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The only reason I've opened Microsoft Outlook or any other desktop e-mail program in the last year is to test tips. Since I added my ISP account to my Gmail in-box, and moved my Outlook appointments to Google Calendar, I get all the information I need in my browser.

Now I'm getting ready to boot Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for their Web alternatives, but before I bail on Office entirely, I stuck a toe in the Web-apps water by using the free ThinkFree Online service irregularly over the past few weeks. So far, I haven't missed Word, Excel, or PowerPoint one bit. In fact, I appreciate the comparative simplicity of their Web counterparts, which have worked without a hitch--so far, at least.

ThinkFree Online is a Java-based service that provides 1GB of storage for your files, though individual files can't be larger than 10MB. You can upload .doc, .xls, and .ppt files to the site (it works with Office 2007's XML formats as well), work on them in an environment much like their native Office apps (though in a smaller window with text ads along the right margin), and return them to your desktop, where they open in the Office equivalent with all changes in place. There's also a limited-function, Ajax-based Quick Edit app for making fast, simple changes to files.

You can choose to keep your files private, or share them, either with a select group, or the world. In fact, easy collaboration is one of the great features of the service for workgroups. You can tag files for easy retrieval, but ThinkFree's search feature located the files I was looking for without having to attach tags to them.

The first time you open a file in the service, it loads some information in your Java Virtual Machine, but subsequently files load at near-desktop speed. You have to make some concessions, such as the text ads, and your selection of fonts is limited. You can't be certain your macros, functions, and other Office customizations will work in the online apps. (I haven't needed any.) Also, a browser can't match the resolution of your desktop apps, but generally the transition from Office to ThinkFree is seamless.

Work on Office documents in the free ThinkFree Online service much like you do in their native apps.

(Credit: ThinkFree)

From the My Office page you get a snapshot of your files, as well as controls for creating, uploading, downloading, and syncing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Click the "Go to the file list" button near the bottom of the window to get a more detailed view of your files, as well as to share them, tag them, rename them, or perform other operations.

The ThinkFree Online Webtop lets you upload, download, and otherwise manage your files.

(Credit: ThinkFree)

If you need to work on your files while offline, you can upgrade to the Premium Edition of the service, which is free during the beta period (no indication of when that period may end). The Premium version also lets you sync files automatically in the background, and load files larger than 10MB, though you can't open these larger files in the online version. There's also the $50 ThinkFree Desktop version, though I use the free OpenOffice.org on my Ubuntu system, which provides all the Office compatibility I need.

Even though ThinkFree offers the ThinkFree Server version for enterprises, I can understand why large organizations would hesitate to abandon Office. First there's the support costs, since their help-desk staff is trained in Office apps. Then there are the many customizations large organizations have applied to the programs. But the biggest reason enterprises will likely stick with Office is the greater amount of control it gives them over file management. I'm sure it makes a lot of IT managers nervous to think about their organization's important documents residing outside of the Office system. (Just suggesting that people save their Outlook e-mail outside of the program raised some IT hackles.)

Google's online apps loom as another Office threat
Even with my reliance on Gmail and Google Calendar, I haven't been tempted to use Google Docs full time, in part because I'm happy with ThinkFree Online. On those occasions when I have tested Google's online apps, I've been pleased with their performance. But ThinkFree comes closer to matching the Office work environment, even with those darn ads. Still, with the expected arrival of online applications using the Google Gears API for offline access, it's difficult to ignore the potential Google's services could have for current Office users. Another factor that might change my mind is whether Google Apps become more tightly integrated with other services from the company. Right now there's not much tying them together besides a log-on ID.

Tomorrow: Customize the Open and Save dialog boxes in Vista and XP.

One of the most notable additions to Microsoft's 2007 Office System was the Trust Center, which centralizes the security options in Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and the other applications in the suite. Of course, this being Office, it figures that many of the most important security features--including the new Document Inspector--also reside elsewhere.

