Delayed sends

So here’s another You Tube video that focuses on Outlook. In this case the video will show you how to configure Outlook so there is a delay when you send emails.

<img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/-5I5GHGZdwfI/UQEl-cQlWXI/AAAAAAAAH5g/wyjHUKbObOo/video3e45464bea00%25255B4%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" style="border-style: none" galleryimg="no" onload="var downlevelDiv = document.getElementById('d2b78ded-f1ba-472e-9126-5e387a1dbe73'); downlevelDiv.innerHTML = "

http://www.youtube.com/v/_u5aNLPc_K8?hl=en&hd=1“;” alt=””>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u5aNLPc_K8

Why would you want a delay? By default, Outlook will send an email as quickly as possible when you hit the send button. What happens if you make a mistake or want to delete the email prior to it actually leaving your mailbox? What about if you realize that perhaps you shouldn’t have sent the email? If you do that after pressing the send button chances are you won’t have the opportunity to do anything since the email will probably be well on its way to its destination.

By inserting a delay for all sent emails you get an opportunity to recover from error or stupidity much easier. It doesn’t take much to configure this in Outlook as this video shows.

Outlook notifications

By default Outlook will notify you via a variety of means that a new email has arrived. This can be very distracting and greatly reduce your productivity as I have eluded to many time here before. As such I have created a new You Tube video that shows you how to disable these notifications.

<img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/-fe64vxAC4UY/UQElnebkFnI/AAAAAAAAH5Y/UVUoarzbxD8/videof6eafbb20b48%25255B4%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" style="border-style: none" galleryimg="no" onload="var downlevelDiv = document.getElementById('70d48fdd-87d3-4525-89fa-ced812a0cbf5'); downlevelDiv.innerHTML = "

http://www.youtube.com/v/rM5jnI-ik8c?hl=en&hd=1“;” alt=””>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM5jnI-ik8c

Watch out for some more tips and tricks to increasing your productivity with Outlook. As usual I’d love to hear any feedback you may have or suggestions of what you’d like to see covered.

Microsoft software direct to end users

In response to the need to keep up with the likes of Google Microsoft has launched an online store according to this article.

”The Microsoft Store is a possible death knell for the practice of selling software on computer discs that buyers install on their machines”.

“The big difference is that after your payment is confirmed, you can immediately download the product to your computer.”

“The Microsoft Store has the full gamut of Microsoft products, from Windows Vista to Microsoft Office and hardware such as Xbox 360 consoles and Zune MP3 music players”

Ok, so where does that leave the traditional reseller who took orders for software for customers and then bought from a distributor? Unless they are adding some value to the transaction (doubtful) then this maybe yet another example of how the world of the traditional IT reseller business is again facing change.

Although not currently here in Australia yet, it is only a matter of time. In all honesty we’ve seen it before, haven’t we? Can anyone say Dell?

Bulk convert documents to Office 2007 format

Now, not everyone is going to need to convert all their Office documents to Office 2007 format but if you are taking the leap and upgrading all your desktops to Office 2007 it is probably an option to consider since there are many benefits with the new format.

Rather than opening each document and saving it in the new format you can download some tools from Microsoft and automate the process. Follow these steps to complete the process.

I learn something everyday

I have been doing a lot of document creation lately for my Windows Sharepoint Services Operations Guide. This has involved lots of screen shots, which I have simply done via the Print Scrn button and then pasting into a Word document. Problem with that strategy is that it creates REALLY BIG documents since the graphics are so large. One solution is to paste the images into a picture editing tool first, compress them and then copy then into Word again.

Surely there must be a simpler way I’ve been thinking and guess what there is! In the Office document you are working on simply right mouse click on any image to get the following menu:

Select Format Picture and you should see:

See that Compress button in the lower left of the window? Press that to reveal:

You can then set the options for what style of output you desire (i.e. web/screen or print for example). However up the top you’ll see the option to Apply this to All pictures in the document. Amazing!

The Office document compression tool does a pretty good job as well and works well on those pictures you have simply copy and pasted from your digital camera. In one case a Powerpoint document I was working with went from 10MB to 1.5MB simply using the above compress feature. This feature is in both Office 2003 and 2007 but may have been there for longer. I am annoyed that it has taken this long for me to find this REALLY handy function, but at least I now know!

As I said, every day I learn something new.

Help Microsoft Office videos

Microsoft has released a number of helpful Office videos. Here’s a list :

Word 2007 Demo (set of 4): Create a set of labels with mail merge

Word 2007 Demos (set of 3): Headers and footers made simple

Word 2007 Demo (set of 2): Let Word manage your table of contents

PowerPoint 2007 Demo: Add animation and sound to text and objects

Project 2007 Demo: Add, hide, and show columns

Outlook 2007 Demo: Customize your calendar

Outlook 2007 Demo: Create and use an e-mail signature

Outlook 2007 Demo: Find needles in a haystack with Instant Search

Outlook 2007 Demo: Up to speed

InfoPath 2007 Demo: Create reusable template parts

2007 Office System Demo: Enable blocked macros

2007 Office System Demo: Work with tables in a document, presentation, or message

Access 2007 Demo: Meet the Navigation Pane

Saves me having to do it!

Outlook Business Contact Manager and detached network user

Strange to find someone wanting to remove a server from their network these days but in our times of downsizing it does happen. Everything was going swimmingly, I had removed all the workstations except for the last one which had Outlook Business Contact Manager installed. I didn’t expect any issues but received a nasty surprise when the user tried to fire up Outlook Business Contact Manager as a stand alone user.

When Outlook loaded it said that the login to the Business Contact Manager database was incorrect and that I had to attach to an existing database or create a new database. Hmmm…ok so I’ll try and attached to the existing database – no go, so I elect to create a new database. Problem is that the client uses Business Contact Manager extensively so they needed the old database back. With a new Business Contact Database Outlook loads but there is no Contact Manager data.

Thinking, thinking, thinking….why would the login details be wrong? Ah ha, because the previous login was on the network (ie domain\user) and the login now is just user (ie localmachine\user). This would still be the case even if the user names and passwords were identical – different privileges between a domain and a workgroup. So now I knew why the login was failing, trick was how do I fix it?

The first thing was to check that the original Business Contact Manager database files were still on the system. By default the database is installed in c:\documents and settings\\local settings\application data\microsoft\business contact manager. The database is probably called msbusinesscontactmanager.ldf and msbusinesscontactmanager.mdf. In this directory I clearly had 2 sets of databases an old (prior to removal from network) and a new (after removal from network).

Next step was to go into services.msc and locate the local SQL service called MSSQL$MICROSOFTSMLBIZ and right mouse click on it and select stop. With that done I returned to the directory and renamed the existing business contact manager out and the old database to what the name of the existing database had been. so existing -> save then old -> existing. I then returned to the services.msc screen and started the MSSQL$MICROSOFTSMLBIZ service, then I restarted Outlook.

When Outlook started I saw a dialogue box saying that the Business Contact Manager was initialising after which Outlook loaded. When the client checked all the information he had stored using Business Contact Manager was back. Phew.

It would have been nice if Business Contact Manager would have warned me that I might have an issue logging into the database if I detached from the network but you can’t cover every eventuality can you? At least it wasn’t too hard to fix but I certainly had to do some testing beforehand since I couldn’t find much on the web. Sometimes it is quicker to run up a Virtual machine and try it for yourself.