Ultimate Steal

Every semester, I try to bring this up in my classes.  Microsoft has made available a number of programs available at a low cost for students.

For example, the Microsoft Office 2007 Home Edition would cost you around $125 - $150 to purchase.  This would include Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.  However, as a student at certain schools, you are eligible to receive a copy of Office 2007 "Ultimate" for $59.95.  This version includes not only the programs listed above, but also Access and Publisher.  The nice part is that this is not only inexpensive, but also legal.  I can understand why people take a risk and download illegal software, but when you have the chance to legally acquire the software at this price, why take the risk?

They also have made available Windows 7 for $64.95. 

Note you will have to register with your school email address (username@pccc.mailcruiser.com).  Also note that they don't mail you an installation CD - the install is done through the Internet.

Note that even though this is not a Microsoft.com site, it does redirect there and I can confirm this is legitimate.
www.ultimatesteal.com

Opening Office 2007 files in older Office versions

I posted this last semester, but this seems to be worth a re-post.

PCCC has made it the "standard" that we are using Office 2007. This presents some issues that we haven't seen in years, the issue of backwards compatibility. In other words, let's say you are running Office 2003 at home. If I mail you a Microsoft Word document in Office 2007 format, you are basically out of luck.

...that is, without an extra piece of free software from Microsoft.

If you are running Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, and can not open Office 2007 files (they have slightly different extensions, such as .docx, .xlsx, or .pptx), the free Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack program will allow you to open these files.

I would highly recommend that you download this and install it, especially if you are a PCCC student. If you do classwork on campus computers, you'd have to otherwise remember to "Save as" an older format in order to work seamlessly between campus and home, and that's really not all that seamless, is it?

PC Users: Download Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack

One problem that someone verbally asked me about - this does NOT help with Access files. If you have Access 2003 and someone sends you a database in Access 2007 format, you're out out luck, even after installing this.

Now, why they haven't pushed this out as part of their Microsoft Update, I can not tell you.

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Mac users only
If you are a Office for Macintosh 2004 or Office for Macintosh X user, you will need to go through a different process. You need to download a free tool called "Open XML File Format Converter for Mac 1.0". Yeah, that's easy to figure out.
Macintosh Users Download Here

Free Trial of Microsoft Office 2007

Microsoft is giving out a fully functional 60 day/2 month free trial of Office 2007 Professional. If you don't have Office on your computer, this is a chance to try the new version for free.

Note that since this is the trial version of Office Professional, not only do you get Word, Excel and PowerPoint, you also get Publisher and Access, two other very nice tools, and a few other tools. For free, it's definitely worth a try.

If you were interested in simply purchasing it, there is a "Home and Student" version, which is designed for home users that will be doing common school related tasks. The "Home and Student" version includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This is much cheaper than the standard versions of Office, with a retail price of $150.

At this point, it is a little over $100 to purchase it on Amazon. I'll link to that below.

Web Links:

• Office 2007 Home and Student version on Amazon (PC Version)
  
  
• Link to free trial download page
  (Note that even though this is not from "Microsoft.com", it is what Microsoft links you to. I checked)

Office 2007 Shortcut Keys

One of the best ways to be a little more productive is to learn the hotkeys of a program. Also known as "shortcut keys" or "keyboard shortcuts", keyboard shortcuts are the way of using the keyboard to do things that you would otherwise do with the mouse. For example, a common hotkey in Microsoft Office is to hold down the control key and hit the P key. This will allow you to print without clicking around to do so.

Now there is no way that you're going to memorize them all, but what I think is efficient is to figure out something you're doing often, and to look up the hotkeys for that feature.


No, not THAT type of hotkey.

I've blogged in the past about some of these hot keys, but in the process of updating Microsoft Office, they've removed some of the hotkeys that I personally was used to, which makes me sad, but they've also added some, which is nice.

Where do you look those up? Well, if you Google it, you'll get a list, but at this point, you're dealing with a lot of people who have the Office 2003 lists up. You would figure that there's a comprehensive list for each of the programs on Microsoft's site ... but you'd be wrong. As far as I can find, they only have a set of Office 2003 shortcut keys on the site, not the Office 2007 ones.

One site that I've used for this purpose in the past is keyxl.com and they've done an excellent job of laying out shortcuts for the major Office tools at the links below. Definitely worth a look if you're wondering something like "How do I start a slide show from this slide instead of slide one?"**

Web Links

• Microsoft Word 2007 hotkeys
• Microsoft Excel 2007 hotkeys
• Microsoft Access 2007 hotkeys
• Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 hotkeys

** Answer - hold shift and hit f5