Posts Tagged ‘Office for Mac’

Speed up pasting in Word with scripts

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008

[Although I use it a lot at work, I don't usually post Word tips on Hawk Wings. This one, though, is too good to pass up.]

WordformacIf you do a lot of cutting and pasting from one document to another in Word (2004 and 2008) and want your pasting to adopt the style of the new document, you will know what a pain in the butt it is.

Word expects you to go to the Edit menu, choose Paste Special and then select Unformatted Text in the next dialog box and click OK.

I couldn’t count the number of hours I’ve spent doing this. I came to accept it as an Office for Mac user’s fate; something that just had to be endured.

Joe Kissell, senior editor at TidBITS, has the shortcut I wish I had discovered years ago. In a TidBITS post he provides the scripts needed to reduce this convoluted process to a single keystroke.

As he points out, I could have automated this with the macro-recorder in Word 2004. Never thought of that!

But Word 2008 has lost its scripting support for Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and ,along with that, the ability to record macros.

Instead, in Word 2008 you will need to use AppleScript.

Joe provides the steps for setting up the macro in Word 2004 and the applescript Word 2008 users will need to get the same result.

He even unlocks the mysteries of the way a file called Paste Plain Text\smV.scpt is automatically bound to a keystroke shortcut.

Check out his article and other newsy posts and tips at TidBITS.

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Entourage gets Spotlight, Sync Services support

Wednesday, March 15th, 2006

entourage100pxEntourage finally gets Spotlight support in an update for Microsoft Office for Mac 2004 released today.

The update features improvements to all the Office apps, but Entourage gets some features that users have long been asking for. (Remember the Entourage developer who posted here in January looking for user feedback and feature suggestions?)

According to the release notes:

  • Entourage now syncs with Mac OS X Sync Services. Users of Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later versions of Mac OS can synchronize Entourage items with other programs, such as Address Book and iCal. You can also synchronize items with other Macintosh computers via Apple’s .Mac online services, and with portable devices, such as phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs).
  • Users of Mac OS X 10.4 or later versions of Mac OS can use Spotlight to search Entourage items. You can use Spotlight to index all unencrypted Entourage items and search their contents.
  • Entourage can use smart cards to sign, encrypt, and decrypt e-mail messages. For users of Mac OS X 10.4.2 or later versions of Mac OS, this update provides improved compatibility with Mac OS keychain support for smart cards, such as Common Access Cards. As a result, Entourage can use certificates and private keys stored on smart cards to sign, encrypt, and decrypt Entourage e-mail messages.
  • SSL connections to Mac OS X 10.4 servers work correctly Entourage and other Office programs are more compatible with self-signed certificates, which are used to establish secure (SSL) connections to servers running Mac OS X 10.4 Server.
  • Entourage is smarter about handling iCal invitations
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Entourage to get Spotlight and iSync support

Wednesday, January 11th, 2006

entourageMicrosoft has announced at MacWorld San Francisco that Entourage will soon have Spotlight and iSync support.

From March this year, Entourage users will be able to search their emails with Spotlight, finally bringing Entourage into line with Word, PowerPoint and Excel, which already have Spotlight support.

Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit will also bring iSync support to Entourage, so that users will soon be able to sync their Entourage calendar, address book, notes and tasks with handheld devices that also work with Sync Services.

Entourage will also gain new converters to allow it to read the new Microsoft Open Office XML formats.

Microsoft introduced these improvements as part of a promise to continue the development of Office for Mac for another five years. ?¢‚Ǩ?ìWe?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ve had many years of success with Office for Mac”, Microsoft Consumer Productivity VP Tom Gibbons said in a press release, “and this formal commitment confirms that we?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re in the Mac business for the long haul.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù

[Thanks, Dan!].

The full text of Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit after the jump…

(more…)

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