To this point in the blog, I've covered most of the new features that we've added to Excel 2007, but I wanted to quickly mention a couple of tools that folks use in Excel and where they can be found in Excel 2007 – specifically, the Solver and the Analysis ToolPak (ATP) Add-Ins. Enabling Excel Add-Ins First, a quick detour, since I haven't covered this in great depth previously : enabling these add-ins is done through the Office Button | Excel Options | Add-Ins, which is where all Add-In management...

Recently, we received the follow question and I thought I would share the answer with everyone: Is there a way to change the baby blue color to something more customized or at least revert back to the same color scheme of Outlook 2003? To change your Office theme, click “Tools” in the toolbar, then “Options”, and then on the “Mail Format” tab, click “Editor Options” as shown below: Then select a different theme (Blue, Silver or Black) next to “Color...

One of the more popular features for Outlook’s calendar is the capability to add your country or region’s holidays into your calendar. This way, you’ll never miss the next holiday. Adding holiday items to your calendar is pretty easy: From the Tools menu, click Options, then click Calendar Options. Click the Add Holidays button under Calendar options. Select the check box next to your location, and any other location you might be interested in, and then click OK. Note for Outlook...

PowerPoint has a lot of great pre-set shapes, but sometimes what you really need is a tailor-made shape for your presentation. If you’re looking to go beyond the Freeform Tool and create more complex custom shapes, there's a feature called Combine Shapes in PowerPoint 2010 that helps you do just that!  It uses the principles of Boolean Geometry, to help you create new shapes by combining multiple shapes in one of four ways: Union, Combine, Subtract, or Intersect.

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Starting today,  you can plug Facebook and Windows Live right into Microsoft Outlook through the Outlook Social Connector. You can view your social network as you look through your email  to stay connected with your friends, family, and colleagues. Check out the video, and then read further to see key links for what Outlook users can do starting today:

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Today’s post is brought to you by Frederique Klitgaard. Frederique is a writer on Office.com It’s easy to understand why the IF function appears in the top 10 list of popular Excel functions. It’s a versatile function that can be used for all sorts of tasks. For example, this function can save you a lot of time when you need to grade a stack of papers. It quickly turns a long list of test scores into grades without having to do any of the math. It can also instantly determine who...

Most of the "Download a trial" links and banners on our site will take you to trial versions of the full Microsoft Office 2010 editions. While all of these suites contain Microsoft OneNote 2010, you may prefer to evaluate OneNote 2010 as a standalone program — in English or in another language.

Read the full blog post to find out where you can get the standalone trial versions for the Office 2010 programs you want.

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Hello everyone. My name is Alessio Roic and I’m a Program Manager on the Outlook product team here in Redmond. Today I will cover how to connect to your Hotmail accounts in Outlook 2010. In previous versions of Outlook, connecting to Hotmail accounts could be done using one of the following methods: Creating an HTTP account (also known as DAV protocol) – this allows users to establish a basic connection to their Hotmail mailbox and to synchronize their Inbox only. Installing Outlook Connector...

We are pleased to announce that a new version of the Excel Viewer is now available for download . To quote the download site: " With Excel Viewer, you can open, view, and print Excel workbooks, even if you don't have Excel installed. You can also copy data from Excel Viewer to another program. However, you cannot edit data, save a workbook, or create a new workbook. This download is a replacement for Excel Viewer 97 and all previous Excel Viewer versions. "

Do you love the conversation arrangement introduced in Outlook 2003, but feel like there is something missing? Well there is! By default, the conversation arrangement doesn’t include your contribution to the conversation. With just a few steps, you can configure Outlook to save copies of all outgoing messages in your Inbox to create what I like to call the Ultimate Inbox. Take a look at my Inbox and you’ll see the messages I’ve sent are right alongside incoming messages making the...