Office 2010 is due to release to the public sometime around June. Each time Office comes out with a new version they change up the suite options that are available. With 2010 they have some very decently priced packages for home, family, and home-based office.

Here’s those 3 user versions:

SKU                                                        Included applications                                                   Boxed Price

Home and Student                          Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote                             $149

Home and Business                       Same as above plus Outlook                                               $279

Professional                                      Same as above plus Access and Publisher                     $499

Pricing so decent it’s worth considering buying for your home system. Even more so as the Home and Student version will be available in a Family Pack which allows the product to be used on up to 3 PC’s. Haven’t seen any pricing on that yet though and whether like the Windows 7 Family Pack it will be offered for a limited time only.

Office 2010 will also have a 64-bit version.

When you’re composing an email that includes hyperlinks for either websites or file locations it’s nice to have the visual clue of the hyperlink look like a link before you send the email. You know, the text underlined and highlighted in blue. You want the recipient to be able to see the link so they know they need to click on it so it takes them to a specific location.

Windows 7 does some frustrating things with links as you create messages. When you add links they’ll look like plain text.  Although once you send your message the link will look like a link to the mail recipient. But I want my message to look the exactly the same as I’m composing it as it will when the recipient gets it.

Here’s how to get the link autoformatting back in Windows 7 with Office 2007. Warm up your left-mouse button clicking finger because it’s going to get a workout when we navigate to where the autoformat options are located:

from the Outlook menu bar select Tools

from the Tools menu select Options

click on the Mail Format tab

click on the Editor Options button

from the left menu pane select Proofing

in the right menu pane click on the AutoCorrect Options button

click on the AutoFormat tab

in the Replace section check the box Internet and network paths with hyperlinks

click on the AutoFormat As You Type tab

in the Replace as you type section check the box Internet and network paths with hyperlinks

click OK on menus until you’ve exited to the main Outlook screen

Close Outlook to save the settings. The next time you create an email and type a hyperlink it’ll look like one before you send it.

Ow! I need an ice pack, Absorbine Jr, and workers comp for carpal tunnel after all that.

 A tip that’s not exactly going to increase work efficiency but for some people eye’s perhaps a different gridline color will make it easier to see cells in a worksheet.

By default the gridline colors in Excel are set to gray but with Excel 2007 you don’t have to stick with that hue. You have 56 tints to pick from for your gridline. It’s a global setting and affects any spreadsheet you open and every new spreadsheet will display the color you’ve chosen. It’s not a saved setting that follows the spreadsheet so if someone opens your document in their Excel the gridlines will display in the color set in their Excel Options.

To change the gridline color:

Click on the Office button (upper left corner of Excel window)

click on Excel Options button (bottom of Office drop-down menu)

When the Excel Options window opens click on Advanced from the left menu pane

scroll down in the right menu pane until you find the section Display options for this worksheet

Make sure Show gridlines is checked

click in the icon next to Gridline color and pick a color

click on OK

If you don’t care for the color you’ve picked you can go back through the steps above and change the gridline color to Automatic. Automatic will default to the gray.

If you’re doing some gift purchases online this Christmas season here’s some tips to keep in mind to keep your shopping experience and personal info safe:

At checkout make sure the site is secure:

While adding items to your cart the site may not be secure but when you’re ready to enter your personal info and credit card # the site address should start with https://

Secondly you should also see a padlock in the bottom status bar of your browser.

The https and padlock indicate your transaction is being processed on a secure server.

Read the sites security and privacy policy. Some sites might still be processing from an https but not encrypt their data (encryption is a security measure that scrambles data as it goes over the Internet).

Every reputable e-commerce site will tell you how it processes your order.

If you don’t see either the https or the padlock or the site doesn’t encrypt their data don’t give them your personal info and shop elsewhere!

Use a credit card vs. a debit card or use a temporary/onetime use number:

With a credit card if your card gets compromised you’re only liable for only a certain amount as determined by your credit card agreement.

You can dispute charges on a credit card.

Not so with a debit card. And you are liable for any unauthorized charges to the debit card.

Consider getting a temporary or virtual credit card number. For example Bank of America has a service called ShopSafe that generates an expiring credit card number that can be used with one online merchant.

Or purchase a Visa/MasterCard/American Express gift card and use it for the online buys. The gift cards enjoy the same protection service that credit cards do.

Know the online store:

Check for seals of approval on sites such as the Better Business Bureau.

If your shopping at a site you haven’t ordered from before check the BBB first and see if there have been a number of complaints registered against that business.

Consider only shopping from sites you’ve ordered from before and/or at major retailers.

How secure is the system you’re making the transaction from?

Are you using a trusted computer?

Does this computer get regular program updates including the browser?

Is antivirus installed and updated?

If your shopping from great Aunt Hortense’s computer that is running Windows 95, 98 or ME stop shopping and wait to get to a computer running Windows XP, Vista or 7.

For more in-depth tips for safe online shopping visit Privacy Rights Clearinghouse .

Lastly if you just don’t trust online shopping follow today’s daily calendar advice of You might be a Redneck if …The only plastic in your wallet is the wallet itself

Say you have an email that you’re expecting a reply on and it’s a message that needs to be acted upon once it arrives. However you might be away and not able to respond. Sure you can have IT setup your Inbox so that all of your messages are delivered to someone else’s Inbox but it’s a bit of process to setup. Plus you and IT have to remember to undo all the steps that was done just to watch for a particular message out of all that you get.

