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Previously:
Fear of Exchange
Moving Mail Online With Microsoft Online Services

Small businesses should strongly consider having their Outlook mailboxes hosted on Exchange Servers run by Microsoft for a small monthly fee. I’m going to recommend this to a number of my clients and I encourage anyone interested to contact me to talk it through. I’d like anyone in a business with 2-20 employees to read this carefully!

For businesses currently running Exchange in an onsite server (usually as part of Small Business Server), the move to hosted services does not significantly change the experience of using […] continued

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It feels as if the smartphone revolution has happened overnight. I am simply astonished at the number of business people and lawyers getting iPhones from AT&T and Android phones from Verizon. I rarely saw them in businesses a year ago – they were still perceived as gadgets, not serious business tools. Now it’s starting to seem unusual not to see them in everyone’s pocket.

The phones are capable of many wonderful tricks but almost everyone tries first to set up over-the-air sync of mail, contacts and calendar. It doesn’t always go well!

• Individuals who have fully

[…] continued

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I’m strongly urging my clients running Small Business Server to move their mailboxes to online hosted Exchange servers. I’ll give you a bit of background and tell you an anecdote to explain why Exchange frightens me, then tell you more about Microsoft Online Services next week.

Microsoft released the first version of Small Business Server in 2000. It was updated in 2003 and 2008, and a new version is planned for next year. It is a customized collection of several Microsoft server products, bundled up to be installed on a single server. The products are the same […] continued

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Previously:
OneNote 2010 – Introduction

OneNote 2010 has been tightly integrated into Outlook, as well as Word, Powerpoint, and Internet Explorer. It opens up a completely new way to use OneNote – almost as an accessory to those programs rather than a standalone program, with all of OneNote’s power to hold different kinds of information (notes, pictures, links, screenshots) and link those notes to items in the other programs.

OUTLOOK

The easiest example: think about attending a meeting that’s on your Outlook calendar. When you highlight the appointment in your calendar, the ribbon bar includes a […] continued

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Previously:
Displaying Contacts In The Outlook Address Book
Sorting The Outlook Address Book By Last Name

For some reason the ribbon bar in Word 2007 and Word 2010 does not have a button to push that brings up the Outlook Address Book for inserting addresses into Word documents, envelopes, and the like. It’s an easy fix but I don’t understand why it has to be fixed. I thought people did this all the time – store addresses in Outlook, then drop them into Word with a single click, right? Humph.

Word 2007 and 2010 have a “Quick […] continued

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Previously: Displaying Contacts In The Outlook Address Book

When you open the Outlook Address Book to address an email message, the names in your Contacts folder are sorted by first name. Lots of people want them sorted by last name. It’s one of those mildly irritating things that requires changing a deeply hidden setting. It seems like the kind of thing that would be listed under “Options” in the Address Book menu, doesn’t it?

Here’s the sequence from Windows 7 and Outlook 2010. It’s similar in earlier versions of Windows and Office.

• Open Control Panel.
• Type “mail” in the

[…] continued

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When you click on the TO: button to address an email message in Outlook, most people expect to see a list of their contacts. If your mailbox is run by Microsoft Exchange, chances are that you’ll see the short list of users inside the company, not the people in your Contacts folder.

Big companies can develop more complex systems of address books. This simplified description is aimed at very small businesses with Microsoft Exchange (typically either Small Business Server or a hosted account at Microsoft Online Services, OwnWebNow, or the like).

When Microsoft Exchange is running […] continued

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Previously:
Office 2010 – Technology Guarantee
Microsoft Office 2010 – Suite Comparisons
Should You Buy Microsoft Office 2010?

Microsoft Office 2010 went on sale Tuesday at local stores and through online retailers. My articles, linked above, describe some of the differences between the different versions; in the next few weeks I’ll tell you about new features.

If you want to do some research, here are three places to start.

• Microsoft’s Office home page
• Paul Thurrott’s exhaustive collection of reviews and screen shots
• Eric Ligman’s list of links to Office 2010 resources

There are […] continued

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Previously:
Office 2010 – Technology Guarantee
Microsoft Office 2010 – Suite Comparisons

Dell is shipping new computers with Microsoft Office 2010 now and it will be on the shelves (virtual and real) to buy on June 15. This is the collection of tools you use every day to do your work and organize your life. Should you upgrade to the new version?

I’m going to offer some generalizations aimed at home and small business users who buy Office individually. The rules are different at bigger companies.

• NEW COMPUTER 

If you’re buying a new […] continued

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Microsoft Office 2010 will be on sale on June 15 – new versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, and the rest. (It’s been available to enterprises with volume licenses for a few weeks now – big businesses live in a separate world from regular consumers, with different versions of products delivered on different dates.)

If you’ve bought a new computer or a standalone copy of Microsoft Office 2007 in the last few months, you probably qualify for a free upgrade to Microsoft Office 2010. The process is similar to getting a rebate – you’ll have to fill […] continued

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