microsoft

What is the MVP Summit?

A few asked about the event at Microsoft. It is a fantastic privelege to spend a few days on the Microsoft’s Redmond campus for the MVP summit. There were over 1,500 Microsoft MVPs attending. There are 34 PowerPoint MVPs globally and 13 of us were able to accept an invitation from Microsoft to meet and talk about the future versions of PowerPoint.

Here is the press release:

1,300 of the world’s top leaders from the technical community will spend four days at the Microsoft Corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington this week for the 2010 Most Valuable Professionals (MVP) Global Summit.

Microsoft’s MVP Award Program is in its 17th year, with MVPs representing 96 countries, speaking 37 different languages and spanning 94 Microsoft technology areas.

The Summit gives Microsoft’s product groups an extraordinary opportunity to listen to their MVPs during more than 700 sessions throughout the week.

Summit brings together some of the top leaders within global technical communities,” said Toby Richards, general manager, Community and Online Support for Microsoft. “I always look forward to this week and am extremely excited to engage with technology’s best and brightest and discuss what’s on their minds.”

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T08:58:29-07:00March 1st, 2010|PowerPoint|

PowerPoint 2010 Pricing

It is still a few months out, but here is the pricing I found:

– Office Professional
– $499 boxed / $349 Product Key Card

– Office Home and Student
– $149 boxed / $119 Product Key Card

– Office Professional Academic (students and teachers)
– $99 boxed

The Product Key Card is an electronic distribution (eg. no packaging or disc). Basically it is full function trialware, either pre-loaded on new computers or downloaded, that is unlocked and purchased with the Product Key Card.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T09:05:05-07:00January 27th, 2010|Resource/Misc|

RIP Office 2003

Over the weekend Microsoft officially pulled the plug on sales (and downloads) of Office 2003.

The lawsuit against Microsoft about the use of some XML code in Word has ended distribution of it. Bcause Word cannot be distributed and the Office suite has Word – cannot be distributed (only Word is the program in question). Here is a good summary article about the lawsuit.

Like a good movie trailer for a bad movie, the title is more appealing than the full show. Office 2003 is not really gone, just the current version. An alternate version with the questionable code removed will be in circulation, which should be identical to even the most knowledgeable Word users.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T09:08:17-07:00January 10th, 2010|PowerPoint|

MS Security Essentials (AntiVirus)

A year ago I was happy letting Microsoft’s Live OneCare handle the antivirus, update notification, backup duties and firewall management on a dozen computers. Then the service was discontinued and over the past 4-5 months I have migrated to a number of antivirus applications. And I have experienced more computer grief over firewall, virus and other issues as a result.

Well last week the follow-up to OneCare, Microsoft Security Essentials, was released to the public!

This is a FREE antivirus application, based on the same engine as OneCare (which kept all my computers safe and running for 2 years) and has a super easy interface. Microsoft Security Essentials is FREE and can be downloaded from Microsoft here.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T09:30:16-07:00October 19th, 2009|Software/Add-Ins|

Mac Office 2008 SP2

At the beginning of this week Microsoft released Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Mac Office 2008. If you use a Mac for your presentations, this is a definite update to download and install.

It promises speed, stability, compatibility improvements, and a new tool called Document Connection for accessing SharePoint collaboration. Adds custom path animations (and play PPT Windows motion paths), default theme support and it is a 300MB download… which is download using AutoUpdate.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T10:03:36-07:00July 25th, 2009|Resource/Misc, Software/Add-Ins|

Sneak Peak at PPT 2010!

Being a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP is very cool – but it is difficult keeping things to myself, honor the many NDA’s, and simply say “I think the next version of PPT is going to be really good.” Well, the Microsoft Team Blog had a post last week with an embedded video that shows a lot more than I am currently permitted to talk about – and check back for more posts as they seem to be finally revealing to everyone some of the really really exciting things coming soon! So if you want a sneak peak head over to “The PowerPoint Team Blog” here.

You can also see some videos of all the Office 2010 products at the Microsoft Office 2010 website (the PowerPoint video shows, or hints at, some of the really great new multimedia features). The link is here.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T10:03:55-07:00July 23rd, 2009|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

What Service Pack 2 (SP2) Brings To PowerPoint

I have had a lot of email and talking with people/clients about the recently released Service Pack 2 for Office 2007. I believe it is critical for PowerPoint users as it fixes, and adds, a number of key design features.

I pulled this list from Microsoft’s (Knowledge Base) KB article 953195.. It covers all Office applications, but these are the PowerPoint specific items – which I have reworded a few to make them easier to understand.

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Better Edit Points: Freeform shapes have usable Edit Points, plus increased interoperability with Office 2003.

Ungroup SmartArt Objects: Officially it says “A new XML-based representation of each SmartArt graphic in a document is saved with the file to optimize interoperability.” Which I believe is referencing the HUGE improvement that you can now ungroup any smartart object!

Faster File Save: Smarter picture compression in PowerPoint’s XML file format (.PPTX) now saves up to 90% faster than before when the presentation contains a lot of pictures.

Steadier Zoom While Editing: “Some commands, such as deleting the selected object when zoomed in would cause the slide view to snap to the center of the slide. Now the zoomed-in slide view does not move on its own.” This means less scrolling around while zoomed in and editing!

Adjust Lines without Extending to Infinity: Officially stated as “Fixes several issues that involve the object model. These fixes let you better achieve parity with Office 2003 when the object model works with graphical objects.” Which for me means I can resize a line while constraining with the Shift key and actually resize it (not have it zoom off into infinity).

Text Overlaps: Some third-party printer drivers could provide bad information, causing PowerPoint to misalign text. It now detect this situation and uses alternate settings that preserve the proper text spacing.

Vista Preview: PowerPoint is now compatible with the Vista file preview commands.

Image Exports: Images exported from PowerPoint could be corrupt or cropped. This is now fixed and the setting produces a good bitmap.

Slide Thumbnail Highlighting: Colors and effects used to indicate when the mouse was over a slide thumbnail, and when the thumbnail was actually selected could occasionally become confused and might indicate a slide was selected when it was not. These are now clearly defined and update properly.

Saving to .PPT with Styled Title Text: Some of the new text formatting in PPT 2007 has to be represented as a picture when saved to the older .PPT format. Sometimes this would cause both a picture and styled text to be saved when it appeared in a title placeholder, giving the text a jumbled or blurred look. It now detects and displays one element.

Built-in Save As PDF/XPS: Users no longer have to download the add-in separately to have the PDF/XPS option in the Save As menu, it is built into SP2 for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

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– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T10:11:49-07:00June 13th, 2009|Resource/Misc|

“Create A Spark” PPT Contest

The folks over at Microsoft Office Online are hosting a PowerPoint contest!

“Create a Spark” is for PPT 2007 entries of short presentations (10 slides max). Submissions due by June 26 and win global fame on the internet!

Find all the details here.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T10:13:05-07:00June 7th, 2009|Resource/Misc|
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