Microsoft Office And Google Docs: The Power of Two

Microsoft's desktop Office is an excellent all in one tool for creating and editing documents, presentations and spreadsheets in an offline environment. Google's online Docs tool lets you easily view and edit Office documents online using browser, very helpful when you don't have your MS Office with you. Like when you are outdoor with your mobile phone only. You may feel both are competing services, but the fact is each tool has its strong standing point. One tool is matchless in creating documents while other helps you easily access documents online on the go.

COMPATIBILITY ISSUE
Integrating MS Office and Google Docs is really an issue, as perfect integration is not possible because of limitations in Google Docs API. For ideal performance one would like to create documents using MS Office and  will wish to make files available online in Google Docs. And any change in file from Google Docs side must be recorded in desktop copy of file. But as I said perfect integration is not possible. You can try these tips to do things in a good way.

Use Google's free Cloud plug-in; a tool that allows saving MS Office documents to Google Docs with one click. Just create Office, PowerPoint or Excel file and synchronize. Your work will be uploaded to Google Docs. But the only problem with this method is that the edits in uploaded copy will not be recorded in copy of file in your computer.

Another alternate is Gladinet Desktop, this tool creates a virtual drive in your computer and in this virtual drive resides all your Google Docs resources. These documents will appear as if they are saved in your local hard disk. With this drive you can interact in classic fashion. You can edit, drag and drop. All changes will be saved to your online Google Docs account.

One last thing that you must remember is that, when you upload your docs to Google the original formating is changed. If you can't afford this then don't use Google Docs, instead use SkyDrive and Office Web Apps.

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Drawing Tool to Create Clipart in Microsoft Office PowerPoint

Watch this video and you can easily learn how to draw clipart and other shapes by using  built-in drawing tools of Microsoft PowerPoint.This video will also show you tips for perfect drawings in PowerPoint.

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Google Releases Cloud Connect For Microsoft Office

Google has launched a new feature called Google Cloud Connect which is used with Microsoft Office and gives enhanced advantages to MS Office users. Office users can do more collaborative work using cloud service.
Google Official Blog says that this new plug-in for Microsoft Office can be downloaded by everyone (Google Account is needed). It allow users to synchronize all data of MS Office from any format like Word, Excel or PowerPoint and upload these files to Google’s cloud. From there all members of group can collaborate, communicate  and work on the same versions of the files at same time.

Cloud Connect also provides "revision history" that is older versions of files are saved to undo changes. Offline editing is also allowed, letting synchronization of documents at a later date if Internet access is not available at time of writing. Beside this Google has also announced its 90-day Appsperience program that lets businesses test out all of there Google Apps for a small fee. This 90 days long test drive will cost $7000 for companies having 50-500 staff members and $15,000  if number of staff members is more than 500 people.

The Appsperience allows companies access to Google cloud, Google Apps and to Google sites along with collaboration and analytics. All this can be done directly through the control panel of Google Apps.
Google Appsperience's website says spending just $50/user per year, costs for using Google Apps for businesses is very low already, and the figures for the test drive don’t show off the savings of companies. Users of Appsperience can also use additional options like support which surely are beneficial for businesses; and this is the difference that the Appsperience users can make by first starting out cloud based setups. To find out more information about Google Cloud check this video.

Google Cloud Connect is compatible with all versions of MS Office 2003, 2007 and 2010, but not with starter edition of Office 2010. This plug-in is also incompatible with versions that use Microsoft’s Click-to-Run service.

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PowerPoint Tips: For Professional and Influencing Presentaion

PowerPoint is very easy to use application, but this does not mean that you can create professional presentations easily. Here I have compiled few tips that will help you create presentations with professional look, but before these tips check these slides.

   

1. While creating presentation always keep your target audience in mind and make your presentation appropriate for the audience! For example adding funny sounds or transitions on presentations made for group of executives is really a bad idea. On the other hand a presentation for less critical crowd, like a classroom use of such add-ons are appropriate. Neglecting or failing to understand level of viewers cost you big time, this can even put your reputation into jeopardy.

2. Display one idea per slide otherwise people get distracted. Audience will read next points while you are still discussing previous point or they will lag you and will read previous points while you’re discussing new points.