To open the Trust Center in the 2007 versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access, click the Office button, select the Options button at the bottom-right of the window, choose Trust Center in the left pane, and click the Trust Center Settings button in the right pane. In Outlook 2007 and Publisher 2007, click Tools > Trust Center.

The Trust Center in Microsoft Office 2007 apps centralizes most of security options in the programs.

The security options presented in the Trust Center vary from program to program, but you'll likely want to start by clicking the Privacy Options button. The third and fifth options under Privacy Settings in the right window are checked by default: Download a file periodically that helps determine system problems; and Check Microsoft Office documents that are from or link to suspicious Web sites (this last option is missing in Outlook 2007).

The 2007 versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Publisher list an option to remove personal information from file properties on save (this may be grayed out), as well as a Document Inspector button, which searches the file for comments, revisions, and hidden metadata. You can also access the Document Inspector in Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007 by clicking the Office button and choosing Prepare > Inspect Document.

Listed under the Trusted Publishers tab are the companies and organizations whose macros and add-ins have an approved digital signature. With Office 2007's default security settings selected, you see a warning in the Message Bar at the top of the file window whenever a macro or add-in from an entity not on this list tries to run. Click the Options button on the bar to open the Security Options dialog box, which provides information on the blocked content. Here you can choose to let the add-in run, trust all files from the publisher, or block it (the default setting). You can also click Show Signature Details to view more information.

You can also choose to allow all files from specific folders or other locations to open with no security warnings. Just click the Add new location button in the Trusted Locations window and enter the folder or network path, if you check "Allow Trusted Locations on my network (not recommended)" at the bottom of the window. Microsoft warns against enabling this option for a reason: It provides malicious VBA scripts entering via this location unfettered access to your applications, where they can wreak all sorts of havoc.

Add folder or network paths to your Trusted Locations list in Office 2007 to avoid the security warning when files they contain open.

The other Trust Center Settings tabs let you disable all add-ins, or adjust your macro and ActiveX settings. The default settings meet the needs of most users: "Prompt me before enabling all controls with minimal restrictions" for ActiveX, and "Disable all macros with notification" ("Warnings for signed macros; all unsigned macros are disabled" in Outlook 2007).

Outlook 2007 adds the E-mail Security dialog box, where you can choose to encrypt outgoing messages and attachments, and to read your incoming mail as plain text rather than as HTML. This option helps prevent malicious content in a message from running automatically (see yesterday's post), and you can view the HTML version of messages from people you trust by clicking the warning at the top of the of the window and choosing Display as HTML.

Many of the permission-restricting options in Office 2007 apps require Microsoft's Information Rights Management/Windows Rights Management Services, but you can limit who can read and work on your files without these services in Word 2007 by clicking Review > Protect Document > Restrict Formatting and Editing. In Excel 2007, click Review and choose one of the "Protect" options in the Changes area of the ribbon. You can restrict the Word styles that can be used, or password-protect the file, though the user-authentication options once again require IRM/WRMS. You can also assign a password to a file in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint by clicking the Office button, choosing Save As, clicking Tools at the bottom of the Save As dialog box, choosing General Options in the drop-down menu, entering the password, and clicking OK.

Add a password to a file in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint via the Tools button in the Save As dialog box.

Tomorrow: keep your passwords in order, with or without a password manager.

You trust Microsoft Office with your most important documents, spreadsheets, e-mail, and presentations. Unfortunately, many of the default security settings in Office applications may not provide a sufficient level of protection for your data, your system, and your reputation. Follow these steps to fine-tune the security settings in Office 2003; tomorrow I'll cover the new security options in Office 2007's Trust Center and elsewhere.

Office 2003 lets you encrypt files so that you need a password to read or edit them. In Word 2003, open the document and click Tools > Protect Document. To restrict the styles that can be applied to the file, check Limit formatting to a selection of styles, and click Settings. Uncheck the styles you don't want to allow, or choose one of the other style-restriction options, and click OK. To make the document read-only, check Allow only this type of editing in the document, and select one of the options in the drop-down menu: Tracked changes, Comments, Filling in forms, or No changes (Read only).

