If you are using Office 2007, you know by now that files are automatically saved in a format (.docx, .xlsx) incompatible with older versions of Word, Excel, etc.  Do you have problems sharing documents because of this feature?  You can, of course, change the format manually when you are initially saving your file – just by using the pull down menu as shown below.

But if you want to alter the default settings in Office 2007 to always save in a format compatible with Word 97-2003, it is easy to do.  Here is how:

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If you think blacking out information in Microsoft Word  using the highlighter and then saving it as a PDF will hide your sensitive data, you are mistaken.   A quick copy and paste into notepad, will reveal that the blacked out information is still available.

I wrote about how to properly redact a PDF document, but I just found a handy redaction tool for MS Word 2007.  It is not an official Microsoft product, but it works great.  Once downloaded and installed, the tool  appears under the tab “Review”.  Highlight the information you’d like to redact,  click on “Mark” and continue through your document marking everything you want blacked out.   When you are finished selecting and marking,  click on “Redact document.”  Your sensitive data will be inaccessible.

Word 2007 Redaction Tool

A change of season always triggers a  fit of cleaning and organizing in my world.  Don’t neglect your office technology and gadgets from a good quarterly dusting.   At the very least, have cans of compressed air on hand to loosen debris  from your keyboard and blow off accumulated dust from the back of your desktop fan.  Keeping your computer fan dust free helps it do it’s job cooling the components, which naturally extends the life of your computer.

Want to get more creative than compressed air?  I’ve found some handy cleaning devices to keep at the office.

Cyber Clean

A crazy looking putty that picks up gunk off all kinds of gadgets – keyboards, cell phones, and more.

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Its almost a dirty word, most people secretly want something better, but are stuck with windows applications due to policy at the work place or ignorance of anything else. What am I talking about? Microsoft Office.  Boy is that one entrenched, Microsoft makes quite a lot of money on their versions of office. They would rather you pirate windows than office.  

Picture from this link (full story here)

So, what are our alternatives?

OpenOffice  This is a great suite , with the exception of email it contains all you need to replace office, some would say its even better (and faster) than office. It will handle word files, spread sheets , presentations. One of the best features? It can print to PDF natively ( get with the program Microsoft) 

It can be used on Windows, OSX and Linux Download

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Sure you can get around your computer using the mouse to point and click on everything, but sometimes keyboard shortcuts are faster and easier.  One of the biggest benefits is that you’re hands don’t have to leave the keyboard.  Let’s say you’re working on writing a document and need to have some bold text inserted.  You could stop typing, move your hand to the mouse, move the mouse to the “B” icon and click it, move your hand back to the keyboard and type what you need then move back to the mouse to deselect bold (phew) or you can just hit Ctrl-b, type what you need in bold and then hit Ctrl-b to turn off bold.  Simple choice, right?

The biggest reason people don’t use keyboard shortcuts is that they don’t know what the shortcuts are.  The are hundreds of available shortcuts, some that you could use multiple times a day, some that are almost never used unless you’re in a specialized job (I almost never use macros ier

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