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6 Reasons why you should upgrade to Microsoft Office 2010

There are a number of reasons why you should upgrade your software to its latest edition. An upgrade assures that you can benefit from new functions and features previously unavailable. Such is the case with Microsoft Office 2010. Since this highly popular productivity software is now offered in 64-bit version, asides from offering a better security, you can expect an improvement in its performance and stability. You can learn more of some of the new features below.

1. Ribbon interface and Office button enhanced
   If you have used Microsoft Office 2007, you know that the Ribbon interface has made the suite more intuitive to use. In the new version, the Ribbon and the Office button can be found as well on Outlook and OneNote. As for its functions, they have been significantly improved. You now have control over what items appear on its tabs. You can add tabs of your own and even put your favourite commands. Ultimately, the new Ribbon is highly customisable and will make working on documents faster and simpler.
2. mprovement in Microsoft Outlook
   If you use Microsoft Outlook as your main e-mail program, you'd be glad to know it is now even easier to manage your conversations and messages. When viewing the messages in Conversation view, you can simply right-click on the conversation title and select the actions that you wish to perform.

   Another great function is the Quick Steps, where you can create shortcuts of tasks and summon them only with a single click. To illustrate, let's say you want to forward a message to ABC. Usually you'll have to first click "Forward message" and then type the e-mail address of ABC in the "To" box. With the shortcut, once you made one, you can easily click the "To ABC" link and the forwarded message will appear with the e-mail address already entered. You can also use the new "Ignore" button to get rid of conversation threads that are of no interest to you. Asides from deleting current messages in the Inbox that belong to that conversation thread, all future messages pertaining to the thread will also be deleted.

3. Multimedia files in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint
   Microsoft has included much more sophisticated and advanced image-editing tools in its Office 2010 suite. Apart from the usual editing feature, you can now use the built-in image editor to apply artistic effects, such as those you find in third-party applications like Adobe Photoshop. The best thing about it is everything can be done within the Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps. Upon applying the effect, there's a thumbnail to preview what the effect will look like.

   The SmartArt feature has also been improved to include more designs.

4. Simpler drag-and-drop in Word
   There's a new and simpler drag-and-drop navigation pane in Word 2010. Think of it as a document map, where you can view the headers, footers, graphics and other sections of your document. You can rearrange the order easily by performing a drag-and-drop within the navigation pane.
5. Sparklines and slicers features for Excel
   The two most impressive features in Excel are sparklines and slicers. The former are tiny editable charts that you can fit into a cell. The latter are objects that you can use to filter the data in pivot tables. You can then move them around or resize them on the screen. Changing the data in the pivot table will automatically update the slicer as well.
6. Simultaneous editing
   As the name suggests, it is now possible to edit a single document simultaneously. To illustrate, you can leave one document open locally and open the same document to work on it from a different computer. The status bar will indicate that there is somebody else currently editing the same document and notify you where the changes are being made. If you have to go offline, the changes made to the document will be automatically synchronized once you come back online.

These are just some of the new features of Microsoft Office 2010. If you are currently using an older version of Office, you can be sure that the new 2010 version offers greater functionalities and functions that warrant an upgrade.

About the Author

Jennifer Mears is a freelance author who writes about various computers and business training topics, To know more about Jennifer's Training ideas please visit. http://www.progressivetraining.ie

I bought a Microsoft LifeCamVX-3000, was wondering if it works with yahoo messenger?

I have a Windows Vista computer, I bought this webcam for my deployed husband, it works with msn messenger but will not work with yahoo, do I need to get a different webcam or is their something I need to download? On the box it says COMPATIBLE WITH ALL LEADING INSTAND MESSAGING SOFTWARE.

probably

Microsoft Messaging
Installing VMM (Viewmail for Microsoft Messaging) NEC SV8100 with UM8000VM

Lotus Notes to Microsoft Application Migrations

In the recent years, due to the increasing popularity and user demand of Microsoft messaging and collaboration environments like Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Active Directory; companies are looking into migrating their messaging and application infrastructure from other platforms, like Lotus Notes to the Microsoft Messaging and Collaboration environment.

