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Mark your calendar for ‘early 2014’ ‘coz that’s when Microsoft will release Service Packs for Office 2013, SharePoint 2013 and Exchange 2013.
The service pack will apply to anyone using the ‘download then install’ version of Office as opposed to the streaming ‘Click to Run’ version supplied to subscribers.
For ‘Click to Run’ users, software changes are pushed to your computer on a more regular basis and, if all goes well, in the background.
Office 2013 SP1 will have the usual ‘performance enhancements’ and ‘feature updates’ and ‘improve compatibility’ with Windows 8.1. In other words the usual platitudes that cover a series of bug fixes, security patches and other embarrassments from Microsoft.
The Exchange 2014 update will include one important change for users; support for S/MIME signed and secure emails in Outlook Web App.
It’s a good bet the Service Pack will, yet again, have that nasty trick from Microsoft that comes with all updates. When Microsoft releases the Service Pack they’ll also admit to software bugs they’ve been keeping secret from customers until they can announce the fix. They call them 'previously unreleased fixes'. It’s PR damage limitation tactic that’s little comfort to customers struggling with bugs in Office. Check out Bug? What Bug?
... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...The Guardian’s Datablog has another interesting analysis, this time of caffeine levels in different foods.
Sounds boring until you read that reduced sugar colas have almost double the caffeine of a regular, sugared, cola. Or 1 cup of coffee can have as much caffeine as 2 cups of tea (depending on the brew time) while a single Red Bull can has less caffeine.
They’ve published the original US FDA data in a Google Docs spreadsheet which can be exported to Excel (File | Download As | Microsoft Excel)
In Excel you can format and chart the data as you’d like:
So grab a cup of coffee and Excel your heart out!
>... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...The New York Times has a fairly glowing review of Apple’s word processor, Pages in comparison with Microsoft Word.
The review notes that Pages has a less cluttered interface which may suit some people with basic editing needs.
But some features like vertical ruler and shortcuts have been removed entirely from the latest release with Apple now promising to return some items in the future. Could you imagine the screams and derision if Microsoft tried that with Word? There’d be rioting in the streets of Redmond.
Sharing of documents is glossed over in our view. Sure, you can use iCloud to share a document and edit it but it’s not that easy. Most people will not be happy to open up yet another web editor just to edit the document you sent; and that’s assuming they have the fast Internet access necessary. Like the online sharing options from Microsoft and Google, Apple assumes everyone is comfortable using their system.
... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...One of the great things about the recent Internet is the availability of previously hidden data. Large blocks of information have been collected, checked and published online. Combine that with a tool like Excel and you can do your own analysis!
Here’s just one example of what’s available and how to get it into Excel.
Recently the University of Pittsburgh released Project Tycho, a painstaking compilation of US public health data. It’s taken a lot of work to find the information, check it, enter into a computer form and normalize it.
The headline in the press was the unsurprising result that vaccinations improved public health and saved many millions of lives.
We were more interested in looking at the ‘raw’ data and seeing how it looks in Excel. Project Tycho lets you do that for polio, measles, rubella, mumps, hepatitis A, diphtheria and pertussis. Go to university web site, create an account and login.
... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...The latest release of Google’s Android has a list of blocked words that won’t show up as suggested autocomplete as you type.
Back in July 2013 we told you about the ‘kill list’ of words on Apple iOS devices. It’s a list of words which iPhone or iPad won’t show as suggested spellings as you type.
In both cases, these lists seem to be arbitrarily and inconsistently compiled.
For example ‘Sunni’ and ‘Iftar’ are on the blocked list but other Islam related words like ‘Shia’ are not. ‘Morphine’ is blocked but ‘Marijuana’ and ‘Bong’ are not.
Again, we’re interested to see how Microsoft Word deals with words that Google thinks we need protection from. So we put together a quick list of some of the curious Android ‘bad’ words to see what Office suggests as alternative spellings, if anything.
We did a similar thing when the Apple kill list was revealed. We’ve all had some laughs at strange autocorrect suggestions and omissions from the Microsoft supplied dictionary.
... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...Down in Australia there’s some special offers for Office 2013. Alas, when you look at the details it’s not such a great deal.