Choose an option in Word 2003's Protect Document dialog box to restrict access to the document.

You can also designate the people who can access the file by clicking More users, entering their user names or e-mail addresses, and clicking OK. When you're done, click Yes, Start Enforcing Protection. In the resulting dialog box, choose either Password and enter the password twice that will decrypt the file, or select User authentication, which allows the people you designate to remove the file's protection.

The User authentication option requires Microsoft's Information Rights management, which requires the Windows Rights Management client. This in turn requires a .NET Passport account, and your agreement to the "free trial," though there's no indication if or when the trial will end. Microsoft promises to maintain the privacy of your files, and to make them available for three months after the trial ends, if you maintain the .NET Passport account. There may be a good reason to go this route, but to keep things simple, I stick with the password option. To remove these settings, click Tools > Unprotect document, and enter the password (if you chose this method of protection).

Choose Password and enter the password that will open the file, or select User authentication to allow the people you designate to read, edit, and/or comment on the document.

To protect a worksheet or file in Excel 2003, click Tools > Protection, and choose your preferred protection method: Protect Sheet, Allow Users to Edit Ranges, Protect Workbook, or Protect and Share Workbook. If you choose the first option, you're prompted to enter a password to unlock the sheet, and you can limit the actions people can take when working on the sheet. The second selection opens a dialog box in which you can specify the ranges that will be unlocked by a password by clicking New and entering the ranges. You can allow specific people to edit, or list the users who can't edit the range without a password by clicking Permissions and entering their user or group names. The third and fourth options are similar to the first, but apply to the entire workbook rather than a specific worksheet.

In PowerPoint 2003, click Tools > Options > Security, enter a password that will let the presentation be opened or modified, and click the Advanced button to select an encryption type. This dialog box also lets you remove hidden data from the file, and adjust your macro security settings (the default allows only signed macros from trusted sources, though this is of questionable value since "trusted sources" is pretty meaningless).

Outlook 2003's security options let you encrypt outgoing attachments, restrict the sites that can send you scripts and active content (the same list that's in your Internet Options), and limit the receipt of images and file downloads. But two of the most important things you can do to protect yourself from malware in Outlook are to turn off the Reading Pane (aka Preview Pane), and to view your mail as plain text. To deactivate the Reading Pane, click View > Reading Pane > Off. And to switch from HTML mail to the safer plain text, click Tools > Options > E-mail Options, check Read all standard mail in plain text, and click OK. When you want to view a message in its original HTML format, click the beige message bar across the top of the message window and select Display as HTML.

Protect yourself from malicious messages in Outlook 2003 by selecting "Read all standard mail in plain text" in the program's E-mail Options.

Protect your reputation with the Remove Hidden Data tool: Maybe you're one of the many Office users who have suffered the embarrassment of sending someone (or a lot of someones) a file that hadn't had its revisions and comments deleted. To minimize the chances of the public seeing more of your files than you intend, download Microsoft's free Remove Hidden Data tool. (I described this program and four other great Office freebies in an earlier post.)

Tomorrow: get more out of the new security options in Office 2007.

It's your presentation, and you have every right to control its pace by deciding when to move to the next slide. But there are times when you want to let the presentation run itself, or you may want to allow the person viewing it to decide when to move to the next slide (or maybe even a little of both). You can convert any PowerPoint presentation into a self-running slide show, or add controls that let the viewer go to the next slide, with just a few simple settings.

Once you've finished putting your presentation's slides in order, select one, and in PowerPoint 2003, click Slide Show > Slide Transition to open that task pane. In the Advance slide section of the task pane, check both "On mouse click" and "Automatically after" and enter the time you want the slide to remain visible. While you'll likely want to test the automatic slide loading to ensure that a slide doesn't stay on screen too long or disappear too quickly, it's a good idea to play it safe by clicking Apply to All Slides.

Ten seconds should be sufficient for most slides; if your slides take longer than that to read, maybe you should be splitting them into multiple slides, or rewriting them. Remember, brevity is the soul.