There is an easier way to direct specific email replies to someone else and you don’t have to involve IT. Not that we mind, but the below method is more efficient for redirecting replies to other people for specific messages and you’re the one in control.

You have a new message composed:

From the Ribbon click on the Options tab

Click on Direct Replies to

The Message Options window appears

In the Delivery Options section check the box Have replies sent to:

Enter the email address that you want to receive any replies to this message (if the person is in the Outlook Address book you just need to enter their name)

Click on Close

Send your message

The person receiving your message sees that it is from you but when they hit reply the person you designated in the Have replies sent to option will be in the To: field of the Reply email.

That’s it! Once you’ve setup the reply for that message there’s nothing you have to do to turn the option off. It’s a one-time setup for the one-time message. So if you have several emails that you want to redirect to different people you would repeat the above steps within each email before you hit Send. 

Also the message you are composing can be to any email address, you’re not restricted to just having the Direct Replies options available for just our company eamil address. The same applies in the address you have your replies sent to.

It’s very easy in Word to open two documents and have them open in their own separate windows so that you can view them side by side. Of if you have multiple monitors you can have a different file open on each screen. So you would think that opening two different files in Excel the spreadsheets would behave the same. But no-o-o-o-o!

You’ll notice when you open spreadsheets in Excel you can view only one at a time. Although within Excel you can:

 click on the View tab

click on View Side By Side

select an open spreadsheet you want to view in addition to your active spreadsheet

click on Reset Windows Position

Your two spreadsheets will display in the one Excel window. Notice that if you only have one spreadsheet open the View Side by Side option is grayed out, you need at least 2 spreadsheets open in order to activate View Side by Side.

You could also resize your Excel window so that it spreads across both monitors and then click on View Side by Side but I found that just kind of weird to work in. I want two separate windows of Excel open so that I can manipulate each window the way I want, dabnabbit! So with the help of my search friends, Google and Bing, we found this little trick to get two Excel screens open at the same time:

have an instance of Excel already open

now from your Start menu find Excel

hold down the CTL key and click on Excel

Another instance of Excel opens that you can drag around and resize either alongside your first Excel instance or to another monitor screen. Yessssssssssss!

So you have a cell where you want to enter multiple lines of text. Say you want each line of text to be on it’s own line in the cell. You can’t just hit Enter as you would in Word because hitting Enter in Excel jumps you into a new cell instead of jumping to the next line.

You could enter a bunch of spaces until your text wraps to a new line but that’s just sloppy Excelness and results when printing might be different than what you see on the screen. Here’s what you do instead to get a new line in the cell:

Press Alt-Enter

That’s it! To quote Nigel Powers, Austin Powers super-suave spy father: “Easy-peasy, lemon-squeasy”.

So you dashed out of the office in a hurry are going to be away for a period of time and Dang it! you realize you forgot to setup your Out-of-Office reply in Outlook. Guess what? You don’t need to use Outlook to setup an Out-of-Office response. So don’t fret about having to return to the office to just to use Outlook or contacting Help Desk to set it up for you. By the way for the remainder of this blog post Out-of-Office Assistant or reply will be known as “OOF”. So much easier to type.

Most of you access your email from home computers using webmail aka Outlook Web Access aka OWA. Did you know that OWA has an OOF feature? It’s super easy to find:

Open an OWA session

From the top right corner of your OWA session click on Options

 The Options menu appears in a menu pane on the left side of the OWA session 

Click on Out of Office Assistant

Configure your reply and the select the Send Out of Office replies. You can also set a time frame for the reply to be active.

Click on Save

Your OOF reply is now on.

 Some additional points to remember:

The OOF is available in OWA no matter what web browser you are using (Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc.)

The OOF you configure in OWA will sync to your Outlook and vice versa.

Not everyone has the ability to turn on OOF’s to external email addresses. So some of you may only have the ability to have OOF’s sent to people with a smp email address.

Here’s how to share your Outlook calendar with another employee and change the permission share so that the user can makes changes, additions and deletions to your meetings and appointments.

Open your  Calendar

From the menu pane click on Share my calendar (shown highlighted in yellow)

When the Sharing Invitation appears enter the users name in the To: field. If you’d like you can type a message in the invitation body.

Click on Send

A confirmation pop-will appear showing who you are sharing your calendar with, if the info is correct click on Yes.

Another confirmation pop-up appears with the message Your calendar has been shared.

The user will get an email with a button link to open your calendar. When they do that your calendar is added to their list of calendars that they can add or remove at will from their calendar view.

 By default the person only gets read rights to your calendar. If you want the person to be able to add, modify and delete items on your calendar continue to the following steps.

From the My Calendars section right-click your calendar and select Change Sharing Permissions

Select the user you shared your calendar with.

In the Permissions area there are 4 fields: Read, Write, Delete Items, Other.  You’ll probably just need to make changes in the Write and Delete Items field:

If you just want your user to be able to add items to your calendar you’ll need check the Create Items box in the Write group.

If you want the shared user to be able to delete anything on your calendar check either Own or All.

Own means they’ll only be able to delete items they created.

All means they can delete anything.

By default when you share your calendar the Full Details options is selected. This means that all information about your meetings, even ones marked private, are viewable to your shared users. If you want any details of your meetings kept hidden you’ll need to select one of other options: Free/Busy time or Free/Busy time, subject, location (any text in the body of the meeting won’t be visible).

Once you have made the permissions changes click on OK. The user won’t get any notification that their permission levels have change for access to your calendar.