, which is a hosted version of the applications available via Office Live WebApps. The default behaviour for SharePoint 2010 is to attempt to launch web compatible formats using the web based application, however as this is not configured in our environment the error appeared.

The resolution to the problem was simply enabling the Site Collection Feature Open Documents in Client Applications by Default. Once enabled on the Site Collection to apply the setting to all child sites, SharePoint began prompting the users to open the file with their client side installations of Excel as per the SharePoint 2007 behaviour.

Email Addresses an Social Media

I touched briefly on this subject in my post on April 27th entitled LinkedIn Outlook Social Connector for Outlook 2010 however, as more social connectors are available for Outlook now I figured I should rehash the subject.

Of late, new social connectors for Outlook 2010 have appeared: Facebook is the biggest and is freely available, but lastly and somewhat stealthy is the release of a Windows Live Messenger connector. This connector automatically installs when you install the Beta version of Windows Live Essentials on your PC, so watch our for it.

All of these social connectors rely on two things:

  1. An account with that social network such as Facebook, LinkedIn or a Windows Live ID.
  2. Email addresses to bind to.

In point number two, what I’m getting at, is how the connectors are able to identify your peers or friends. The connectors use the email address from the persons online profile to match against the addresses used in Outlook emails to make matches and display social feeds and photos.

The problem arises when you mix personal and professional email addresses. At this moment in time, I use three email addresses, none of which I am going to hand out here because the spam clan will get hold of them, but they consist of a professional business address, my professional personal address and my personal address.

If I have a friend on Facebook called Steve, and he is registered on Facebook with his personal Hotmail address, then the social connectors in Outlook are able to associate emails from his Hotmail account with his Facebook profile because the email addresses match up. What happens though, if Steve emails me from work? The answer is that by default I get nothing – I don’t get a social match for Steve. The reason is that the connectors don’t know who that address belongs to.

There are two solutions to the problem – One requires work on the part of the people sending the message, and one requires work on the end of the person receiving the message, and I guess the outcome is a mixture of both and it also depends on personal privacy requirements.

Read more…

Upgrade to Office Live Workspaces Accounts

I got an email from Microsoft today announcing that my Office Live Workspaces account is being upgraded for free to build it around Windows Live SkyDrive and Office Web Apps.

Good news!

Your Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta account is about to become even better. You already know it’s a great way to store and share documents, and soon it will come together with Windows Live SkyDrive to become a great way to view, create, and edit documents from virtually anywhere.

In the coming months, you’ll receive notification when your Office Live Workspace account will be upgraded, along with further details. Until then, there’s no need for you to do anything.

With your SkyDrive account, you’ll get 25 GB of online storage for sharing both documents and photos. Your SkyDrive account is designed to work smoothly with other Windows Live services like Hotmail and Messenger. And you’ll be able to view and edit documents from virtually anywhere* using new Microsoft Office Web Apps.

Questions? Visit the Office Live Workspace upgrade center.

 

This is really exciting for people who use Office Live Workspaces and it means you no longer need to be on a PC with Office installed such as an Internet Cafe, and it also means the storage grows and becomes consolidated with documents on SkyDrive – Excellent.

I’m just hopeful that Live Mesh with integrate with SkyDrive meaning I can have 25GB of Live Mesh / SkyDrive / Office Live Workspace storage instead of three separate spaces.

LinkedIn Outlook Social Connector for Outlook 2010

In the Beta period I had been using Office 2010 64-bit, however after reading a Microsoft article that Microsoft are recommending people deploy 32-bit still for compatibility of add-ins etc, I decided to uninstall LinkedIn_Logo60px[1]64-bit and install the 32-bit RTM.

After installing it I decided that I would install the LinkedIn Social Connector which I saw was released previously during the Beta period (but only for 32-bit).

The idea is great, however I’ve discovered a problem with it and that is the way is associates email addresses. My primary use of Outlook in Exchange email for my corporate mail, but I also check some POP3 accounts for personal accounts. I personally use my @richardjgreen.net email address as my primary LinkedIn profile address.

My primary activity in Outlook is corporate email: I am sending and receiving email for people using business addresses – Are you seeing the problem yet?

The majority of people in my LinkedIn network use their personal address to register. When I engage in communications via email the LinkedIn Social Connector isn’t picking up these people and it’s not displaying any of their LinkedIn profile information.

