IT edge

I ran into a problem with Excel taking a long time to open a file from Windows Explorer. If Excel is started first and a file is opened from within Excel, the file opens immediately.  This problem is unusual, but does exist on some machines. Double-clicking an Excel file to open it from within Windows [...]

You may have experienced the occasional ‘timeout’ while working in Office on Windows Vista. For example, if you get the blue spinning cursor (waiting icon) in Outlook when you click on a new E-mail message in you Inbox, or try and compose a new E-mail, our in Word or PowerPoint when you open an Office document. This is more [...]

The Microsoft Office Team has released a Calendar Print Assistant for Outlook 2007. IT allows you to customize your calendar informaiton and layout for printing. It allows you to print different views of your calendar including customizing your schedule and printing it in the traditional hanging wall calendar complete with a photo. See the details [...]

Microsoft has published a new installation package of iFilters (allows the indexing of the contents of different files types) for its line of search products. The search products supported are: Office SharePoint Server 2007 Search Server 2008 Windows SharePoint Services v3.0 SharePoint Portal Servicer 2003 Exchange Server 2007 SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008 Windows Desktop Search [...]

December 11, 2007 – Microsoft released Service Pack (SP) 1 for Office 2007 Suite, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0, and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 . There are over 600 bug fixes across the Office Suite that SP1 addresses. This SP should be tested in and applied to any Office 2007 installations as soon as possible. Specific [...]

Microsoft has a Solution Accelerator in the form of “Business Desktop Deployment (BDD)” 2007 which is a set of best practice guidance and toll set developed to help you deploy Windows to client desktops.  BDD 2007 contains a new MMC and a task sequencer that originates from System Center Configuration Manager 2007. BDD tools and [...]

Diagnose audio issues within your Office Communications Server 2007 environment using the Office Communications Server 2007 Deployment Validation Tool. A common issue in VoIP deployments is that administrators find out about problems with audio quality only after a user reports a problem. The Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Deployment Validation Tool simulates audio traffic so [...]

There are a couple Vista patches that improve stability, reliability and compatibility of the OS. Interestingly, these are not pushed down from Windows Update. Get the stability/compatibility update from – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941649 Get the reliability update from – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941600 Get the Vista Media Center from – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941229 Applying these patches have reall improved my experience with Vista on my home machine [...]

Windows Vista Hardware Assessment (WVHA) 2.0 is available for download. WVHA 2.0 allows you to scan upto 25,000 (yes, 25,000) computers on your network. It can also integrate with Active Directoy to allow you to target scans to specific OU’s and you can also scan workgroups. The result can be stored in an Excel file [...]

Microsoft released an update to Outlook 2007 which fixes performance issues that occur when you work with items in a large .pst file or .ost file. I have installed this update and Outlook is tons faster. The update also fixes a problem in which a calendar item that is marked as private is opened if it [...]