Click 'Automatically after' in PowerPoint's Slide Transition task pane, and set a time for your slides to run automatically.

To set a presentation to run automatically in PowerPoint 2007, open the file, click one of its slides, choose the ribbon's Animations tab, check Automatically After in the Advance Slide area to the far right, and click Apply to All to the left of that option. Tweak the timing of the slides by clicking the Slide Show tab, choosing From Beginning at the far left, and noting which slides stay visible too long, and which need to stay on screen longer.

Add manual slide controls
You can combine automatic slide timings with viewer slide controls to let people decide when to move to the next slide, while also moving them after a set time if they take no action themselves. Start by following the steps above to apply lengthy onscreen time for each slide. Then in PowerPoint 2003, select the presentation's first slide and choose Slide Show > Action Buttons. Click the Next button, and a plus sign appears on the slide. Click the spot on the slide where you want the button placed, and leave Hyperlink to: Next Slide selected. You can resize the button, or double-click it to view other AutoShape options.

Now select the next slide, choose Slide Show > Action Buttons, and add both a Next and Previous button. You can also add a Home and/or End button. (If you customized the appearance of the Next button on the first slide, you can copy and paste it onto the next slides.)

Add slide controls to your presentation in PowerPoint 2007 by selecting the Set Up Slide Show button to open the Set Up Show dialog box.

In PowerPoint 2007, you add slide-control buttons simply by clicking the ribbon's Slide Show tab, choosing Set Up Slide Show, and selecting Manually under Advance Slides. This adds a control bar in the bottom-left corner of the slides with icons for going to the next slide, returning to the previous slide, annotating the slide, and moving to other slides in the presentation, among other options.

Place slide controls in your PowerPoint 2007 presentation via a single setting in the Set Up Show dialog box.

Thursday: a free utility makes it easy to customize your right-click menus.

Microsoft Office is so jam-packed with features that an entire industry has been created to help people find the ones they need. (An example is Addintools' $30 Classic Menu for Office 2007.) Why would anyone suggest that you add even more functions to Office apps? Because the best free Office add-ins can save you considerable time and trouble, without costing you a red cent. Here are five of my favorite Office helpers.

Poll attendees to find the best time for a meeting
Everybody's busy, as anyone who has ever tried to schedule a meeting with more than two attendees quickly learns. TimeBridge Personal Scheduling Manager is an Outlook add-in that lets you send e-mails to the attendees with as many as five proposed meeting times. They select the times they're available or not, and they can even mark one of the times as "best." Once all the people respond, the program sends you and the attendees an e-mail suggesting the best time, which it adds to your Outlook calendar. The program places a toolbar in Outlook 2003 and 2007, from which you can create a new meeting, view your scheduled meetings, and edit your account settings.

Propose as many as five different meeting times and let TimeBridge Personal Scheduling Manager poll attendees find the best one.

You have to register (name, e-mail address, and time zone) to send meeting invitations, but attendees need not sign up, though they can invite others, and add the meeting to their Outlook or Google Calendar. You can also network your calendars to see who's available when prior to scheduling the meeting.

View the responses of meeting attendees by clicking a link in the TimeBridge Outlook toolbar.

Keep people from viewing the data hidden in Office docs
You may be sharing more information than you intend to when you send someone a Word document, Excel worksheet, or PowerPoint presentation. If two or more people have worked on the file, there's a good chance that anyone who opens the file subsequently can view insertions and--more importantly--deletions made by each person, as well as any comments they may have made, and other personal information relating to the file's creator. Microsoft's Remove Hidden Data program for Office 2003 and XP will remove such data in a file before you share it. (See below for a description of Office 2007's built-in Document Inspector, which functions similarly.)

After you download and install the program (and after Microsoft "validates" your copy of Office), you'll find a Remove Hidden Data option on the File menu of your Office apps. You can also remove the hidden information from several files at once by running the program separately. Among the information the program removes are comments, revision marks, deleted text, user names, and macros.

