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You probably get very upset when your Microsoft Office application crashes down (closes down unexpectedly) while you are working on something important. It is not necessarily that the problem is within the Microsoft Office code. Computer viruses (read How to Protect Yourself from Viruses from Your Computer Health Part Two), disk failures, or laziness with respect to installing updates (read How to Stay up to Date Automatically from Your Computer Health Part One) are just a few issues causing this condition.

Microsoft Office Diagnostic is a tool included in Microsoft Office 2007 pack, allowing you to run a series of diagnostic tests that can help you discover why your computer is crashing. These tests will either solve problems directly or may help you with the ways to solve them.

These are the diagnostics that are run:

Setup Diagnostic – Files and registry are checked for errors occurring due to viruses or by hardware that is faulty or incorrectly configured. While running for about 15 minutes, the test may require the original installation source.

Disk Diagnostic – Hard disk is examined for errors logged by the Windows system and SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) feature of your hard disk (if provided by disk drive manufacturers) to notice potential hard disk failure.

Memory Diagnostic – Random Access Memory (RAM) is verified for integrity.

Update Diagnostic – Your computer is tested as to whether it has the latest updates installed to make Microsoft Office more stable. You can install updates from Microsoft Office Online.

Compatibility Diagnostic – Different versions of Microsoft Office are checked for conflicts, as two different versions of Office installed on your computer can cause instability.

Check for Known Solutions – The crash report is tested and checked against the database of Microsoft’s crash cases for available solutions.

To find out how to run diagnostics, read How to Fix Errors Using Microsoft Office Diagnostics.

You can choose from a wide selection of slide design templates to create a background for your PowerPoint presentation. But sometimes you may want something more unique, which matches the content of the presentation more directly. In these cases, create your own background in PowerPoint. Follow these steps to add a photo or a clip art as a background in PowerPoint.

1. From the Ribbon, select the Design tab.
2. In the Background section, click on the Background button in the right corner. This will open the Format Background dialog box.
3. Select Picture or texture fill and from the Insert from section, click on File or Clip Art to choose the photo or clip art you want to use as a background. If the object is small, PowerPoint will stretch it to cover the whole slide. However, this can deform the graphic object.
4. If the graphic object is small, you can tile it. This means that the picture or clip art object will be placed repeatedly across the slide in rows. To do that, check the Tile picture as texture box.
5. If you don’t want to stretch or tile the picture or clip art, you can offset it from the edges of the slide. Simply, edit the text boxes for the percentage of Offset you want from each edge of the slide. As best practice – use the same number to offset for all four sides of the slides to keep the proportion ratio of the picture.
6. If you use a picture or clip art as a background it is the best practice to keep it faded or transparent. To make it transparent, in Transparency use the transparent slider or type in a transparency percentage.
7. Click on the Close or Apply to All buttons to apply a background to an individual slide or to all slides in the presentation. If you are not happy with changes you can always click on Reset Background button.

The Ribbon is designed to help you quickly find the commands. Commands are organised in logical groups that are collected together under tabs according to a type of activity.

You cannot delete or replace the Ribbon with the toolbars and menus from the previous versions of Microsoft Office. However, to make more space available on your screen, you can minimise the Ribbon.

1. From the Quick Access Toolbar, click Customize Quick Access Toolbar .
2. From the drop down list, select Minimize the Ribbon.  

To use the Ribbon while it is minimised, click the tab you want to use, and then click the option or command you want to use. After your request has been performed, the Ribbon reverts to being minimised.

You finally installed Office 2007 and guess what? You cannot find commands you are used to in the Menu!

It will certainly take a while to adjust to a new Menu. So what you can do to locate where your favourite Office 2003 commands are in the new Office 2007 interface?

Microsoft developed visual, interactive reference guides to help you quickly learn where things are. You can download and install them on your computer.

The only downside to it is that you have to download these guides for each of the Office 2007 Applications.

If you are not sure if it will help it, try an online demonstration from one of those listed at Microsoft Office Online.

