Maarten van Stam - Soft As In Software :-)

Just while I'm in Redmond to discuss the next version of Office, Office 2010, the second service pack for Office 2007 came available for download.

So if you think you found some bugs in Office 2007 SP1 or earlier, install Service Pack 2 to check if your issues have gone away.

The 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2 (SP2)

From my own experience I know that at least the performance improved a lot for Outlook. And that alone for me is a reason to install the Service Pack without delay.

Is this Service Pack an improvement for your installation? Let me know!

I always seem to have trouble getting the right Office Outlook Connector.

I recently bought a new machine and for now I am test driving Windows 7 on this machine to see how it serves my needs for my daily home stuff to experience what the average end user is experiencing. The downside is of course that everything I used to use had to be reinstalled but get the benefit of having a clean and fast machine in return.

Back to the connector. When I look for the latest download I end up on several locations and never find the right one. After installing I was reading a mail with the latest downloads of MS products and there was a link to the version that was just posted.

So if you like me are searching for the latest Outlook Connector:

Microsoft Office Outlook Connector http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9A2279B1-DF0A-46E1-AA93-7D4870871ECF&displaylang=en

Early this year I reviewed a new book on VSTO development for beginning and intermediate Office developers and only a week or so the book VSTO 3.0 for Office 2007 Programming was released to print and published.

The book is written by Vivek Thangaswamy who besides writing is also awarded Microsoft MVP in the expertise area of SharePoint Server, close related to the topic of his new book.

The book explains how to start developing Office 2007 applications using VSTO 3.0. With step by step examples he shows you how to create applications for InfoPath, Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint. The book will help beginners and intermediate developers to create their first Office applications.

To give you an impression of his writings I now have a sample chapter for you available to download here. By clicking on the title of the sample chapter below you can open it in Adobe Reader or save it somewhere for reading later on.

Enjoy!

Update:
The publisher (Packt) offers some combi deals you can check out (want only the pdf? Or both? It's available!)
http://www.packtpub.com/vsto-3-for-office-2007-programming/book.

Sample Chapter title
Microsoft Office Outlook Programming <- Click to open (PDF)

Book description
A step-by-step guide for brand-new Office developers who want to explore programming with VSTO. This book contains complete step-by-step instructions and simple explanations about VSTO programming of entire Office applications. It covers the concepts of VSTO, VSTO architecture, its features, and versions using practical examples, to help beginners and intermediate developers develop real-world Office applications. Separate chapters cover programming InfoPath, Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint. This book is aimed at .NET developers, familiar with C#, who want to get to grips with programming Office 2007. The book will also be useful for those of you who already have experience with VBA and programming Office, but are ready to take the next step into the more powerful world of Office programming with VSTO.

Just got the announcement … ok, ok, ok it was someone Tweeting on Twitter pointing out to me that SharePoint Designer 2007 can be downloaded for FREE as of April 1st (And it appears NOT to be a joke!). How is that for an economic crisis.

Now, if you want it, go out there and get it from:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=baa3ad86-bfc1-4bd4-9812-d9e710d44f42

The reason for all of this is to is explained by Tom Rizzo:

Mix is like PDC, TechEd and similar events one of the soapbox areas where big vendors make big announcements. There has been already a few announcements but most of them were announcements of Betas, CTPs, SDKs etc.

This is another announcement, however one of going Gold:

Internet Explorer 8 will be available at noon EDT on March 19 here: http://tinyurl.com/5zejnv
source: http://tinyurl.com/c4zum4

Go and get it ... at noon EDT [16:00 UTC, 17:00 GMT+1 ... I think ;-) ]