RobiNZ CAD Blog

Microsoft Calendars still a mess...

I wonder if Microsoft New Outlook, Microsoft Phone Outlook and Microsoft To Do will ever get their $hit together and present consistent options? Take, for instance, snooze times on a task reminder, you can set a great range of options on a New Calendar Item (1), but at the time Snooze offers +- 5 or 10 minutes (2), or just 5 or 10 minutes, and that's it. What's worse, I found this in draft, first written in September 2023 and it's no better today. Oh, and the best options were in the old, now dead, Windows Calendar app (3). Read more →

Better controlling Word image placement

I saw this meme, on Mastodon, about the fight that is Word images. They hide the anchoring controls in a ribbon fly-out + dialog. Once you set them (per image sadly) to keep with text it becomes much more manageable. With the image selected access it from the flyout Layout Options > See more... link. or the Ribbon Picture Format > Position > More Layout Options > Position (tab) and set the Move with Text or Lock Anchor options. You can also accurately set the X,Y position relative to margins, paragraph, line etc Read more →

OneNote or Evernote?

I saw this question on Twitter from Edwin: @EdwinPrakoso I chose One Note as got "free" with Office & @windowsphone supports — Robin Capper (@robincapper) October 14, 2013 I’m a OneNote novice, just basic lists and notes, but have used it more since the arrival of Microsoft Accounts & SkyDrive integration in Windows 8/Windows Phone 8 Learning by comparison Edwin’s question prompted me to take another look at Evernote. I’m not about to change but discovered some new things about OneNote in the comparisons! 8 ways OneNote is better than Evernote | Pocketnow “Every time I’ve tried Evernote it has... Read more →

Microsoft Office Web Applications are Live, on SkyDrive

The Microsoft Office Web applications went live, on Live, today. I’ve only had a brief look but first impressions are pretty good. Live goes Office or Office goes Live? From Office.live.com (* see footnote if not in the US, UK, Canada, and Ireland) you get access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. The files are hosted on Microsoft Skydrive which currently offers 25GB of free storage. They feel like basic Office 2010 applications with all you need to create, view, edit and share documents in the current Office xml based formats (old documents are migrated to .docx .xlsx ,pptx etc).... Read more →

Excel Ribbon’y Office goodness

What’s that, you know, the thing in Excel where you can stop stuff scrolling…? It was Office 2003 so I had to show the Window Menu>Freeze Panes command and explain, demo, how it freezes rows/columns to the left & above the selected cell. That led me to wonder why on “Window” when it’s the document view you are changing and what, if you don’t already know, would make you look for “Freeze Panes”? In Office 2007 it’s on the View tab, because it does alter how you view the document not it’s window, and although still named “Freeze Panes” has... Read more →

Foxit PDF Preview Handler for Windows & Office

One thing missing after my move to Windows 7 was a decent PDF preview in Outlook. The default Office 2007 install gave an error referring to the Windows Vista PDF Preview Handler. The solution was Tim Heuer’s PDF Preview Handler for the excellent Foxit Reader. Thanks Tim & Foxit! Foxit PDF Preview Handler - timheuer.com The Foxit PDF Preview Handler is a piece of software written by myself with sponsorship from Foxit Software (providing the license so that we all can enjoy). Read more →

Ribbon Hero! A Microsoft Office game from Office Labs

I only just found, and installed, this but had to share it due to my ribbon affection. It’s a “game” that aims to improve your Office skills while you work. Read all about it on the Office Labs blog: Play Ribbon Hero and hone your Microsoft Office skills - Office Labs Hi! I’m Jennifer Michelstein, a Program Manager and casual games enthusiast in Office Labs. My current project is Ribbon Hero, which works on Vista and Windows 7, and in Excel, PowerPoint, and Word 2007 and 2010. Ribbon Hero watches what features you do and don’t use, and then it... Read more →

About the (real) Office Web Apps, should I be excited?

The team bringing Microsoft Office to the web are blogging. On the desktop Office is a (some say too) complex, powerful beast so it's interesting to see how they are approaching the web versions.... Read more →

Stubborn language settings in Office Outlook 2003?

It won't concern US readers but I had a problem where the language in Outlook defaulted back to US English. This was in-spite of setting the default language in other Office applications. The solution... Read more →

I LOVE "THE RIBBON", do you?

I'm going to be writing about some "recently ribboned" applications in the next few weeks, some better than others. Before that I have decided to set out how I feel about a variety of "already ribbone... Read more →