Office 2007 adds the Document Inspector that cleanses Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007 of revisions, versions, presentation notes, hidden rows and columns, and other metadata, including personally identifiable information. To activate this feature, click the Office button and choose Prepare>Inspect Document>Inspect. After it runs, select Remove All as necessary.

Keep your secrets by running Office 2007's Document Inspector before sharing your files.

Teach Excel some new tricks with ExTools
If you could create your own Excel toolbar, it would probably include a list of your favorite worksheets, a super-clipboard for storing text you reuse frequently, and the ability to save and back up a worksheet with one click. It may also let you switch a vertical range to horizontal (and vice versa) with a single click, reverse the order of a row of cells just as quickly, and save a selection as an Excel, text, HTML, or comma-delimited (CSV) file. You get all these features and more with ExTools, and its partner for Office 2007, ExTools RX.

I counted 67 different features, though more are being added all the time. While technically free, ExTools is officially donationware; the developer requests a donation of $5 or more, so if you find it useful, drop a few dollars in the e-hat to help ensure that the features keep on coming.

YouTube comes to PowerPoint
No matter how many fancy transitions, jumping graphics, animated lines of text, or "borrowed" comic strips you add to your PowerPoint slides, your audience will be sawing logs unless you provide them with content that matters. Shyam Pillai's YouTube Video Wizard lets you insert a YouTube video in any version of PowerPoint from 97 to 2007 with just a few clicks. After you download and install the program, just click Insert>YouTube video, insert the video's URL, choose to play it once or loop it, set the size and placement of the playback window in the slide, and then run your presentation. The video will be embedded in a slide, complete with Flash control. You must have a working Internet connection to run the video, and there's not much you can do to embellish the slides they appear on, but now you can let lonelygirl15 help you get your message across.

Send text messages from Outlook
If you use Outlook 2003 or 2007 and you're having a hard time keeping track of your text messages, why not let the program manage your SMS correspondence for you? The Microsoft Office SMS Add-in lets you treat each message like an e-mail: save drafts, view all sent items, forward them as e-mail or SMS, even spell-check messages before you send them. There are some restrictions, however: you can send messages to any phone on a GSM network, but you can't retrieve messages from the phone, and the program does not support Flash SMS or the Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS).

Tomorrow: For bullet-fast app launches, skip the menu and go straight to the command prompt.

There's a great little feature in Microsoft Word 2003 and earlier versions of the word-processing program that lets you export to PowerPoint an outline of any Word file formatted with headings. I admit that it's a specialized operation that probably doesn't get used all that often, but it's a handy way to work between the two Office apps.

I was all set to tell you how to use the feature in Word 2007 when I realized it has been removed. So all that noise Microsoft made when the new Office System was released more than a year ago about how much better the various apps would work together didn't extend to exporting Word outlines to a PowerPoint presentation. Oh, well, I'm sure Microsoft had a good reason for removing the feature.

Here's how it works in Word 2003: First, if you haven't applied headings to the document whose outline you want to export to PowerPoint, open it in Word, select the headings one at a time, and click Format>Styles and Formatting>Heading 1. Each Heading 1 entry will become a separate slide. Now select any subheadings in each Heading 1 section and choose Heading 2. These will be the entries under each Heading 1 slide.

To preview your "presentation," click View>Document Map to open a pane on the left side of the screen. If you like what you see, click File>Send to>Microsoft Office PowerPoint. A new presentation will open in that program with slides representing each of the Heading 1 entries in the original Word file.

Preview your new PowerPoint presentation in Word 2003 by clicking View>Document Map.

A plain-jane PowerPoint presentation is created from the outline of your Word 2003 document.

My attempts to find the same function in Word 2007 came up empty. I tried converting the document to PDF and then importing the PDF version to PowerPoint 2007, but this created so many nonsense slides that it would be easier simply to copy and paste the headings into the various slides. If anybody out there knows how to move the outline of a Word 2007 document to PowerPoint, please let me know.

Tomorrow: Safely disable unneeded services in Windows XP and Vista.

