Pippa's Place

Quote

Create and share a new Office Live workspace

The first time you open your new workspace at Office Live Workspace (http://workspace.office.live.com) you don't have any files set up and you need to use the New menu to create new documents or save Excel, PowerPoint or Word documents from your desktop.

However, if you want a set of documents for a particular task, all you need do is choose to create a new workspace and make your choice from a wide range of options.

and

In general you'll get a set of documents including a note file to jot down ideas, a to-do list, contacts list for working with others in a group, a PowerPoint presentation file, a Word document and others.

At this stage it's worth pointing out that you can share your new workspace, that is, all the documents that are set up, with other members in a group so your team members can contribute. As leader of the team, you decide whether other members can edit documents or are restricted to simply viewing them. Once you've chosen your team members, they'll receive an email notification to go to their new workspace and all the necessary documents are automatically at their disposable.

A real bonus is that members of your team don't all need Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook or Word installed on their own computers to take part in your group's work. Your team can contribute online through the workspace Note document, log when they've completed a task in the To-do list or view what other team members have written up in a Word document or PowerPoint presentation.

webDotWiz chose a Project workspace and after the document list page loaded he changed the title of the project to WNews articles and entered a short description.

Here's the list of files that are automatically created as part of this new workspace:

Documents now available to webDotWiz include a notes file for brainstorming and comments, a Word document to type up the proposal for this project, two PowerPoint documents to use for before and after presentations, a contacts list, a schedule for important dates and events during the life of the project and a to-do list.

A similar list of documents is created for you if you choose one of the other workspaces when you choose to create a new workspace.

If you're the leader of a group that's going to work together, now is a good time to click the Share button and have Office Live Workspace send off an email to those in your group (remember to choose those members who can edit and those who are only allowed to be viewers).

Once they've clicked the link in the notification email they receive, they can sign in with their Windows Live ID and see that they have their own workspace with all the required documents.

If you've allowed others to edit documents then any changes they make and save in their workspace become available to other members of the group (the Modified by column records the email address of the person who last made a change).

As well, over on the right-hand side of a workspace page is the Activity pane which also keeps you up-to-date with what changes have taken place to documents. As well, you can leave a comment, using the Comment button, in the Activity pane.

The above is just an introduction to the different workspaces you can create in Office Live Workspace either for yourself or a group to work together. Once you start spending some time in a workspace you'll come up with plenty of ideas of how you can make best of the service. By the way, it's free!

Posted using Windows Live Writer, with the help of Paint.NET, Live Photo Gallery, Microsoft OneNote, and, of course, Microsoft Office Live Workspace.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft Office Live Workspace,OneNote,Live Photo Gallery,Paint.NET,workspace

Quote

Office Live Workspace hints and tips

webDotWiz has good reason to give you more information on using Office Live Workspace. This type of service which combines files in your documents folder on your hard disk with storage on the Internet (in the cloud to use today's jargon) is a pointer to the not-to-distant future of software plus service (to use a bit more jargon).

Last week Microsoft announced Live Mesh, a platform which will enable us to connect to all our devices (e.g., desktop PC, laptop, smartphone) to access our files and applications regardless where we are as long as we have a connection to the Internet. Now one sentence doesn't in any way describe the implications of the Live Mesh platform and it's best to read through (several times, it's suggested) Ray Ozzie's memo (Ray Ozzie is the brains behind Live Mesh).

Anyway it's time to talk about some hints for using your Office Live Workspace (http://workspace.office.live.com).

Opening and saving documents

When you're working in Word, for example, and you've saved your document for the first time using Save as on the File menu, subsequent saves using the quick save icon (the icon that looks like a floppy disk) will save your file to your hard disk (as normal).

Now you want to save your document to your Office Live workspace so you use Save to Office Live on the File menu. You'll be asked to sign in for the first time and the dialogue box will pop up asking for a file name. So give a name and click Save.

If you make some edits to your document and click the quick save blue floppy disk icon, your document is saved to the your Office Live workspace but not to your hard drive because your last Save as was to your workspace. So to make sure your document also gets saved to your hard disk, click on Save on the File menu.

When opening a file from the File menu, keep an eye on the Open dialogue box that pops up so you check whether you're opening a file from your documents folder on the hard drive or from documents folder on your Office Live workspace.

The screenshot above shows the normal view of a My Documents folder (notice the My Documents location is highlighted under the Look in: column on the left).

In the following screenshot webDotWiz has changed his location to Microsoft Office Live to open a document from his workspace.

For those with a version of Office earlier than Office 2003 you can save your document to your Office Live workspace using Add document that's on the toolbar in your workspace.