The Get Modern offers for small businesses are summarized by Microsoft like this:
The headline says “15% off Office 2013 Pro Plus + Windows 8 Pro” which can be taken one of two ways:
Guess which one Microsoft chooses? Correct – 15% off Office 2013 software only and possibly not even that.
This offer isn’t a cashback or discount from Microsoft (the company is very firm on this latter point). The resellers are ‘required’ to pass onto customers discounts of ‘up to’ 15% when buying specific combinations of Windows 8 and Office 2013 Professional Plus.
You have to buy at least 5 licences of each type to qualify.
We’d be curious to hear from customers who have tried getting this promotional discount (as always, confidentiality assured) since the wording is quite vague.
... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...Down in Australia there’s some special offers for Office 2013. Alas, when you look at the details it’s not such a great deal.
The Get Modern offers for small businesses are summarized by Microsoft like this:
Let’s look at the $30 cashback offer ….
To get $30 from Microsoft you have to buy a PC or tablet with Windows 8 Professional (not a cheaper version like Home Premium) AND a year’s subscription to Office 365 licence (Small Business Premium, Midsize, E3) with a minimum purchase of FIVE computers plus licences.
The company has to have less than 250 employees and be new to Office 365. Volume License purchases don’t count.
You have to purchase the Office 365 subscription via Microsoft’s Australian agent Telstra – which charges more for exactly the same service purchased in other countries.
You have to buy during the ‘promotion period’ 1 October 2013 - 24 December 2013 but here’s the kicker – you have to apply within FIVE days of purchase. Miss that 5 day deadline or not submit all the necessary paperwork in that time and you get nothing. Cashback offers normally allow a lot more time to redeem; this trap alone will save Microsoft a lot of money.
... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...We’ve already talked about getting prices from the Amazon.com web site into Excel with automatic updates. Now let’s look at how to do it for BestBuy.com prices.
Excel has had a method of web scraping for many versions you can find it at Data | Get External Data | from Web.
Place your cursor in the cell where you want the scrape results to go. For reasons that’ll become obvious, it’s best to insert the results into a separate worksheet for each product.
Go to Get External Data | From Web. Paste in the link to the Best Buy product page you want to check and press Go. You can browse in the Web Query window but it’s usually easier to find the page in a normal browser then paste the link into the Address field of the Web Query.
As you can see above, there’s only one main table you can select on the Best Buy Page (unlike Amazon product pages which have many smaller tables to select from). Click on the arrow top left to select most of the web page, then Import to continue.
... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...
With Black Friday coming in the USA, it’s time to carefully check prices and look out for bargains. Ideally get those prices automatically and put them into Excel for comparison.
To do that for Amazon means ‘scraping’ or trying to grab prices from a web page. Web scraping can be hard because a web page isn’t designed for simple extraction of data. Amazon makes scraping hard because the company doesn’t like price ‘bots’ which check prices for rivals.
There are various commercial services, VBA addins etc available to get price data from Amazon to Excel on a commercial scale while trying to bypass Amazon’s limitations.
In this article we’ll show you a ‘quick and dirty’ method of getting prices from an Amazon web page. These steps work without VBA code and you can follow each step, changing to suit your needs.
Excel has had a method of web scraping for many versions you can find it at Data | Get External Data | from Web.
... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...
Office 365 Home Premium subscription currently lets you install Office software on up to five computers in a household as well as get some ‘bonuses’ like an hour of Skype calling time and 20GB of Skydrive space. However control of those installs and the 20GB cloud storage is only available to the original subscribers Microsoft account.
From December 2013 (no date has yet been given) the subscription purchaser can share their subscription with four other household members. Each person has their own Microsoft account which can control or get Office installations from the five licenses allowed under Home Premium. This sounds great but perhaps not all households want to let each member grab an Office install license without the permission of the original buyer. We’ll have to wait and see how this works.
There are also changes to the 20GB of Skydrive storage bonus. At present only the purchasers Microsoft account can access the extra cloud storage. With the December 2013 change, each household member gets their own 20GB of storage. In effect boosting the entire household Skydrive storage to 100GB (i.e 20GB for each of five household members).
... click here to read more at Office-Watch.com ...|
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