There is a resolution to the problem, however I don’t think many if any people are going to have investigated this. Adding multiple email addresses to LinkedIn.

LinkedIn allows you to have multiple addresses associated with your account, so this means Outlook and the Social Connector will be able to detect you using either address (or three in my case as I added my corporate address as well as both my personal addresses).

On the LinkedIn site, select Settings in the upper right corner. and then Email Addresses from the Personal Information section within Settings. From here you can add as many addresses as you need to link your profile to all your addresses. LinkedIn will send confirmation emails to each account to verify the addition and once it’s done they will appear as Confirmed in the list.

Office 2010 WebApps Available to Everyone

Microsoft have been touting invitations to their Office 2010 WebApps for about a week now, and I was quite disappointed that I didn’t get one, namely because I get Technical Preview invitations to most things but I discovered this little flaw / opening in the system today.

Using your own Windows Live ID sign into login.live.com and then access SkyDrive using the link in the More menu. (PS: This will work with any account registered as a Windows Live ID, contrary to what other reports claim – I used my @baby-green.co.uk email address and it worked just fine).

Once you logged into SkyDrive upload a Word, Excel or PowerPoint document.

Once you have the document uploaded you’ll find a notification waiting for you asking you to join Office WebApps Technical Preview.

Just remember that during Technical Preview, only PowerPoint and Excel have editing capability. Word is view only and OneNote is currently unavailable.

In Your Face Out of Office in Outlook 2010 Technical Preview

As most people will know from various sources, I’m Out of the Office from work at the moment on paternity leave with our new baby Layla.

As an obvious result, I’ve got Automatic Replies enabled in Outlook to warn people I am Out of Office. I have Outlook open all of the time as I check my POP3 email accounts in it, but today I saw a menu appear in Outlook to warn about the Out of Office for the first time.

Outlook2010OutofOffice

This is a great step on from previous implementations of the Out of Office namely because (having fallen victim myself once or twice) it’s fairly easy to leave it on when you get back into the office and forget about it.

OneNote Mobile 2010

I’ve been a OneNote user for some time and namely with OneNote 2007 and it’s lack of Ribbon UI.
When I originally got my old O2 XDA Orbit (HTC Artemis) it came with OneNote Mobile as part of the office applications, however I was not a user at this point in time.

As time moved on and I began to use OneNote, I had upgraded the ROM on my phone which meant I no longer had OneNote.

I was left in the same situation with my Touch HD as the Windows Mobile 6.5 ROM I am using doesn’t include OneNote, however when I attached my phone via USB today so that I could flash the Radio and the ROM with fewer builds, I noticed a popup from Office 2010 which 2007 never showed.

(I have attached the phone via USB before, but it’s always been with Office 2007 installed not 2010 like now)

OneNoteMobile1

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Strikethrough Button in OneNote 2010 Ribbon

Strikethrough is something which I never used to use until I started using OneNote some time ago.

Strikethrough in OneNote is good because it means you can make lists and cross things out as you go. The trouble in OneNote 2007 was that settings and options for Font appeared in a menu on the right which wasn’t static – It would come and go as you did other things in OneNote.

Now in OneNote 2010 however, with the new Ribbon interface, Strikethrough has rightfully earnt a button on the toolbar.

Memory Usage in Outlook 2010 Technical Preview

It’s been about a day now since installing Office 2010, and this is one thing I noticed earlier today which is excellent.

In Outlook, I have two email accounts: An Exchange account connected with RPC over HTTPS and a POP3 account. I’ve got one OST file for the Exchange mailbox, one PST file where all the POP3 email goes and a PST for backing up old emails to.

Outlook 2007 used to run in the region 0f 100,000 KB to 150,000 KB according to what I was doing that day. As you will see from the screenshot below, Outlook 2010 is running as a measly 47,736 KB. That’s less than one of my Internet Explorer tabs.

Outlook2010-Memory

Excellent work Office team.

Office 2010 Technical Preview

Office 2010 Technical Preview is the latest version of the Office suite. Currently in Technical Preview and scheduled for a public Beta release in July, some sneaky people have posted some builds of it to a torrent site in particular.

 I’m not going to name the site, but most people will be able to work out from the screenshot the site I’m talking about. There are various different torrents for it on the site, however some of them have comments to suggest that there is malicious content included, as described by Microsoft themselves here:

http://blogs.technet.com/office2010/archive/2009/05/19/leaked-build-and-staying-safe.aspxRead more…