Backup Your Daughters, Office 2007 SP2 Update Coming Soon...

[Kilmatead]

(As much as it galls, pains, catches-in-my-throat to actually post a potentially useful/practical message, here goes...)

For those who use Office 2007 (especially Outlook Office edition) the 2nd Office Service Pack is due out on Apr 28th (via auto-update, or download).

I mention this as it contains changes to:

   * Performance in startup, shutdown, view rendering, and folder switch has been improved.

   * Calendar updates, search, and RSS are more reliable.

   * The object model has been improved.

All of which means that those who have ever enjoyed the schizophrenic nature of Outlook's attitude to e-mail (or MS's attitude to SP's in general) may consider backing up their .pst files (or the whole system via an image) before this is released.  Sometimes these things install painlessly... other times... well... (when Microsoft uses the word 'improved', it usually means "bugged in a whole different fashion").

And, just for real fun, to really stir the broth, Vista SP2 is also due soon (it's been out in public beta for awhile now)...

Not that I'm cynical, or anything.  :roll:

Postscriptum: I've plugged it before, but now is a good time to mention True Image again... probably the single most useful 3rd party application (after the obligatory x2, of course, ) I have seen.  Just a thought.

[Kilmatead]

Actually, while I'm at it, for those who keep Outlook running in the background full time, and find it a pain not to be able to Close to Tray, I found this...

As anyone who has ever done a Google search about it will know, you'll end up with lots of people saying "I have no idea how to do this, sorry."

Or, worse yet, you'll be directed to a particular plug-in that the creator seems to think is worth a lot more money than it is.

This is to "close to tray" (i.e., using the X button) not just "minimizing to tray" which is configurable within Outlook itself.

I was quite pleased to discover this awkwardly named Outlook Shutdown Minimizer free extension for Outlook.

The link on your man's site provides the source-code (for those interested) and a simple installer (for those who aren't). You'll have to dig around in the .zip a bit to find it.

Strangely for it to work, Outlook seems to need to be minimized at least once before this kicks in, but for those who start Outlook minimized with Windows in the first place, that's automatic anyway.

[fgagnon]

I also cannot emphasize enough the value of making regular backups ... or rather the value of having a backup from which to recover lost data when you need to.

Many years ago I used a highly-regarded (but free) Acronis product for backup.  Alas, when it came to recovery, I couldn't get it to work when I needed it to.  Hopefully the current True Image is easier to use.  

Currently, I use an extremely easy-to-use and easy-to-recover-with product from StorageCraft: ShadowProtect Desktop  (PC-Mag review here).  It is not free; but has been worth its cost many times over.  It has saved me twice, with no fuss.  Once with a "bare-metal" recovery and another time with more prosaic data recovery from a 'mounted' image.  And it will be a third "save" in another few weeks after I get back a repaired (or replacement) desktop from Acer repair.  No re-installation of app's required: just set it to recover the image, and come back later to a completely restored machine.  [This, of course is for hardware failure recovery, or deleted by mistake beyond the 'recycle bin'.  For bad software, one must uninstall, or roll the system back to prior to installing the broken app.]

[Kilmatead]

Many years ago I used a highly-regarded (but free) Acronis product for backup.  Alas, when it came to recovery, I couldn't get it to work when I needed it to.  Hopefully the current True Image is easier to use.

Having used Acronis for a few years now, I've always found it faultless, but you're right: one of the first things anyone should do with any backup product is to do a "test" full image, then restore it to a spare drive to ensure that it works and that you understand clearly how to do a recovery.  Rather like going to the dentist before you actually have to, tends to hurt less in the long run.

Just to toot Acronis' horn a bit more, one of the most useful things about it is what they call "Try & Decide" mode... this is not a free trial (like it sounds), but an instant, persistent virtual environment which lets you install whatever you like to test, and if you don't like it (or it proves insidiously invasive), you can just re-boot and it's instantly gone - not just "rolled back" in the MS sense (where you have to trust what they tell you), but literally.

