Microsoft Office is without a doubt the killer app of the Windows era and
must be the most pervasive software application of all time. Almost everyone
uses it, either at work or at home. But despite its widespread adoption, only
a handful of the Office suite components are typically used: Microsoft Word,
Excel, Outlook, Access, and PowerPoint—and to a lesser degree, Publisher
2003, InfoPath, and OneNote. As one of the most feature-rich products ever made,
Office has far more features than most people are familiar with. Of the many
little-known tools in Microsoft Office 2003, here are my 10 favorites.
10. Picture Manager—In Office 2003, Microsoft Office Picture Manager replaces Photo Editor. Accessible
from the Microsoft Office Tools menu, Picture Manager lets you locate, manage,
edit, and share digital photos. If you've ever helped a friend try to locate
pictures that he uploaded from his digital camera and promptly lost, you'll
understand the value of Picture Manager.
9. Internet Free/Busy service—To share your calendar with other people across the Internet, you can
use the Internet Free/Busy service (IFB). To access the IFB, go to Outlook and
click Tools, Options, Calendar Options, Free/Busy options.
8. Document Scanning and Document Imaging—Microsoft Office Document Scanning and the related Microsoft Office Document
Imaging work together. The scanning tool lets you use your scanner to capture
images, and the imaging tool lets you view and annotate documents, rearrange
multipage documents, and send document images through email. You access both
tools from the Microsoft Office Tools menu.
7. Equation Editor—Expressing mathematical formulas in documents can be a challenge. Equation Editor
provides a toolbar of symbols and automatically adjusts font size and spacing
as you build an equation. From Microsoft Word, click Insert, Object, then select
Microsoft Equation 3.0 from the Object type menu.
6. XML task pane—InfoPath and Excel aren't the only Office tools that can work with XML—you
can also open and edit XML documents by using Word's XML pane. To open the pane,
click View, Task Pane and select XML Structure from the drop-down box in the
upper left corner of the window.
5. Research task pane—The integrated Research pane lets you easily do research as you write,
without leaving Word. Click View, Task Pane, then select Research from the drop-down
box in the window's upper left corner. With the pane open, you can type words
or highlight document selections and look up information in an online dictionary
and encyclopedia.
4. Translation task pane—The Translation task pane can quickly translate documents and words into other
languages. To open the pane, first open the Research task pane, then scroll
to the Translation section and select the language conversion you want from
the drop-down boxes.
3. Save My Settings Wizard—The Save My Settings Wizard is great for moving all your customized Office settings
to a new system. Using the wizard (access it through the Microsoft Office Tools
menu), you can save your Office settings in an .ops file, then restore that
file on another system.
2. Access Snapshot Viewer—Access is included only in Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003, but sometimes
you want to share database reports with people who don't have Access. The Access
Snapshot Viewer lets a user view Access report snapshots without installing
or using Access itself.
1. MS Query—I use MS Query a lot. This graphical query editor lets you build and execute
queries against most ODBC/OLE DB databases and return the results to Office.
You access MS Query by either running msqry32.exe or using Excel's Data, Import
External Data, New Database Query option. MS Query isn't part of the default
Office installation. If you need to install it, click Start, Control Panel,
Add/Remove Programs, then select Microsoft Office. Click Change, then select
Add or Remove Features. Select the Choose advanced customization of
applications check box, click Next, then expand the Office Tools node. Locate
MS Query, click the drop-down arrow next to it, select Run from My Computer,
and click Update.