Let me (or us, as the case may be) help with questions regarding Office 2007

[unstrung]

@Northern_Piper

My problem is that when the e-mail containing the attachment is sent in html format, the names of the attachments don’t print, so the hard copy doesn’t show the attachments. If the e-mail was sent in text format, the attachments show up as icons on the printed version.

I’m having trouble replicating this issue on my Outlook 2007. When I print an html message w/ attachments, there is a field that lists the name of the attachment.

Maybe the best next step would be to confirm which version of Outlook you are using. If you go to “Help”, then “About Microsoft Office Outlook”, it should tell you.

If you are using 2003, I will cheerfully blame the earlier version of the software (but won’t be able to tell you how to resolve this - I don’t know Office 2003 nearly as well). If you are in fact using 2007, let me know and I’ll dig deeper to see what I can find out.

[Mark_Ryle]

@Dead_Badger

Y’know how everything typeset in Word looks like dogshit? That’s because it doesn’t do kerning by default (or decent justification, or any of those things that have made typography not shit for the last umpteen years, but that’s by the by). Anyway … it [Word 2007] actually does support proper kerning, it just doesn’t enable it. If you [1] open a new document, [2] right click and select Font…, then [3] choose the Character Spacing tab, and [4] check “Kerning for Fonts”, setting it to something like 8 points and above, then [5] click the “Default” button, all of your documents will magically look much, much better (assuming you’re using a font with proper kerning tables; the new Office fonts such as Calibri and Cambria have these).

What does this 8 points setting mean in “Kerning for fonts”? When I perform this procedure I notice no difference from Word’s default justification. I am able to specify any value from 8 to 72 points but no matter which I choose the text looks the same, as far as I can see. I’m using Cambria 14 font.

Following Badger’s second recommendation in that post indeed results in dramatically improved justification:

[ul]
[li]Office Button > (uppermost left corner of Word 2007)[/li][li]Word Options >[/li][li]Advanced >[/li][li]Layout Options > (at the very bottom of the dialog box)[/li][li]Do full justification the way Word Perfect 6.x for Windows does >[/li][li]Ok[/li][/ul]

This does the job very nicely and I will always use it from now on when I justify text. But what is the relation between these two procedures? Are they supposed to do the same thing? Why doesn’t the first one seem to work for me?

[unstrung]

@Mark_Ryle

This does the job very nicely and I will always use it from now on when I justify text. But what is the relation between these two procedures? Are they supposed to do the same thing? Why doesn’t the first one seem to work for me?

They are similar functions, but there are differences between them. Kerning is specific to letter spacing within each typed word - adjusting the kerning will result in slight differences (in some places, close to unnoticeable). Dead Badger’s solution deals with justification, which takes the idea of kerning and expands it to not just the spacing in between letters, but also between words. So, you end up with more dramatic differences when that option is turned on.

In this case, I agree with Dead Badger - his solution is the way to go if you want your documents to look their best.

[unstrung]

@Mark_Ryle

This does the job very nicely and I will always use it from now on when I justify text. But what is the relation between these two procedures? Are they supposed to do the same thing? Why doesn’t the first one seem to work for me?

They are similar functions, but there are differences between them. Kerning is specific to letter spacing within each typed word - adjusting the kerning will result in slight differences (in some places, close to unnoticeable). Setting the kerning to “8 points and above” means that it will use kerning for any font that is 8 points or larger, but you probably won’t notice nearly as significant a difference in smaller type as you would in very large type.

Dead Badger’s second solution deals with justification, which takes the idea of kerning and expands it to not just the spacing in between letters, but also between words. So, you end up with more dramatic adjustments when that option is turned on.

In this case, I agree with Dead Badger - his suggestions are the way to go if you want your documents to look their best.

[Mark_Ryle]

@unstrung

Setting the kerning to “8 points and above” means that it will use kerning for any font that is 8 points or larger, but you probably won’t notice nearly as significant a difference in smaller type as you would in very large type.

So that’s why the dialog box gives you the choice to limit the kerning to the larger fonts. I’ll experiment with larger fonts to see if I can notice the effect.

Thanks so much unstrung – and Dead Badger. So nice to have people willing to help us get the most out of such a complicated but wonderful product. I really appreciate it.

As you can see, unstrung, I’m now the very thrilled owner of Office 2007. I purchased it Saturday and will soon be trying out your previous fixes to my Layers problem upthread. Thanks again.

[Sailboat]

Here’s one that’s stumped me repeatedly.