It also has the ability to backup the "settings" of most major applications (everything from Word, to Firefox, to WinRAR).  If anyone has spent hours figuring out how to configure a complex application (like Outlook), this is a lifesaver when it comes to manual re-installs.

[Kilmatead]

...and yes, I've been having an Epic Battle (in the Macedonian sense) with Outlook 07 recently, so my scars are obvious and fresh.  :D

[Kilmatead]

Re: Update...

As expected, Office 07 received it's SP2 release today, clocking in at a wee 300MB (give or take a tetradrachm or two).

Superciliously obscure details (and links for those who use not the update service) may be found here.

It coughed a bit under Vista x64, rejecting a couple of the (9) updates, for me, but we'll just write that off to Piglet-flu, shall we, and just as mystically remedied...

Hopefully Winnie the Pooh will use Word's new nonsense to re-imagine the Decameron for the modern age (though with all the bees dying these days, he has his own more immediate difficulties... and with Paddington lost to gnashing teeth at Crufts - all may be lost for those seeking Boccaccian shelter)...  :D

[nikos]

so now you can save PDF straight from word?

[Kilmatead]

Funny you should mention that... I was just playing around with it.  The theory is that yes, you just select 'Save As' and choose PDF, but mine seems to have irregular emotional difficulties, erroring out with 'File is in use by another application' about 50% of the time.  Not certain what it's related to, as "sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't."

There was always a proper MS plug-in for that anyway, though it too seemed emotionally lonely.  When all else fails use of one of those PDF printer drivers such as PDF Re-Direct are reliable, if a little limited in their functionality (such as converting links, etc.).  (Unless you're using ed2 x64, where it doesn't work at all for some reason... I'm sure I mentioned that once...)

Edit: I think Kaspersky Internet Security is interfering with the PDF production somehow... works every time with it disabled.  I seem to recall it being mentioned on their forums as well (pertaining to the original plug-in, and this doesn't appear to fix it).

On related notes, for those interested a complete list of changes to Outlook 07 may be found here.  Though, as nothing ever goes to plan, they seem to have broken desktop alerts... c'est la vie...

[nikos]

that's good news for narayan then, you'll no longer have to wrestle that buggy openOffice to produce the x2 manual

i haven't found a robust PDF creation tool yet. Tried cutepdf (something like that) a few times but it never managed to produce anything. It could be missing fonts, or such things don't work from normal user accounts...

[Kilmatead]

that's good news for narayan then, you'll no longer have to wrestle that buggy openOffice to produce the x2 manual

i haven't found a robust PDF creation tool yet. Tried cutepdf (something like that) a few times but it never managed to produce anything. It could be missing fonts, or such things don't work from normal user accounts...

narayan (at last contact) gave a rather staunch defence of OpenOffice, and didn't really figure MS Office to be much better when dealing with mammoth tomes of sufferance like the x2 manual... at which point, it should be mentioned that one of the new Office 07 additions is the ability to read/write OpenOffice formats, so MS are beginning to feel the heat.  Or the pinch.  Or the pressure.  Personally, despite it's foibles (ribbon, anyone?), I rather like Office 07 (version 12).  The "new hip thing" for Office 14 (the next version, MS is skipping for triscadecaphobian reasons the 13th iteration [really, it's true!]) is on-line applications... in other words, "cloud computing" in the interest of competing with Google Docs, etc.  Apparently it's popular to have numerous people working on the same document at the same time.  Seems confusing to me, but so be it.  And cloud computing is usually the kind of thing you can only sell to people "who really haven't thought it through" yet.

One of the difficulties those PDF-creation printer driver thingies suffer from is that they can only incorporate the information the printer is actually given - certain things like link-pseudonyms, font aliasing, etc., tend to be left out.  They did not choose (probably at Adobe's selfish behest) to implement the ability to edit in the PDF format into Word 07, merely the ability to create an end-product.  (In much the same way as Vista SP2 is expected to include Blu-Ray disc support, but not the necessary codec support to play films, so the specialized DVD players can rest content.  A pity.)

[narayan]

Ribbons? No thanks. That's pure madness. Never been more productive for me.

OOo (or even MSO 2000) any time for me!