Using workspaces

Each new Office Live workspace user has a documents section automatically created. You could simply use this area in which to store all your different documents online (as well as on your hard drive). However you may want to better organise groups of documents into their own workspace (this is somewhat akin to setting up separate folders under My Documents on your hard drive).

As time goes by then, create new workspaces for each group of documents. You can create new blank workspace and add your documents.

Another option is to browse the different types of workspaces on offer - each has a group of files specifically targetted to a certain group of documents you can use for the job-in-hand such as class workspace, essay workspace, planning a trip or managing a sports team.

One of the options available after setting up a new workspace is to share this workspace with other people. As owner of the workspace, you decide who to invite and whether the members of your group will be able to simply view files or the privilege of changing files. Note that each member of your group will have a new workspace set up for them containing the same files as you do.

Using the Notes file and Activities pane

If you set up a shared workspace use the Notes file to jot down ideas for other members of your team to comment on and get feedback and ideas from your team. Each team member will see all the contents of the Notes file so it's a simple way for everybody to keep up to date.

The Activities pane on the right-hand side of the workspace shows the changes made to documents and by which team member. Even so, it's a good idea that each team member leave their initials with any idea or feedback they enter into the Notes file.

Office Live Workspace and Skydrive

Office Live Workspace gives you, at the moment, 500 megabytes of free online space for your Excel, PowerPoint and Word documents. Skydrive provides 5000 megabytes of free online storage. If you're ho-humming about whether to use these free services, answer this question: What would happen to your documents, photos and videos if your hard drive had an unrecoverable error and it had to be replaced?

On a positive note, Office Live Workspace and Skydrive are services that enable us to have access to our files regardless of whether we're at home, at work or visiting friends.

More importantly, we’re getting a glimpse of the future where the platform and experience will enable us to be in control of and manage our devices and their content wherever we are.

--------------

Posted using Windows Live Writer with the help of Microsoft OneNote, Windows Live Photo Gallery and Paint.NET.

Technorati Tags: Office Live Workspace,hints,tips,webDotWiz column,Live Mesh

Quote

Virtual Earth - Bird's eye view and 3D

 
Video: Virtual Earth - Bird's eye view and 3D

Quote

Introduction to the Visual Basic Programming Language

  
Video: Introduction to the Visual Basic Programming Language

Quote

pythagora switch

  
Video: pythagora switch

Quote

Share and socialise with Messenger and Spaces

In the last column webDotWiz took you through some major changes that had been made to Live Spaces. In particular he showed off the new layout on each person's Spaces homepage where we can see what our Spaces friends have updated on their space, whether it be some writing, a new photo album or new list.

Ok, so let's work out a simple way to make use of this information. Note these updates come to us so we don't need to spend hours visiting lots of web sites. It's just a matter of getting into the habit of doing a couple of things once we go online.

webDotWiz is now urging everyone to sign in to Live Messenger as usual - perhaps scan through your contact list to see who's online and who's updated their Space by looking for a gleam alongside their nickname. The next step is to click the icon at the top of Messenger to open up your Space's homepage where you can check the What's new section to see your Messenger contacts who have updated their Space lately.

At this stage all you need do is hover your mouse over each contact's profile picture and wait a few seconds for their contact card to appear. The contact card will give you the title of their last blog entry and display the latest photos they've added to their Space. Hint: choose those people who have a gleam alongside their profile.

Nothing new? Then hover your mouse over the next profile picture.

An important point to make at this stage is to ensure you type a short but informative title for each blog entry you make on your Space. For example, it took webDotWiz a few days to realise that his titles for his Sites for the day (e.g., Sites for 27-Jul-2007) didn't mean much unless he added a couple of keywords to describe some of the sites he was listing. So US trip movie provides more information to your family and friends than Overseas trip.

Were you expecting to see some new photos on a relative's or friend's Space but there's nothing new? Now is your chance to use the Send a message link on their contact card to remind them. Or you've looked at their photos or they've put their latest Photo Story movie on their Space and you want to congratulate them or ask a question - use the Send a message link. Or you want to check the date when that family reunion is to be held and ask who will be taking photos - another use for Send a message.

But, you say, all I wanted to do was do a search for some information, and you've made me go through all those steps. Ok, have a look at the top of your Space's homepage and you'll see where you can either search all Live Spaces or the Web.

In summary, get the gleam glowing alongside your name and profile picture on your family's and friend's Messenger and Live Spaces and send a message to say thanks when family and friends gleam in return.

Technorati tags: Windows Live Spaces, social networking, Windows Live Messenger, keeping in touch, sharing