Microsoft Office
Business users generally use one of Microsoft's bundles in their Office series. Depending on the year of purchase and the amount paid, you will end up with one or more of the following:

Word - essential - if you want to send documents by e-mail to others who might want to edit the document, there is no other option. One tip - if Word one day fails to start, it may be that the file normal.dot has become corrupted. Go to Start>Search and find this file. Then delete it. Word will re-create it next time it starts. The settings for your normal style will revert to the default and if you had changed them you'll have to change them again.

Excel - essential for spreadsheet users - for the same reasons as for Word if you share spreadsheets with others. If you'd like to add tools to Excel (approx 300), see ASAP Utilities. Lots of useful improvements.

Power Point - the standard for Business presentations. Most home users will not need this. However there are e-mails that are distributed that use PowerPoint format . To read these (.ppt, .pps or .pot) PowerPoint Presentations, Microsoft has a free PowerPoint Viewer available here.

Outlook - the big brother of Outlook Express. As well as e-mail, includes a good Contact manager (good because it's integrated with e-mail), a Task list, a Calendar with reminders etc and a Notes feature. For a comparison with other e-mail programs, see E-mail on our Browsers page.

Concerning management of attachments: If not configured correctly, all attachments will be barred from being received. To receive any attachments, be sure to configure as follows: In Outlook, select Tools>Options>Mail Setup>Send/Receive>>Edit>Download complete item including attachments. Also, like Outlook Express, attachments with "dangerous" extensions (like .exe) are barred although there is more flexibility with Outlook. Extensions are actually classified as Type 1 or Type 2. Type 2 can be enabled using the technique described on our security page but Type 1 can never be enabled. However, a utility is available that allows you to selectively move programs from type 1 to type 2 - thus enabling any attachment if you are brave enough! Get the program here.

Download of pictures in HTML emails. For Outlook, select Tools>Options>Security. On that page you'll see a button under Download Pictures labelled Change Automatic Download settings. Click that button and uncheck the check box beside Don't Download pictures or other contenet automatically in HTML Email. If this box is checked, you won't see many pictures in your emails. For this issue in Outlook, click here.

One disadvantage of Outlook is that when you reply to someone, it does not allow you to automatically add this person and e-mail address to Contacts as can be done in Express. But then Express only stores name and e-mail address and nothing else. However, you can buy an add-on ($15US) to Outlook that does automatically add names and addresses.

Moving e-mail data between Outlook versions: If you just bought a new computer, you will want to move your Outlook data to the new one. For e-mails, that's easy, just copy the .pst file (which is typically in the location: C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>\ Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\ ) and paste into the corresponding location in the new Computer. But although you'll see the contacts in the new location, you can't use the contacts for your address book for e-mail. That's because the 2 contact books are incompatible. To transfer Contacts, Export the Contacts from your old computer using File>Import and Export... Choose Excel as the file format. Copy the resulting file to the new computer. Now select all the contacts (you may want to use a list view) and delete! Then while viewing "Contacts", use File>Import and Export>Import from another program or file to import the Excel file you just created. You may have to map one or more fields (e.g. e-mail addresses) to be sure that all data gets imported. When complete, the contacts are now available and in the new format and can be made available as a source for the address book.

Access - if you want a data base and you are not a full fledged data base programmer and you like Reports to look good, then Access is for you. Like Power Point, many people you want to send reports to will not have Access. If you would to send them a report anyway, you will need the Access reader - called Snapshot Viewer! More here.

Other Office Programs. There are several other Microsoft Office Programs that have the advantage of being integrated with each other and having the same "look and feel". However, since they are fairly specialized, only a very brief description is given here.

• InfoPath - For electronic forms.
• Live Meeting - Internet Meetings (If you need it, you need it!)
• OneNote - Computer version of Yellow Post-its! Integrated with Outlook - best for hand-helds.
• Project - Project Management, Pert charts. (Has been the standard in the work place for a while).
• Publisher - Desk top Publishing - if you do a lot of newsletters intended for printing, makes life easier.
• Visio - Drawing program. Often too large and expensive so try Smart Draw which is faster, cheaper, simpler and better for many users or ConceptDraw which is cheaper, Visio compatible and runs on Macs as well.

Converting formats. If you bought a new computer, you might have saved money by not buying Microsoft's office suite. But other people will often send you files in Office formats e.g. Word [.doc], Excel [.xls], Powerpoint [.pps or .ppt]. To read these files - but not modify or save the new version - get the Microsoft readers. More here.

Word Perfect.

However, there are programs that can read (read only) many formats - in fact, once installed you feel like you can open anything! One such program is Quick View Plus version 9 (go to www.avantstar.com then choose Software Store). The catch is that the price is $46US. To transfer between formats, open in Quick View Plus, select all, copy, then paste into Word! But, if you happen to have WORD and want to write in .wpd (Word Perfect format), you're out of luck. (Note: Quick View Plus does not open Microsoft Publisher - there is no known program other than Publisher that will open these files).

Free Office Software
The best known (and loved!) free Office Software is OpenOffice. Although there are many people who have tried this and swear it is a great program - or collection of programs - it is still not in widespread use. The latest version is 3.0 and includes a data base program, word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program etc. There are two reasons why you might want to use this program: 1. you want to save money even if there's a learning curve; 2. You don't want to use a Microsoft product. It also exports to pdf which is useful. But it's not quite up to Micosoft Office - notably the Data Base program is not relational.

It will save in many other formats although the compatibility is not always clean.

• Cannot be modified and be mistaken for the original
• Never has macros so cannot hide a virus
• Relatively compact even when including graphics
• Virtually everyone can read it since the Reader is free (Download Adobe Reader 9.0 here)
• It's fairly easy to generate a pdf file - for example Word Perfect users can "publish to pdf". Or you can use Adobe Acrobat 8.0, full featured and costing from $300 to $500US. But if you just want a simple conversion this is too expensive so you should use a free program like PrimoPDF. This is better than many of the alternatives and totally free as well.
• To edit a .pdf file or convert it to Word, you need either the full Acrobat Reader from Adobe or a pdf to Word converter. If you have a couple of documents to do, try the trial copy of Solid Documents' PDF to Word Converter. To keep it longer than 15 days, you'll need to pay $50 US.

There was one disadvantage with Adobe Reader.... It took a long time to load/startup. Versions 7.0 and up load much faster - download the new version (click icon below) and it will replace the old and is faster to start.

Works This is Microsoft's answer to Word Perfect. It is a watered down version of Word and Excel with read only capability of Word and Excel. The advantage is price. The same comments made above for Word Perfect apply here. One item of interest, if you want the full version of Word, you can get it in Works Suite which is still cheaper than the cheapest Office! Works Suite also includes some other programs such as Picture It so it could be the answer for some.

Data Base Programs
If you want a data base at home, it is hard to justify the cost of buying Microsoft's Access (many people just use Excel). For a good alternative for a single user, go to PLWorx and download dbWorx. But as always, a new program has a significant learning curve. Open Office has a data Base but it is not relational when used on its own so has few advantages over Excel (see free Office software above). But for many purposes, Excel handles many data base functions and will suit many people.

Notes
If you would like Microsoft's OneNote but are reluctant to pay the price - try EverNote - it's free.