3. Create easy to read presentation. Presentations are some time useless if audience cannot read what it says. Be sure to use moderate size text, not make the text too big or small. As far I have observed 24pt is best  fonts for for text. It is hard to put all text on one slide if it is big, and  if you use small text people will not be able to read it. Using clear font is also very important. Prefer to use Arial or other modern, smooth, and of course, easy to read fonts. If possible pass out an outline of your presentation to audience.

4. Don't use thick text. Eliminating maximum text from your slides. That’s because audience will either read slides or they’ll listen you, remember they can’t do both.

5. Add decent colorful graphics, time of white simple background is gone! That means insert some appropriate picture files and add cool relevant effects, also add 3D charts and graphs if possible. Also use good appropriate themes! themes have power to make everything look great with just one click. It is a quick and easy way make presentation look better.

6. While presenting share interesting information add your own experiences to the presentation! Don’t just read slides. Describe the world outside slides and explain the experience and opinion of your own. And share additional information that is not added in slides.

7. Explain the content of slides with eye contact to the audience. This shows your confidence and conveys your message clearly. Lack of understanding from audience towards your presentation is a bad, make sure audience are clearly understanding you.

8. Nothing is more boring than text only presentation. Make sure your presentations has sufficient amount of pictures, video, sounds and other graphics. Using these things you can convey your message easily and efficiently and without boring audience. Oh, and be sure to use the cool editing effects that today’s presentation software titles have.

9. No one wants to read paragraph on your slides, show text in form of points with bullets. Audience can easily extract useful content from points.

Making presentation look good can make you look good. So remember these tips whenever you create presentation. For more knowledge read this link.

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Create Customized Icons Using PowerPoint Clip Art

Built in image editor of PowerPoint can be used to convert shapes into Icons for use in presentations. Check this video for details.

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SlideShare: World's Best Presentation Contest

Recently slideshare arranged a presentation contest based on presentations uploaded at there server. Here are top three presentations, check them and find features that make a presentation perfect.

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Use Microsoft World To Write And Edit Wikipedia Articles

Wikimedia Family

Writing and editing Wikipedia or other Wiki based website pages is very complex. The formating syntax of Wikipedia is very complex for a ordinary person. Today when we are used to work with rich-text editors like Microsoft Word or Adobe Dreamweaver, no one will like to edit Wikipedia using its complicated syntax.

But the good thing is, now you can edit Wikipedia pages using MS Word. Now Microsoft Word can generate wiki format of text for you with a single click. This feature is not built-in but you can install a free add-in to generate a Wikipedia format of your text.

First install Microsoft Office Add-in for MediaWiki, and then create and format a document in MS Word as you do everyday, and hit Save As and select MediaWiki. MS Word will convert and save your document in Wiki style markup. You can also convert a html webpage . Just open the corresponding web page in MS Word and save it as Mediawiki text file.

* The add-in is only supported on 2007, 2010 and later versions of Microsoft Office Word.

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Lorem Ipsum: Dummy Text In MS Word Document

Now one can write dummy text content using Microsoft Word. To write simply type =lorem () in MS word document and hit enter. This will add three small paragraphs of dummy content in your document, as shown bellow.

You can also add counted number of paragraphs and lines by passing values in above mentioned command like this =lorem(5, 6)

You can also insert the  “quick brown fox” text in your Word Documents by using this command =rand.old(5, 6)

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Free PDF Editor: Create And Write PDF Files

Adobe PDF reader is perfect tool if you only need to read and print files. But if you want to edit and create your own PDF's then you will have to upgrade. But here are few apps that will help you do this with out spending any money.

Creating pdf

Microsoft Word 2010 and later has introduced the option of saving word document in pdf format. So you can create pdf files as simply as you create .docx files.

Nitro Reader gives you freedom to work with pdf files they way you dreamed. With this tool you can read and create PDFs. You can also convert Office documents, webpages and virtually any other formaat files with pint button into pdf format. Simply drag your files to Nitro Reader icon on desktop and your files'll be converted into PDFs instantly. With this tool you can use any image as your stamp. So to sign a PDF file, simply add stamp using Nitro Reader. Another adorable feature of this software is “Extract Images” this allows you to export all images from a PDF into files.
Nitro Reader is also recommended because it is very simplicity with easy to use display panes and installs in only 25MB hard disk space.
Nitro PDF Reader software is available for download for Windows XP, Vista and 7 (both x86 and x64 editions). Download Nitro form Nitro website.

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