To my long-time, short-time, or maybe even first-time Crabby Office Lady readers:

After nearly 10 years writing the Crabby Office Lady columns, blog, podcasts, videos and more, it's time to try something new. This is Crabby's last post. However, I'm not really going away. In fact, my role is expanding. From here on you'll find me writing under my own name, Annik Stahl, on the Outlook blog for starters. You'll also find me writing for the other Office blogs and for Office.com about selected topics and events.

As Crabby, there's so much I'd like to say here...and much I can't say here because of space and emotion. The jist of it is thank you.

Here's more information about what's happening to my posts and columns, and how to follow my work as Annik from here on...  

For customers new to the Office ribbon, we know there's learning curve. While this learning curve is part of what we address with “Getting Started” content, 'ribbon angst' can persist far beyond "Getting Started." This is particularly true for folks who have a long history with Office and a deep familiarity with the menu versions of our products.

To help, I'm pleased to announce the release of the refreshed Transition to the Office ribbon page. This is the place that will open doors for you and get you really going with the Office ribbon.

You may think you know all there is about Excel--I mean, you've been using it since its inception in the mid-80s. (Well, okay, maybe you haven't. I sure haven't; my parents bought me my very first computer in 1995—a PowerMac--and it had Excel 5.0 on it. So...that makes it 15 years for me.) 

But even so, an old hat (like the Hogwart's sorting hat) can discover new tricks that it didn't know were possible. Excel 2010 has some really great new additions as well as improvements (I probably shouldn't use that word--improvements--but everything and everybody can fashion some room within themselves in order to to squeeze some in...right?).

And then one day the clouds part and Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and partying AND  fertility--which, in our context here, means productivity--smiles his sweet, naughty, benevolent smile down at you and y ιδού * you are anointed! But with what?

Read on to find out...

In the past I've touted Office Communicator and frankly, I am and have always been quite fond of that program. But I have to admit that like some past presidents and ever-present politicians, I also have a bit of a wandering eye; I've often wondered if there might be something, well, cleaner, more integrated with the other programs I use most. Something a bit more satisfying and complete than the reliable and comfortable old Communicator.

Well, look who's entered the building: Microsoft Lync (meee-owww!).

Today's topic is about how Outlook can save you from your own impetuous, fiery, trigger-happy self: I'm going to tell you how to delay a single message (akin to counting to 10 before speaking) or ALL your messages.

To me, this is an invaluable feature; an escape valve of sorts. Here's how it works...

Today's post was written by Cathy Moya, a designer on the Microsoft Hardware team. Apparently, mice are her specialty...

Confession time: I completely ignored my extra mouse buttons and keyboard hot keys until I decided to interview for the group at Microsoft that makes mice and keyboards, and then I had to cram. It was actually pretty easy, and within a few days of using all that extra stuff, I was hooked! Move over raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens—here are a few of my favorite mouse and keyboard things!

I've been sitting here for longer than I should, trying to write about how Word isn't just for text, that you can use it for just about any project you can think of because of some of its new-ish and most awesome design capabilities. But I haven't been able to spit out what it is I want to say, exactly; in fact, I've been going on and on, knowing full well I'll lose my audience before I even get to my point.

Finally, after taking a break, I realized that Tal, one of the Word bloggers, wrote about that topic quite nicely and succinctly in his post called An image, a diagram, and a chart meet and all I really wanted to do was tell you about what is probably in my top five favorite features in Word 2010: The Picture Tools. (Phew. There it is.)

When you put all that work into writing the perfect email message, it's nice to know that someone has received and read it. Outlook has a feature that can help with that, but it's a two-way street: Your recipient has to be willing to play the game too.

I like to think of it this way: When you order a meal in a restaurant, you know that the chef has received your "message" because your food arrives a short while later (provided you haven't angered the chef by making too many suggestions). When it comes to email, however, things aren't so black and white. How can you be sure that someone has received and actually read your message? To put it bluntly, you can make it easy for them to let you know...but you can't make it happen. You can set it up for your recipients to let you know if they've read your note, but it's really up to them to decide whether to let you know or not.

Oh, the games people play...

If you know me, you know that OneNote is, by far, my favorite Office program. It's not that I don't love (and probably use more) the ever-present Outlook, but it's OneNote that is so versatile, so flexible. and frankly, a lot of fun. So when the "Around the World in 40 Days" project launched, I was immediately smitten.

In a nutshell, this is what the project is: 40 bloggers write about, within the scope of a OneNote "TripBook", 40 cities. You can download the city (or cities) of your choice and when you open up the notebooks in OneNote 2010 or 2007, you get sections and pages regarding where to stay, where to eat, places to play, and more. And those sections are really just suggestions; it's YOU who makes that notebook about your dream trip come alive.

Today's post was written by Angela Chu-Hatoun, a senior programmer writer on our big Office team who's, frankly, much more technical than I am and is good at exploring the deep underbelly of programming, how it works, and how YOU can do it too.

This post originally appeared last Friday, May 13, on the MSDN Office Client Developer Content blog (friendly name: Dev Docs) and I just HAD to ask Angela if I could post it here, too. I figure it's a good tandem piece to my September 2010 post What is a macro and why you should care.