Correction 2:10 p.m. PDT: This blog initially misstated the savings for buyers of Office 2004 for Mac Student and Teacher edition if they choose to upgrade to the 2008 Special Media Edition. The savings would be $350.

Microsoft has improved on an earlier offer to those who buy Office 2004 for Mac before the new version of Office is released in January.

In September, the company said it would offer buyers of Office 2004 an upgrade to the comparable version of Office 2008 for the cost of shipping and handling.

Now, those who purchase Office 2004 for Mac Student and Teacher edition ($149), the Standard version ($399), or the Standard upgrade ($239) are eligible to receive the new Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition for $6.99, the cost of shipping and handling. The Special Media Edition will retail for $499.

The Standard flavor includes a single license, while three licenses are included with the less expensive Student and Teacher edition. Microsoft does not verify whether those who buy this education edition really attend or work at a school or university. However, consumers must pledge in the End User License Agreement that they bought the edition for use in a school.

The Special Media Edition includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Expression Media, an image file management application.

The discount offer lasts until January 14. Office 2008 for Mac is set to ship the next day. Customers' licenses from the 2004 and 2008 versions will remain valid.

The potential savings would be $350 for buying Office 2004 for Mac Student and Teacher and receiving the 2008 Special Media Edition for free.

Office 2008 for Mac is also available in other flavors. For $399, the Standard edition swaps Expression Media for the Entourage scheduling application. Office 2008 for Mac Home and Student, equivalent to 2004 Student and Teacher, includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for $149.

Microsoft provided an early look at the Office 2008 for Mac 11 months ago, and has been gradually rolling out details about other new features, such as a bigger selection of templates and enhanced Exchange support, and the capability to configure out-of-office settings in Exchange. No public beta tests have been made available.

At full price, Office 2008 for Mac costs at least twice as much as its competitors. Other Mac productivity software options include the $79 Apple iWork, the free OpenOffice, and the $49 ThinkFree desktop and online bundle. Additional free competitors to Office include browser-based suites such as Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Zoho Office. All options offer a word processor, and presentations and spreadsheet programs that can read Microsoft Office documents.

Microsoft is revealing more details about new features in its Office for Mac 2008 suite, due for a release early next year.

Excel 2008 for Mac will offer worksheet templates with baked-in calculations designed to make it easier to balance household finances, manage inventory and other common tasks. The new Ledger Sheets features will include a gallery of elements, shifting formulas to the background.

In addition, the Entourage e-mail client will offer more support for Microsoft Exchange, which traditionally has enabled non-Mac PC users to make appointments and share notes and files with each other.

Each version of Office for Mac will cost about a dollar more than the 2004 editions. The $149 package will lack Exchange capabilities, while $399 buys the works: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Exchange-ready Entourage.

Google Presentations, which is free, is part of the company's online office suite, Google Docs.

Right off the bat, you will notice that Presentations has some of the same basic functionality as Microsoft's PowerPoint. It does enable you to create some really basic presentations, with themes, but the lack of features and slide show polish are real turn-offs for me.

Yes, there are nice collaboration features, just like the other Google Docs applications, but if the final product isn't on par with what PowerPoint produces, those features are almost irrelevant. The omission of basic animations and transitions really take away from it.

PowerPoint-style presentations have two major objectives. Those are to inform the people to whom you are presenting and to hold their attention. I would personally not feel great about using Google Presentations on an important presentation, where I need to impress people. The presentations that it creates just do not have the "wow" factor.

Despite all of that, the collaboration features are really the service's strong point. Not only can other people collaborate on the same presentation, but when you are done, you can either share it via a public URL or present it to a group of people that you invite. This is really where Google gets it right.

Google Presentations is a decent free, Web-based solution for creating slide shows, but the limited feature set hurts it when compared with PowerPoint. I give Google some points for the collaboration and sharing features, but that's not enough to get me to switch. I understand the concept behind trying to provide a simple solution, but this is a case where simple is not necessarily better.