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.

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Removing bloatware applications from your new PC or laptop can help speed up the performance of your system.

Bloatware can be defined as software that is so overloaded with functionality that its performance suffers. At the very least, it takes a long time to load the program. If you choose to install bloatware because you want/need it, then that is fine. But when it is installed by default, it is another matter.

Thankfully, a tool has been produced to do the hard work for you. (more…)

Squeezing extra performance out of your Windows XP installation might help you get added value from your PC.

With the release of Service Pack 3 imminent, early reports suggest that adopters can expect up to a 10% increase in performance over SP2. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to make sure you are squeezing every last drop of horsepower out of your computer. Handily, Steve’s Tech Guide has a useful tweaking guide to ensure you can do just that. (more…)

When you open a PDF from a website, by default Adobe Acrobat opens it in your browser window.

This behaviour doesn’t sit well with me; I prefer to see the PDF inside of Acrobat.

To set this as the default behaviour, load up Adobe Acrobat. From the toolbar, go to:

Edit > Preferences… > Internet

Uncheck the Display PDF in browser under the Web Browser Options.

There you have it; PDFs that you open from websites will launch Acrobat Reader, and be displayed in there.

I have an Excel file which is behaving differently on my PC to my laptop (both running Windows XP Professional with Office XP). On my PC, I see negative numbers as just that - a number beginning with a minus sign, for example -247.

However, on my laptop, if I look at the same file, I see the negative numbers as numbers in brackets, for example (247). Any ideas why this is?

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