SharePoint and .Net provide key integration benefits with Exchange, Active Directory, Outlook, and Microsoft Office “out of the box” allowing the development of better collaborative business applications while being standardized on a Web based architecture and having a relational databases as the data store for reporting, scalability and disaster recovery. SharePoint and .Net applications can also integrate both structured content from enterprise applications and unstructured content from intranets, file folders, etc. due to the many utilities provided with the development environments. Also, given the large Microsoft developer community; extensive online support and the ease of rapid application development in the .Net environment it is easier for Lotus Notes based development groups to translate their skills into a Microsoft based environment.

Since Microsoft SharePoint and .Net are web based environments they provide many benefits in being able to centralize administration and management while reducing client based administration. Also, given that they have robust integration frameworks and methodologies, organizations can extend their ERP, MRP, Supply Chain and CRM platforms by providing easy access and integrations from those platforms into the SharePoint Portal and .Net environment.

Given that the goal of any migration is to reduce disruption to the business and the users of the systems, it is critical to come up with standards and best practices to make the adoption of the new platform easy in the end user community and reduce support requests after the migration. The following are some of the standards and best practice areas –

1. User Experience –

• To facilitate the transition of business users from the Notes platform to the Microsoft platform, it is necessary to keep the essence of the user experience and the navigation scheme to be similar to the one the designed in Notes.
• Any changes in the UI elements [for example differences in the behavior of multi-select boxes between Notes and SharePoint/.Net environments] should be done in a standardized format.
• A guide for UI changes should be developed to highlight the differences in the navigation in the converted applications.

2. Database Design –

• Given that the databases in Lotus Notes are non-relational while SQL Server is a relational database certain standardization is required during the conversion –

• Standardization of Unique identifiers for entities within the database and mapping scheme from the Lotus Notes ID scheme to the entity ID scheme in the relational database.
• Parsing attachments from rich text fields to be stored in separate relational tables with BLOBs.
• Transforming multi-values from a single string to a set of entries in a relational table
• Analyzing and converting relationships from hierarchical to relational

3. Development –

• Forms – Forms and sub-forms in Lotus Notes can be translated into ASP.Net forms, SharePoint lists, or InfoPath forms dependent on the complexity of the forms/database. The more complex forms should either be targeted for ASP.Net or InfoPath while the simpler forms can be targeted for the SharePoint environment.
• Validations – Complex logic based validations can be achieved using VBScripts in .Net forms or InfoPath forms while simple validations can be achieved in SharePoint without any code.
• Lookup data – Single level lookups are easily possible in SharePoint while multi-level dependent lookups can be accomplished in either InfoPath or ASP.Net
• Application Security – A common framework for application security should be developed so that both authorization of roles based security can be handled within all of the converted .Net applications.

Converting Lotus Notes applications to the Microsoft environment can be a very systematic and manageable project. The project needs upfront planning and dedication of the right resources, tools, frameworks, and processes. The converted applications provide for greater standardization, accessibility through a web browser, greater scalability, along with the ability to do comprehensive reporting using standard commercial tools like SQL Reporting Services, Crystal reports among others. Additionally, the applications provide for integrations with Microsoft office, Microsoft Outlook & Exchange along with the integrations with the company Active Directory infrastructure leading to better sharing of information, collaboration and utilization of the resources within the organization.

About the Author

OptimusBT,a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner is a global leader in providing Business solutions that are primarily sharepoint based and utilize existing client infrastructure. For over 5 years, OptimusBT has paved the road when implementing complex, global sharepoint solutions in the areas of Sales, Finance, Procurement, Manufacturing, Human Resources, and others across industry segments around the world.

Microsoft Messaging