The company said on Monday that the Office 15 technical preview was being shared under non-disclosure agreements, with the customers testing early builds and giving Microsoft feedback on their experiences.

“At this early point in our development cycle, I’m not able to share too much about Office 15, but I can tell you Office 15 is the most ambitious undertaking yet for the Office Division,” Microsoft Office development chief PJ Hough said in a blog post. “With Office 15, for the first time ever, we will simultaneously update our cloud services, servers, and mobile and PC clients for Office, Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, Project, and Visio.”

Hough’s announcement coincided with Microsoft’s publication of the SharePoint 15 technical preview managed object model software development kit (SDK), for those on the technical preview programme.

Microsoft Office 15 is still something of a mystery though, as very little information has been released so far.

Source: ZDNet

Well the simple, and great looking option is to use a Slide Background.

A slide background is a simple gradient that will turn any standard barebones deck into one that looks very professional.

To add a simple background to your PowerPoint 2007 presentation:

1. Click on the “Design” tab of the ribbon

2.Look for the “Background” group – on the right hand side of the ribbon

3. Click on “Background Styles”

4 Select your preferred background

You will notice that not all the colours of the rainbow are available.

Background styles are linked to the current colour palette that you have selected in the document. If you play around with the colors by clicking on the Colors button whilst you are still on the Design Tab of the ribbon, you will notice the background colour change to match the new palette.

To turn on gridlines (which appear in the background of your document, and do not get printed):

1. Make sure you are on the ‘Page Layout’ tab of the ribbon.

2. Look for the ‘Arrange’ group – on the right hand side of the ribbon.

3. Click on Align.

4. Click on ‘View Gridlines’.

To turn gridlines off again, just repeat the process above. You will notice that there is another option when you click on ‘Align’, called ‘Grid Settings’. Using this feature you can customise how the grid appears and impacts in your document. For example, you can ensure that objects snap to each other, the spacing of the grid, and whether the grid uses your margins or not. This is a very good option to use if you want fine control over the placement of objects in your document.

If you have a large spreadsheet you will have to scroll down the page to see all the fields and totals. As you scroll down the page your descriptive column headings disappear from view. The best way to remedy this is to freeze the top row of your Excel 2007 spreadsheet.

To Freeze the top row in Excel 2007:

1. Click on the ‘View’ tab of the ribbon

2. Look along the row for the ‘Window’ group

3. Click on ‘Freeze Panes’ and then click on ‘Freeze Top Row’

To reverse the operation, just repeat the process above, but instead of clicking ‘Freeze Top Row’ in step 3, just click on ‘Unfreeze Panes’.

To sort from high to low using Excel 2007 just follow these simple steps:

1. Select all the cells that you want to sort.

2. Now click on the ‘Data’ tab of the Ribbon menu and look for the ‘Sort’ group.

3. Click on the “Sort Z to A” button – this is the one that has a ‘Z on top of an A’ with an arrow pointing down.

That’s all there is to it!

You’ll be pleased to know that this pinging noise is a configurable feature of Outlook 2007. To turn of (or turn on) audible email notifications in Outlook 2007 take the following steps:

1. In the top menu bar of Outlook 2007 click on ‘Tools’.

2) Now from the list produced click on ‘Options’. Make sure you are on the ‘Preferences’ Tab.

4) Now click on ‘E-mail Options’ and then ‘Advanced E-Mail Options’.

5) Just a little way down in this display box is a section called ‘When new items arrive in my Inbox’. Remove the tick from the ‘Play a sound’ option if you want to silence Outlook. To get the sound back just put a tick back in the ‘Play a sound’ option.

6) Click ‘OK’ three times to close all the open windows and your finished!

The To-Do Bar is located on the right side of Outlook 2007. It shows you a calendar, your upcoming appointments, and your task list.

The task list shows:

1. Messages you need to respond to (flagged messages).
2. Contacts you need to call (flagged contacts).
3. Tasks that come up spontaneously.

By default there should be three upcoming appointments shown in the To-Do Bar, but you can customise this display to show any number of appointments.

To increase or decrease the number of upcoming appointments shown in the Outlook 2007 To-Do Bar take the following steps:

1. Right click at the top of the To-Do Bar.

2. Click Options’ from the drop down menu that appears.

3. In the ‘To-Do Bar Options’ box that appears, change the number of appointments to your preferred number.

Although you can choose more appointments than can comfortably fit on your screen, it’s not wise to go too far – 5 or 7 appointments would be the upper limit to make the To-Do Bar in Outlook 2007 most useful and practical for day to day use.

If this practice continues to annoy you, you will be very pleased to know there’s a setting in Outlook 2007 to ensure that the spelling and grammar checker only checks the content that you have written.

To ignore the original message text in reply or forward take the following steps:

1. Click ‘Tools’.

2. Click ‘Options’.

3. Click on the ‘Spelling’ tab.

4 Check the box ‘Ignore original message text in reply or forward’ and then click OK.

This action will tame Outlook 2007 into just checking what you have written in your email.

It’s good to know that, by default, Outlook 2007 will save a draft every three minutes.

But if you are concerned about the possible loss of all your important work, you can change how often Outlook 2007 saves your emails.

Here’s how to increase or decrease the AutoSave time for draft emails

1. Click on the Tools Menu at the top of Outlook 2007′s Toolbar and from the drop down list choose ‘Options’. Make sure you are on the ‘Preferences’ tab.

2. Now click the ‘E-mail Options’ button.

3. Next, click the ‘Advanced E-Mail Options’ button (about half way down the open window).

4. Beside the first checkbox ‘AutoSave items every:’ change the number to the number of minutes you would like the interval to be (between 1 and 99).

5. Click OK three times to close all the open windows.

To find your draft emails that Outlook has saved, just take a look in your Drafts folder.

In a post on the Office Blog earlier this week, the company said that it had expanded Office Web Apps availability in 150 new countries including Mexico, India, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, and that by next month it will hit “all remaining markets in Central and South America.”

The free service, which contains Web-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, was launched by Microsoft in June of last year. Microsoft says that 30 million people are now using it.

In its blog post Microsoft added “If you’re one of the more than 30 million people who are using the Web Apps, we’d love to hear from you on the Web Apps Facebook page at www.facebook.com/officewebapps. Join the conversation and let us know what you think. To get started, or for more on the Web Apps, you can go to www.office.com/webapps“.

Source: CNET