Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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Besides giving me a good excuse to go to Vegas, the Consumer Electronics Show has replaced COMDEX as the place to hobnob and see the latest and greatest in gadgetry.

Since most gadgetry these days involves software and in many cases some kind of productivity, there is a relevance for MS Office users.

In fact Microsoft's presence at the show, which is usually mainly Xbox and game related, was also about Vista and Office, and some new products.

The rest of the stuff I saw will probably appeal mostly to presenters and PowerPoint users, although having a tiny full featured Windows computer, for example, would be a boon for any road warrior who is tired of lugging a laptop around.

Office Accounting Express and Pro 2007

Taking a step beyond its old Money program, Microsoft now has two new accounting packages that are part of MS Office going forward.

You can try the free version of the Express product (no limit on how long it lasts) at http://www.ideawins.com.

The Pro versions for mature and growing small businesses of up to 25 employees will be available for $149 at the end of January.

Among the integrated online services available with the products are eBay, PayPal, Equifax, ADP Payroll Solutions, Microsoft Office LIVE and various other online banking and credit card processing services.

Both levels of the product boast basic and advanced accounting features and trying the Express version, for free, certainly can't hurt.

Office Accounting Express 2007 has been designed to work smoothly with other Microsoft Office system programs. Its integration with Word enables you to customize any documents like quotes and invoices by using existing or new templates. You can then use e-mail to send these invoices to your customers by using Office Outlook 2007.

The integration with Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager helps ensure that all financial and marketing information is available centrally, and changes made in any one program automatically show up in the other. Furthermore, Outlook users can view financial information from within Outlook, use Outlook to create invoices, submit timesheets from Outlook, and track time in the Outlook calendar.

Reports for business insight can be created in Office Accounting Express 2007 and then exported to Excel, with its rich formatting, for deeper analysis and calculations. The analysis pack included with Office Accounting Express 2007 enables viewing financial data in Excel, PivotTable reports, and Microsoft Office Access reports.

DocuPen Pen Scanner (with Word)

Among the cool gadgets that were shown on or off the show floor, the portable pen scanner from DocuPen intrigues me because it is a great way to bring the product of research, electronically, into your office products.

I would think that students or attorneys who need to trek to a library for various tasks will find it extremely convenient to store pictures and/or text that they grab through this portable device and eventually download it to their PC or laptop, and incorporate it into Word documents, PowerPoint presentations or other files.

Mimio Whiteboard Capture

Another product that intrigues me is a small capture device offered by Mimio, the whiteboard manufacturers. Larger electronic whiteboards are popular in schools and some businesses and integrate with PowerPoint in storing drawings that you might otherwise put on a flip chart.

The Capture device turns any ordinary whiteboard (purchased at Office Depot for as little as twenty bucks) into an electronic version. This means, for example, that by attaching one of these to an ordinary laptop you could use a small whiteboard as a sort of Tablet PC, and the ink program with the Mimio products also does OCR, so that it can convert some scribbles to text as well as taking electronic snapshots.

The Mimio products are very hot in academia, but again I think that any presenter who wants to make his or her show interactive, or highlight important issues (like testimony for legal situations), can use one of the Mimio products effectively in a boardroom or in a courtroom.

Webaroo — Cached Search for Presentations

I also saw an interesting product for those who might need to supplement conventional PowerPoint presentations with online search.

I have always counseled presenters not to count on a network connection during presentations and instead to save pages locally before linking to them from PowerPoint slides.

Webaroo is for presenters who need a wealth of online content during presentations and may also need to locate specific pages quickly offline.

Webaroo is a free software program and service that lets you search and browse real web pages without a connection. Webaroo’s advanced technology makes it simple for you to take the web with you and find what you are looking for anywhere, anytime. Webaroo stores searchable web content on your laptop, PDA or smart phone. Searches run and pages load instantly at memory speed. To keep content fresh, your Webaroo content is updated every time you sync with the server.

OQO Model 02 Portable PC

I have never been a big fan of Windows Mobile, although I intend to review its interoperability on Smart Phones with Microsoft Office in an update. I prefer to use small laptops, and the company that blows my mind every year with a better model is OQO with a full featured Windows (yes, even Vista very soon) computer that measures 5.6" x 3.3" x 1" and weighs under a pound with a standard battery.

A table PC edition is also available, but it can come with a pull out keyboard and it has a very cool docking station option as well. For PowerPoint presenters, it has an HDMI output which means that it can connect directly to the newest and sharpest LCD HD displays from a unit that fits into the palm of your hand.

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