Access 2007 Tutorials

Microsoft has provided tutorials to help you migrate to Office 2007 as soon as possible. The latest tutorials for Access so far are:

• Basing one combo box on another
• Shading alternate rows in a report
• Multiple column reports
• Eliminating unwanted blank lines in labels and reports
• Counting in reports
• Summing in reportsUsing parameters with queries and reports
• On time and how much has elapsed

Send your questions to MSAccess@Microsoft.com, and Microsoft will answer as many questions as possible in upcoming tutorials.

Microsoft Office 2007 Tips For The New UI Ribbon

There will undoubtedly be a slowdown as offices migrate to the new Microsoft Office 2007, especially with the new UI Ribbon, as office workers relearn how to use Office's features without the menus and toolbars they're used to. Read Christopher Elliot's article, "6 tips for increased productivity," and you'll be up to speed in no time.

Connect To Access 2007 And Excel 2007

If you don't already have the new Office 2007 on your PC, but you need to connect to an Office 2007 data file on the network or you need to connect to Sharepoint, you need the right driver. The Data Connectivity Components of the 2007 Office System Driver are now available for free download. They include the ODBC and OLEDB drivers for the ACE and Jet database engines, a driver for Microsoft Office Excel 2007 (xls, xlsx, and xlsb), and a driver for Sharepoint Services.

PDF And XPS Formats Available for Microsoft Office 2007

Thanks to a legal disagreement with Adobe, the promised PDF file formatting available from within Microsoft Office didn't happen. But Microsoft did the next best thing. Microsoft has provided a free add-in for Microsoft Office 2007 applications that will allow you to save Office files in PDF and XPS formats. The add-in doesn't work in earlier versions of Office, sorry to say. (But software manufacturers have to give you incentives like these to upgrade to their latest versions.) The only catch on this free download is that Microsoft requires validation of a genuine Microsoft Office edition before the download is allowed.

The free add-in works in these applications only:

• Microsoft Office Access 2007
• Microsoft Office Excel 2007
• Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007
• Microsoft Office OneNote 2007
• Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007
• Microsoft Office Publisher 2007
• Microsoft Office Visio 2007
• Microsoft Office Word 2007

(Some of these applications allow you to send PDF and XPS E-mail attachments.)

The add-in requires Windows XP SP-2 or Windows 2003 Server, so you can't use it on older operating systems. (Yet another incentive to upgrade your operating system, too, huh?)