Microsoft Office 2010 knows there are Word-based macro viruses out there. It’s so protective, in fact, it can be a bit annoying when you’re trying to open Outlook attachments from co-workers. Tech blogger Amit Agarwal explains how to disable Word’s “Protected View.” More »
The thought of your iPhone or iPod touch falling into the wrong hands is enough to scare anyone. The iPhone does have the passcode function to keep prying eyes out, but what if that’s not enough?
In a corporate environment, the loss of a device like this is a major ordeal. Apple has touted the MobileMe remote wiping capabilities, but what if you don’t use MobileMe? If you are in a corporate environment, you probably connect to an exchange server for mail. Using OWA (Outlook Web Access) you can remotely wipe your lost or stolen iPhone/iPod touch and breath easy knowing your data is safe.
As I stated, this relies on using the Exchange email push functionality in the iPhone OS. I have only tested this with Exchange 2007 so I can’t verify how or if this works in older versions of Exchange. OWA is Microsoft’s fancy name for web mail so the first thing you need to do is access your company’s web mail.
You can give this a try on your own device if you want to see the magic. Be advised that it will take about an hour to wipe the device so you can’t use it during that time. After the wipe, you can restore from a backup in iTunes. Since this is done in OWA, you don’t even have to bother your Network Admin. Maybe you are a little embarrassed that you lost your iPhone. This way no one has to know. Your secret will be safe with me.
Microsoft’s Visual Search tool, introduced earlier this week, turns out to be a pretty helpful platform for browsing free and paid iPhone applications. It’s a trade-off: you won’t have to fire up iTunes, but you will have to install Silverlight.
Reader Anunay writes in with the link to turn Bing into a robust search for iPhone apps. From left-hand links, you can narrow your search by broad categories, specific prices, publishers, or other criteria. Hovering over an app icon gives you ranking, category, and release date information, and clicking an icon brings you to a Bing search page for that app—which, in turn, generally leads you to a developer's page and iTunes link. For those who don't like to (or can't) fire up iTunes to browse and search apps, it's a decent alternative, even if it requires installing a third-party plug-in. Thanks Anunay!
If you are stuck using Microsoft Outlook to send those TPS reports at work, you've already experienced just how painfully slow it can get—but with a few quick tips you can make it usable again.
While you might keep up to date on all of your Windows patches, too many people are running outdated versions of Microsoft Office (not to mention other applications). You'll want to install the very latest service pack—because Service Pack 2 has fixed a ton of performance issues for users with large mailboxes or anybody using IMAP to access their email.
The 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2 (SP2) [Microsoft]
When you are using IMAP to access your Gmail (or other email) account, you'll probably notice that Outlook can hang, stutter, and just generally become completely unusable—but it works just fine with POP accounts. You can make the whole experience a lot better by telling Outlook to download the entire message every time you synchronize so you won't have to wait while it slowly grabs the message off the server. Head over to the Send/Receive Groups panel by using the Ctrl+Alt+S hotkey, then drill down into your account and choose "Download complete items including attachments". The first time Outlook syncs with your mail server, it might take a little longer, but you should notice a significant improvement overall.
Force Outlook 2007 to Download Complete IMAP Items [How-To Geek]
Keeping a nice, clean mailbox is probably one of the most obvious, but also most overlooked aspects of speeding up your Outlook experience. You can do it yourself by setting up a separate personal folders (PST) file, and then moving old email over there on a regular basis. If you don't feel like managing the archiving process yourself, you can turn on the built-in Auto Archive feature by heading into Tools -> Options -> Other and setting up your preferences for when to archive—you may need to tweak them to fit your own emailing behavior, but the key is to keep your daily mailbox nice and small.
Configure AutoArchive In Outlook 2007 [How-To Geek]
This is one of those tips that almost all long-time Outlook users know, but it's still important to mention. All of your email is stored in a single .PST file that grows larger and larger as time goes on, but deleting messages isn't good enough because the file never gets any smaller. You'll need to head into the Files -> Data File Management menu, then using the Settings button to take you to the dialog where you can actually compact your mailbox, shrinking the file down and potentially saving you a ton of disk space.
