Microsoft says that by next month, users worldwide will be able to get their hands on the free, online version of its Office suite.

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

I’ve had Outlook 2007 running successfully on Windows 7 for almost eight months but yesterday it would not send a single email!

I could receive email but not send any, so I researched the problem online and discovered a lot of people had email problems that all resulted in the error message:

‘Outlook cannot connect to your outgoing (SMTP) e-mail server. If you continue to receive this message, contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP)’

The culprit is the outgoing SMTP protocol which, by default, uses port 25 for sending email to its correct destination.

A suggested answer was to change the SMTP port from 25 to 587 so I used a online form to contact my ISP to see if they agreed. A prompt reply (good service from 1and1) said – ‘Please be advised to change the outgoing port number from its default number 25 to its alternative port number 587′.

I fired up Outlook, went to Tools – Account Settings and double clicked the troublesome email account. I then went to the More Settings button and clicked the Advanced Tab. I then changed the outgoing server port (SMTP) from 25 to 587, clicked OK and then clicked the Test Account Settings button and Outlook connected successfully.

Although 1and1 didn’t mention why port 25 had been causing problems, it’s more than likely that it was blocked to stop a lot of spam email hitting their email servers.

Happily everything is now back to a fully working copy of Outlook 2007!