Section breaks and header/footer text. We very often have documents with section breaks and sequential page numbers in the footer; the last section is a concurrence page that is later removed.

When deleting the concurrence page, Word replaces the header/footer text in the previous section with the info from the deleted section, effectively deleting the page numbers. I’ve tried adding page numbers to the concurrence page before I delete it, on the theory that the numbers would then overwrite the previous section header/footer and this appear correctly, but it does not work correctly – it’s been a while, so I forget the exact details.

Our workaround has been to blank out that concurrence page but leave it there. creating a blank, un-numbered page at the end of the document but leaving the page numbers in the rest of the document intact.

I’ve also tried making the last section “continuous” so that it’ll be on the same page as the last numbered page and thus not have the extra blank page. Word helpfully automatically adjusts the previous section break to overcome this solution, which drives me a little nuts.

This seems like a thing that should be easily solvable – I’ve been my workplace’s “answer guy” on Word for the last several versions – but it is not as simple as it appears to be.

I’d REALLY like to bust this problem.

Sailboat

[Rattlehead02]

Excellent thread! My question is this: Is there a way to save excel files as dbase in Office 2007? It was possible with 2003 and prior. I checked all the addons and found nothing. I do a lot of Foxpro work, so this would be pretty helpful.

Thanks!

[Mark_Ryle]

@Dead_Badger

… all of your documents will magically look much, much better (assuming you’re using a font with proper kerning tables; the new Office fonts such as Calibri and Cambria have these).

Cambria is an interesting font. It does many things well. I still haven’t noticed anything objectionable about it but I know those things will come, as no font is perfect.

Dead Badger is not necessarily saying Cambria is new but he seems to say it’s new for Office in Word 2007. An older version of Word on my work computer does not offer it as a font option but when I paste a paragraph written in Cambria, on Word 2007, into that older-version Word at work, the font box in the Formatting Toolbar surprises me by saying “Cambria 13.5.” (I originally wrote it in 14-point, as I recall, but let that go for now.)

There is another surpirse – it’s the same with Gmail. Cambria is not one of Gmail’s limited array of fonts but when I paste something Cambria into a Gmail it looks to me exactly the same as it looked in Word 2007’s Cambria. It also seems to be kerned the way Word 2007 kerned it, and – now wait for it – it’s justified! Gmail doesn’t offer justification, am I right?

Moreover, the Gmail looks to me as if it is justified “the way Word Perfect 6.x for Windows does” (as the description reads in Word 2007’s Layout Options Dialog Box), and as I had indeed justified the original in Word 2007. Cambria travels very well. What’s going on here?

I experimented further with this SDMB reply box I’m using right now by pasting this reply into it after actually typing it in Cambria and justifying it in Word 2007 “like Word Perfect 6.x for Windows.” As you can see, you’re not soaking in it as I had hoped.

[HookerChemical]

In Excel, is there a convenient way to create rows with summaries of data stored in columns?

Allow me to explain more clearly:
I create lots of tables with raw data with compounds names as headers like the one below.

|------------------------------------------|
|          |  chemical A    | chemical B   |
| sample X |    value       |   value      |
| sample Y |    value       |   value      |

I then create summary tables like the following:

|-----------------------------------------------|
|            |  average      | standard dev     |
| chemical A |    value      |   value          |
| chemical B |    value      |   value          |

My current strategy is to create some rows of data outside the printed area with the average, standard deviation, etc… below each column on the raw data page then use the {=transpose()} function to create the summary tables (by putting the transpose formula in the first cell, selecting the cells I want to have the values, then hitting F2 then ctrl+chift+enter). The problem with this strategy is that I can’t edit the arrays on the summary tables without having to delete the whole array, make my edit, then recreate the array.
Naming variables is the only alternative that seems to work well, but that can be cumbersome if I have a lot of chemicals.

Is there an easier way of putting the data in the summary tables?

[unstrung]

@Sailboat

Here’s one that’s stumped me repeatedly.

Section breaks and header/footer text. We very often have documents with section breaks and sequential page numbers in the footer; the last section is a concurrence page that is later removed.

When deleting the concurrence page, Word replaces the header/footer text in the previous section with the info from the deleted section, effectively deleting the page numbers. I’ve tried adding page numbers to the concurrence page before I delete it, on the theory that the numbers would then overwrite the previous section header/footer and this appear correctly, but it does not work correctly – it’s been a while, so I forget the exact details.

