Simons SQL Blog : Office 2007

Office 2007 iFilters are now available

simonsabin — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 23:08:59 GMT

The ifilters needed to index office 2007 documents are now available for download from here

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=60C92A37-719C-4077-B5C6-CAC34F4227CC&displaylang=en

At the time of writing some of the related KB articles aren't available.

If you use full text and need to index office 2007 documents then you need these iFilters installed and registered

Office - Excel impressions and tip

simonsabin — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 20:08:38 GMT

I've been using Excel 2007 for quite a while now and am I am starting to love it. Ok so I suffered from the "Where the hell do I find option x" syndrome due to the new ribbon bar, but as I had heard before this is a short term issue, you...(read more)

First impressions of Office 2007 - Excel

simonsabin — Thu, 31 May 2007 19:08:29 GMT

I've been using Excel 2007 for about a month now and am I am strarting to love it.

Ok so I suffered from the "Where the hell do I find option x" syndrome due to the new ribbon bar, but, as I had heard before, this is a short term issue, you will eventually understand how the options are configured and be able to find things very easily.

This brings me to my first observation, the Ribbon bar. The way the ribbon bar is configured does provide a much greater surface area for items, this means that most items are only 2 clicks away. More importantly I have found many of the options I use frequently are now accessible in 1 click compared to 5 or more before. This includes, "Wrap text" , vertical text position and standard formatting.

It is obvious that the standard office toolbars haven't changed much over the years and the development of the Ribbon has been influenced by feedback from users so that the most used items are easily accessible.

The second major observation is formatting. This has taken a huge leap and is just great, especially when dealling with large sets of data, where the addition of vsiuals makes the data stand out from the page without the user having to read every value.

Whats more I am someone that used conditional formatting extensively. Previously this was stuck deep away in a menu, it is now an option directly on the ribbon and provides access to builtin formatting and also a means by which you can customise the formatting. If you've been to any demos of Office 2007 or even BI in SQL Server 2005 you will have seen the data bars, color scales and icon sets.

Finally functions, I haven't looked at depth into what new functions are available I just know that 2 that have appeared are COUNTIFS and SUMIFS. These allow you to specify multiple criteria for suming and counting a range.

EXCEL 7 hangs when using pivot tables and other external data sources

simonsabin — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 12:52:24 GMT

I have found Excel hanging a lot when doing something with pivot tables or external data sources. This happended today and so I killed Excel on doing so the application error reporting kicked in, I reported the error and was taken to a KB article about the "Information Bridge Framework" and that it doesn't work with .Net 2.0 and Office 2007.

I guess the "Information Bridge" is used for exchanging data between applications, in which case most people using Excel and the data components will be using it.

Suprisingly its requires a hotfix that you need to get hold of from MS support. Whats the quickest way to get a hotfix?

Word 2007 double spacing - how to have normal spacing

simonsabin — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 23:35:27 GMT

The biggest thing that has bugged me about Office 2007 was that with Word when you type and press entre you end up with a double line space between the paragraphs. I've hunted up and down how to change this behaviour but just couldn't find it.

On a seperate not I have a HTML editing control from writing these blog posts. This has the same behaviour because it puts <P> in rather than just <BR>. I learnt recently that to get a line feed in the HTML control I just have to use SHIFT+ENTER. that worked wonders.

Today I got annoyed again at Word and the light bulb went on in my head. You're probably there already. Yes in Word to get a normal space after a paragraph you need to use SHIFT + ENTER.

Simple heh! Still slightly annoying. If someone knows how to make it behave like before it would still be appreciated.

Excel 2007 Functions

simonsabin — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 18:18:38 GMT

One of the great aspects of the Excel 2007 is the new functions. I have used COUNTIF and SUMIF numerous times and often found I wanted to do multiple criteria, i.e. sum if revenue is for this month and for this store. To achieve this before 2007 you had to jump throuhg numerous hoops and it all became very complex.

The great news is that SUMIF and COUNTIF functions have been extended to take more than one criteria. These are implemented using SUMIFS and COUNTIFS. These both can take up to 256 criteria (more than I can imagine anyone ever needing).

You can now produce very complex summary sheets very easily.

Outlook 2007 Nice touch

simonsabin — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 09:10:56 GMT

One thing that always bugged me was that reminders set on emails didn't appear with the tasks I had set up.

Well in Outlook 2007 they have not got a To-Do list which incorporates all the tasks and emails with reminders in one view.

As I've previously mentioned I also really like the third side bar which includes the to-do list not just the task list. What I would like to do is for that to be a filtered list. Because I sync with my phone I don't want my personal tasks appearing in the list, I only want my work tasks.

Office 2007 - First thoughts

simonsabin — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 08:20:57 GMT

I've finally taken the plunge and installed Office 2007 and thought I would blog my first thoughts (I still have Office 2003 just in case)

As always with a new version there are some things that you think "thats neat". An example is the 3 column view in Outlook that provides task and calendar summary whilst in the mail section. I know something similar was in outlook today but that was useless as I never went to Outlook Today.

"Where the hell is the File menu?". As has been said many times before the Ribbon experience takes a little getting used to. But I do believe the hype that after a few days of floundering productivity should resume. I can see real benefit in the ribbon when designing/formatting documents in Word, Excel and Powerpoint. What previously would require a number of clicks through different menus and dialogs can now be donw very easily and generally with auto preview.

Thats all for now.

The 2007 Microsoft Office system does not support upgrading from a prerelease version of the 2007 Microsoft Office system

simonsabin — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 22:11:31 GMT

I've just come across this when trying to install Office 2007. The Office 2007 readme says this is a known issue due to having Office Web Components (OWC) installed. I have scoured by system for installs of OWC and removed all of them and still I get the problem.

I did a google when I got back home and found a blog entry by Scott Hansleman http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Office2007WontUpgradeFromAPrereleaseVersionOfThe2007OfficeSystemOffice2007SetupSpelunking.aspx

He got round it by using MyUnInst from Nirsoft but the later mentioned Expression Beta.

Well I had Expression Beta installed and went for that and Office is now happily installing.