Solutions to your PC problems
28 May
Don’t want to buy the expensive Microsoft Office suite? A nice alternative is OpenOffice, but what is even nicer is version 3 which is due to come out in the very near future.
Currently, version 2.4 is out now, but the new version of OpenOffice has been released for evaluation by the general public. The latest release 3.0 supports the OpenDocument format as standard and will work with files from the most relevant applications. (more…)
11 May
I have a copy of Microsoft Office 2007 on my laptop. When I save files from Word, I can’t open them on my PC, which has Office 2003. So, why can’t Microsoft Office 2007 files be opened in Office 2003?
The reason is due to Microsoft creating a new file format called Office Open XML. There are numerous advantages to this, one being smaller file sizes compared to the older version of office. By default, all Office 2007 files now have an x added to the end; .doc is now .docx, .xls is now .xlsx and so on. Therefore previous versions of Office cannot open these new files natively.
3 Jan
Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 3 prevents access to certain file formats that the software assesses as being less secure, and bizarrely, it includes its own files.
SP3 will block access to some Excel 2003, PowerPoint 2003 and Word 2003 formats, as well as Corel Draw files.
Microsoft said: “By default, these file formats are blocked because they are less secure. They may pose a risk to you.”
Full details of the issue can be found in a Knowledge Base article on Microsoft’s website.
Note: A workaround has been provided for users who need to access such files but the default is to disable access.
10 Jul
Microsoft has released six new patches that you might be interested in.
The critical updates are:
The important updates are:
The moderate update is:
More detailed information can be found in the July 2007 bulletin.
To check what patches your PC may need, visit Microsoft Update.