Our workaround has been to blank out that concurrence page but leave it there. creating a blank, un-numbered page at the end of the document but leaving the page numbers in the rest of the document intact.

I’ve also tried making the last section “continuous” so that it’ll be on the same page as the last numbered page and thus not have the extra blank page. Word helpfully automatically adjusts the previous section break to overcome this solution, which drives me a little nuts.

This seems like a thing that should be easily solvable – I’ve been my workplace’s “answer guy” on Word for the last several versions – but it is not as simple as it appears to be.

I’d REALLY like to bust this problem.

Sailboat

Here’s what I think will be the easiest way to work around this… So, when you get to the point where you are going to delete the concurrence page, you no longer need the information in that page’s footer, right? If so, you can select the footer in that concurrence page, then go to the Header/Footer Design tab. There, in the Navigation section, you should see an option marked “Link To Previous”. Select this, and Word will extend your page numbering (and whatever else you may have in the footer) to that last page. You should then be able to delete the page without any nasty after-effects.

If that doesn’t work, let me kow and I’ll try and figure something else out.

[unstrung]

@GildedLily

Excellent thread! My question is this: Is there a way to save excel files as dbase in Office 2007? It was possible with 2003 and prior. I checked all the addons and found nothing. I do a lot of Foxpro work, so this would be pretty helpful.

Thanks!

Hmm, it definitely looks like you don’t have that option in Excel. However, it looks like you can export to dbase from Access. That being the case, one option would be to create a blank database in Access, link your Excel worksheet to it, then export from Access into dbase format.

However, that seems like more of a process than you should have to do. I’m honestly not that familiar with FoxPro - can it import from .csv format, maybe?

[unstrung]

@Mark_Ryle

Cambria is an interesting font. It does many things well. I still haven’t noticed anything objectionable about it but I know those things will come, as no font is perfect.

Dead Badger is not necessarily saying Cambria is new but he seems to say it’s new for Office in Word 2007. An older version of Word on my work computer does not offer it as a font option but when I paste a paragraph written in Cambria, on Word 2007, into that older-version Word at work, the font box in the Formatting Toolbar surprises me by saying “Cambria 13.5.” (I originally wrote it in 14-point, as I recall, but let that go for now.)

There is another surpirse – it’s the same with Gmail. Cambria is not one of Gmail’s limited array of fonts but when I paste something Cambria into a Gmail it looks to me exactly the same as it looked in Word 2007’s Cambria. It also seems to be kerned the way Word 2007 kerned it, and – now wait for it – it’s justified! Gmail doesn’t offer justification, am I right?

Moreover, the Gmail looks to me as if it is justified “the way Word Perfect 6.x for Windows does” (as the description reads in Word 2007’s Layout Options Dialog Box), and as I had indeed justified the original in Word 2007. Cambria travels very well. What’s going on here?

I experimented further with this SDMB reply box I’m using right now by pasting this reply into it after actually typing it in Cambria and justifying it in Word 2007 “like Word Perfect 6.x for Windows.” As you can see, you’re not soaking in it as I had hoped.

I unfortunately don’t have an old version of Word to play with, so I have to plead ignorance for that part. But, for gmail - I tried the same experiment that you did, and noticed that when I pasted text into the new message, I did indeed see the Cambria font and the paragraph justification, just like in Word. However, it did not remain once the message was sent. I sent the test message to myself - when I opened it, the font size had been retained, but the font itself defaulted back to Arial (or whatever Gmail’s default font is… I think it’s Arial…).

So, that appears to have been some sort of optical illusion on Gmail’s part. As for why it looked that way… I got nuthin’.

PS - Congrats on your new purchase, hope it works well for you…

[unstrung]

@HookerChemical

My current strategy is to create some rows of data outside the printed area with the average, standard deviation, etc… below each column on the raw data page then use the {=transpose()} function to create the summary tables (by putting the transpose formula in the first cell, selecting the cells I want to have the values, then hitting F2 then ctrl+chift+enter). The problem with this strategy is that I can’t edit the arrays on the summary tables without having to delete the whole array, make my edit, then recreate the array.
Naming variables is the only alternative that seems to work well, but that can be cumbersome if I have a lot of chemicals.

Is there an easier way of putting the data in the summary tables?

Quick question - when you say edit the arrays, do you mean changing the values based on changes in your raw data? In other words… if the value of Chemical A in Sample X was misrecorded and needed to be changed, or if you added a Sample Z to your raw data, the standard deviation for Chemical A would change - what I believe you are looking for is that your array that you created should reflect the changed/updated/additional information. Is that correct?