If you are happy to proceed, use the following links to download command reference guides for each of the Office applications:

Word 2003 to Word 2007 interactive command reference guide

Excel 2003 to Excel 2007 interactive command reference guide

PowerPoint 2003 to PowerPoint 2007 interactive command reference guide

Outlook 2003 to Outlook 2007 Interactive Command Reference Guide

Access 2003 to Access 2007 interactive command reference guide

PDF is a fixed-layout electronic file format that preserves document formatting. It ensures that when the file is viewed online or printed, it retains exactly the format that was initially intended, and that data in the file cannot easily be changed.

Before the release of Office 2007 we had to either buy Adobe Acrobat for about £450 in order to convert Office files into PDF format, or install a third party software solution.

With the release of Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft introduced a file format called XPS. It is similar to PDF in that you can save a file to this format and share or print it at a later date. This XPS format is not the global standard, and not many people know what it is when they receive it.

The following Office applications can be used to convert files to PDF format:

• Access
• Excel
• InfoPath
• OneNote
• PowerPoint
• Publisher
• Visio
• Word

In order to convert files, you need to install 2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS. 

Let’s use Microsoft Word application to convert a Word file into PDF format.

1. Open a Microsoft Word document you want to save in PDF format
2. Click the Microsoft Office Button , and then navigate to Save As, and click PDF Or XPS.

 

 

3.  In Save as Type, make sure that PDF is selected.

 

 

If you want to open the file immediately after saving it, select the Open file after publishing check box. This check box is available only if you have a PDF reader installed on your computer.

 

4. Click Publish to create your PDF.

Sometimes it is imperative to temporarily black out the screen while you are running Slide Show. In this case, press the letter b on a keyboard.

To return to the Slide Show from the blank black side, press the letter b again.

Suppose you want to start a PowerPoint file in a Slide Show but without opening a PowerPoint file. What shall you do?

If you double-click on a PowerPoint file, PowerPoint opens and shows the first slide in editing mode. To avoid this you can do the following:

• Locate the PowerPoint file you want to open in Slide Show
• Right click on the PowerPoint file’s icon with your mouse
• Select ‘Show’ from the displayed shortcut menu.

Your presentation will start in a Slide Show format. When it finishes, the file will be closed.

A few friends of mine recently told me they don’t have a new .docx format and couldn’t open a file in Word format.

Do you have Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003 and receive an error message when you try to open a file in Word, Excel or PowerPoint?

Error messages include:

• Windows cannot open this file
• The file is not in a recognizable format
• PowerPoint can’t open the type of file represented by filename

This article may help you to get rid of the problem.

Microsoft has added the new Office Open XML Formats to the following 2007 Microsoft Office programs:

• Microsoft Office Excel 2007
• Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007
• Microsoft Office Word 2007

Some of the formats have been changed and are now:

• Word Document (*.docx)
• Excel Workbook (*.xlsx)
• PowerPoint Presentation (*.pptx)

To be able to read files in new formats from the earlier versions of Microsoft Office you will need to install and download a Compatibility Pack.

A compatibility pack is available to help you open and save Office Open XML formats in earlier versions of Microsoft Office. You can install the compatibility pack on a computer that is running Microsoft Office 2003 programs, Microsoft Office XP programs, or Microsoft Office 2000 programs. When you install the compatibility pack, you can open, edit, save, and create files in the Office Open XML Formats.

All you need to do is:

1. Make sure that you have all High-Priority updates from Microsoft Update. Just press the Express button from the Welcome to Microsoft Update page and follow the instructions.

2. Download the Compatibility Pack by clicking the Download button from the Microsoft website on http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&displaylang=en and save the file to your hard disk.

3. Double-click the FileFormatConverters.exe program file on your hard disk to start the setup program.

4. Follow the instructions on the screen to complete the installation.

These simple steps will ensure you can open and save files in the Office Open XML Formats. They will also mean you have the latest Microsoft Update for your Windows application, which is a MUST for protecting your computer from threats.