I just got a new computer running windows 7. It only came with a trial version of microsoft office and now I should pay and get microsoft office. I see on the microsoft soft there is a beta version of 2010 currently offered free.
So, should I just download this free beta or am I just asking for trouble? Any knowledgeable people want to advise?
I dunno about the MS Office beta specifically; sometimes they’re stable, sometimes they’re not. Sometimes MS’ final releases aren’t stable. 
You could download the beta, in addition to the offerings from sun.com/software/staroffice/index.jsp). That way you’d have options if the beta turned out to have glitches at a particularly inconvenient time.
Another free option is symphony.lotus.com/software/lotu … e.nsf/home (no, I don’t use it) or Google Docs 
Google Docs is nice for viewing files and maybe for some lightweight doc and xls editing, but not much more beyond that. The 1GB of any file storage is handy though.
There is also going to be a free “Starter” edition of Office 2010 that only includes Word and Excel 2010. There is a beta test of that on connect.msdn.com too. Could be handy if you never have a need for Outlook or PowerPoint.
I have the 2009 version of Office and have to remember to save all the docs in an old format because otherwise no one else seems to be able to read them
File>Options>Save>Save files in this format:
I’ve been using MSO2010 beta for months, it’s fine. A couple of quirks using Outlook with Exchange accounts, but most people won’t have that setup.
Thanks, everyone. I have been using the Beta version for a couple of days. So far, so good.
I am now having trouble opening excel and word files sent to me as attachments… I get the message that there is no driver or program attached to that file I want to open. Is there some trick to getting office 2010 to automatically open these (eg. xls) files sent as attachments?
Have you tried right clicking the files and select open with and then pick the right program from there?
This should’ve been setup automagically at the install of office… 
[quote]Have you tried right clicking the files and select open with and then pick the right program from there?
This should’ve been setup automagically at the install of office… [/quote]
Yes, I did… but word and excel don’t seem to show as options. I can save the files then open the office program, and then open the file, but I can’t open it straight from say an email where I want to download the file.
Maybe I need to reinstall windows.
Care to elaborate? Head office in their infinite wisdom have decided to switch to Exchange Server 2010 so I can no longer get mail with Thunderbird. Evolution doesn’t yet support this version of Exchange via Connector, so it looks like I’ll have to switch to the dreaded Outlook (kicking and fighting), but I am damned if I am going to pay for the privilege of installing a hacker-friendly piece of shit software on my own PC. Outlook Express doesn’t support calendars which is the whole reason for the migration in the first place.
[quote=“asiababy”][quote]Have you tried right clicking the files and select open with and then pick the right program from there?
This should’ve been setup automagically at the install of office… [/quote]
Yes, I did… but word and excel don’t seem to show as options. I can save the files then open the office program, and then open the file, but I can’t open it straight from say an email where I want to download the file.
Maybe I need to reinstall windows.[/quote]
Some times you actually need to browse to the executable file of the program itself if something went a bit funny during the install.
Here’s a way for resetting the file association in Window XP sevenforums.com/tutorials/19 … store.html
There seems to be an easier way for Office which should hopefully work with your version
[quote]You can do this by starting Excel from the Run dialog box on the
Windows Start menu using the /regserver switch. Open the Run dialog,
then enter
Excel.exe /regserver
and click OK. This causes Excel to set itself back to “factory
defaults”. You may need to include the entire path to Excel[/quote]
The same should be possible to do with word by replacing Excel with Word
Both of these are bugs in the beta and will almost certainly be fixed when 2010 is finally released. They may also be unique to certain Exchange setups, for example the OTA issue appears to be related to hosted Exchange accounts (which mine is via CHT) so not everyone will see them.
When first setting up the Exchange account, and if using OTA, if you supply your credentials as email address (e.g. me@company.com) + password, setup will fail. Instead you have to use Windows domain\user name (e.g. workgroup\me) + password
Whenever you launch Outlook, if you log in to the Exchange account straight away Outlook will hang. You can sometimes get it to respond again by “canceling server request” in the right-click menu of the tray icon.
The simplest way around this is to simply cancel the first log in prompt, and then manually initiate a log in by going to “Send/Receive > Type Exchange password and connect”
@aisababy
What do you use to download your email? gmail, thunderbird, hotmail, yahoo, internet explorer, firefox, outlook…?
I use explorer, and my hotmail and gmail accounts. I have also discovered I can’t open documents without first opening the program. I can open an excel file from excel, but I can’t have it open from the “documents” list directly.