If so… the array should be automatically updating itself. If it is not, your first place to check will be the “Formulas” tab. You’ll see a button in the “Calculation” section marked “Calculation Options”. Make sure this is set to “automatic”, not “manual”.

If that doesn’t take care of it, or if I’ve gone down the wrong road w/ regards to what you are trying to accomplish, let me know and I will try to think of something else.

[Sailboat]

@unstrung

Here’s what I think will be the easiest way to work around this… So, when you get to the point where you are going to delete the concurrence page, you no longer need the information in that page’s footer, right? If so, you can select the footer in that concurrence page, then go to the Header/Footer Design tab. There, in the Navigation section, you should see an option marked “Link To Previous”. Select this, and Word will extend your page numbering (and whatever else you may have in the footer) to that last page. You should then be able to delete the page without any nasty after-effects.

If that doesn’t work, let me kow and I’ll try and figure something else out.

I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what we’ve been trying and, surprsingly, not getting results with – but I’ll have to experiment tomorrow, and will let you know.

Sailboat

[Mark_Ryle]

@unstrung

But, for gmail - I tried the same experiment that you did, and noticed that when I pasted text into the new message, I did indeed see the Cambria font and the paragraph justification, just like in Word.

I’m so glad you confirm this. I was incredulous when I first noticed it and since there is no font confirmation on Gmail’s toolbar I couldn’t be sure. But you seeing the same result is good enough for me. And I did wonder whether Cambria would survive the Send to another computer. It does not, apparently, but I am going to experiment further with that and maybe consult some Gmail group about it.

The “original” I’m experimenting with is a letter to my nephew I wrote Sunday night in Word 2007 and sent to him as an attachment in Gmail (to preserve all my newly-learned kerning and justification). Monday morning at work I went into my Sent File in Gmail and brought up that attachment onto my older-version Word on my work computer. In the Formatting Toolbar it told me the font was “Cambria 13.5.” (As I said, there is no Cambria at all on my work computer). I then copied and pasted from that document being diplayed on the older-version Word into a new Gmail – into the body of the Gmail, not as an attachment – and was dazzled to see the Cambria font and all the justification and kerning intact in the body of the Gmail. From a computer that doesn’t have Cambria.

I’m very enamored of my new Office 2007. I installed it on my laptop which is my only personal computer. An original purchaser is allowed to copy Office 2007 onto another computer as long as they own it (as I understand the EULA’s wording) so I installed in on my father’s desktop as well, which I do own. He has been compiling a recipe book for months on an fairly recent version of Microsoft Works. He does not take well to any change made to his computer and he is not at all computer savvy. While I can’t say he is thrilled with Word 2007, he has made some comments that are not entirely negative. This can be taken as a very positive preliminary evaluation by him of Word 2007, believe me. Seems it does a couple things very well that Works did abominably. One is highlighting down a long page as the screen scrolls. Works fairly jumps to the end of the document making it almost imperative to redo the highlighting and in fact do it some other way. And I think the icon-based ribbons are a big plus for him, even though a new concept.

[HookerChemical]

@unstrung

Quick question - when you say edit the arrays, do you mean changing the values based on changes in your raw data? In other words… if the value of Chemical A in Sample X was misrecorded and needed to be changed, or if you added a Sample Z to your raw data, the standard deviation for Chemical A would change - what I believe you are looking for is that your array that you created should reflect the changed/updated/additional information. Is that correct?

If so… the array should be automatically updating itself. If it is not, your first place to check will be the “Formulas” tab. You’ll see a button in the “Calculation” section marked “Calculation Options”. Make sure this is set to “automatic”, not “manual”.

If that doesn’t take care of it, or if I’ve gone down the wrong road w/ regards to what you are trying to accomplish, let me know and I will try to think of something else.

I’m talking about things like reordering, adding, or removing one of the chemicals in the middle of the list. The values in the arrays do automatically update as they should.

[unstrung]

@HookerChemical

I’m talking about things like reordering, adding, or removing one of the chemicals in the middle of the list. The values in the arrays do automatically update as they should.

Ok, so we’re on the right track… based on the setup you describe, re-ordering the chemicals should result in an automatic update as well. Adding or removing samples should be ok too, since your array is based on the calculated fields that you’ve got outside the printed area.

However, once you add or remove a chemical, you’ve changed the number of items in the array - as a result, you will unfortunately need to recreate it.