Quick Tip: Easily Compact Outlook Data Files [How-To Geek]
You’ve probably never thought of running the built-in Inbox Repair tool unless you absolutely have to, but if your Outlook frequently crashes and requires restarting from Task Manager, you should probably give it a run to fix all the errors you didn’t even realize were there. Since your personal folders file is effectively a database, it’s important to keep it clean and free of errors. You’ll need to head into your Outlook installation folder, and then find the scanpst.exe file to start the repair process.
Fix Your Broken Outlook Personal Folders (PST) File [How-To Geek]
If you aren't using Outlook to read your RSS feeds, you might not realize that it's still synchronized to the Internet Explorer common feed list. There's really no reason to keep this feature enabled, and you can easily disable it by heading into Tools -> Options -> Other -> Advanced and removing the checkbox from "Sync RSS Feeds to the Common Feeds List". Don't forget to delete any RSS feeds once you are done.
Make Outlook Stop Using Internet Explorer’s RSS Feeds [How-To Geek]
Chances are good that the majority of used space in your mailbox is taken up by all those attachments that everybody keeps sending you. After a while, your inbox is going to get so gigantic that Outlook can't help but slow down a little, but you can easily find all of the attachments and save them somewhere else before you go through a big mail cleanup—just use the free OutlookAttachView utility to save them to a folder easily and quickly.
OutlookAttachView Lets You Save All File Attachments
It's not that difficult to sort a few columns in your inbox and figure out which messages are wasting the most space—but if you've got a complicated set of folders that you use to organize your email, you can quickly view all email that is older than a certain date, or too large to keep around. Head into the Tools -> Mailbox Cleanup wizard that gives you loads of options to quickly find and delete messages you really don't need to keep around anymore.
Quickly Clean Your Inbox in Outlook 2003/2007 [How-To Geek]
There are loads of great add-ins for Microsoft Outlook that add all sorts of great features, but often there are add-ins installed that are unused, unnecessary, or just pointless—and those are most likely the biggest cause of Outlook slowing down to a crawl no matter what you seem to do. You'll need to head into Tools -> Trust Center and click the Go button to edit your COM Add-ins, though Windows 7 or Vista users might have to open Outlook in administrator mode to be able to disable some of them. In my experience dealing with Outlook problems, this is the hidden one that most people never think of, but gives the biggest benefit overall.
Make Outlook Faster by Disabling Unnecessary Add-Ins [How-To Geek]
If you live and breathe Microsoft Office for your job, you might be interested in signing up for Microsoft’s Office 2010 Technical Preview. Microsoft is planning to release the preview at the beginning of July, but unlike Windows 7 Beta and RC, the Office 2010 Technical Preview is by invitation only. Hit up the link below if you’re interested in registering for the preview (registering doesn’t guarantee you’ll get in), and while you’re there check out the silly Office 2010 trailer. [Office 2010 via Download Squad]
The Microsoft Office Word Team blog details a number of options to streamline the Word 2007 interface, from hiding toolbars to turning Word into a full-blown distraction-free writing environment.
If you're just looking for a bit of extra space on the screen, the guide advises you to minimize the Ribbon by double-clicking on the tabs, set the Windows taskbar to auto-hide, and switch to Web Layout to let the writing area fill the screen. If you are looking for the full distraction-free effect, you can change the page colors and add the Full Screen button to the quick access toolbar—hit the link for the full walk-through.
For more distraction-free writing, check out the previously mentioned Writeroom for Mac, Darkroom for Windows, or do your writing online with Writer.
For those Google Chrome users who need access to one or two Silverlight sites, a Microsoft developer offers a file-tweaking work-around to get access to certain sites.
The Chrome/Silverlight hack requires grabbing a few .js files normally intended for Silverlight developers and tweaking them to have Silverlight sites accept and provide content to Chrome. By downloading the .js files and modifying them a bit, you should be able to access, as the developer rates it, “most” Silverlight apps, but your mileage will certainly vary.
Tech evangelist and Microsoft consultant Blake Handler hosts an impressively completist list of free Windows programs offered by Microsoft, dug from the trenches of Del.icio.us tags. It’s a handy bookmark for Control+F hunting. [via]
