If you get a document sent to you that's in an Word, Excel or Powerpoint 2007 format (it'll be a .docx, .xlsx or pptx file extension) and you have Office 2003 - don't fear! You are able to read these documents without having to upgrade to Office 2007. You just need to install Microsoft's "Office Compatibility Pack for Office 2003". The link is on this page:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/HA101686761033.aspx
I've not tried this myself, so install at your own risk, I am not responsible for your computer catching fire, the end of the universe, yadda yadda yadda.
If you're like me and you tend to pepper your Outlook calendar at work with private appointments as well as work related ones, you probably find that you sometimes forget to tag your private appointments with the "Private" marker. This means that anyone that can view your calendar is able to see your private appointments. That may be fine for a lot of people, but I wanted to be sure that I remembered to mark my private appointments as private. I've also been syncing my appointments to and from my mobile phone - and appointments created on there don't get set as "Private" automatically, so I have to remember to tag them when they are imported in my Outlook calendar. So, I used the custom view creation abilities in Outlook to show me any private appointments in a different colour. This way, when I glance at my calendar in the morning to see what's coming up, I immediately notice any private appointments that are not the colour I am expecting and I can then mark them. Here's how you do it (Outlook 2007).
- Firstly, switch to your Calendar within outlook.
- Select the view that you most commonly use (this is Day/Week/Month for me)
- Select "Current View->Customize Current View" from the View menu.
- Select "Automatic Formatting"
- Select "Add" to add a new formatting rule.
- Give it a name in the "Name" box ("Private appointments" or something, it doesn't matter what)
- Select your colour from the "Color" dropdown that you want your private appointments to be shown as (I used a lovely dark orange)
- Select "Condition"
- Select the "Advanced" tab
- Under "Define more criteria", drop down the "Field" button, and select "Frequently used fields->Sensitivity"
- Set the "Condition" drop down to be "equals"
- Set the "Value" drop down to be private
- Select "Add to list"
- Select OK on all the screens previously opened.
Voilà! Your private appointments should be coloured now, and any that are not stand out so you can set them so.
Hope this is useful to someone.
