Entourage for Exchange EWS

A couple of days ago, Microsoft posted on their site an announcement about the availability of a new beta for Entourage. This new version allows Exchange 2007 users to access their e-mails through Exchange Web Services (EWS for short). This has serious advantages over the previous method (using WebDAV). Much faster You can now sync categories, tasks notes, etc, Now be careful. This update is not for everybody. It cannot connect to an exchange server through WebDAV, so if you have an account on Exchange…

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Messenger A/V beta

Just out on the MacTopia blog: A beta of Messenger with A/V support should be out in 2009. It doesn’t say when in 2009, but at least it’s coming 🙂 A demo should be up and running at MacWorld. Thanks to Nadyne for pointing this out to me, Tout frais (en anglais) sur le blog de MacTopia : une version béta de Messenger avec supprot A/V devrait être disponible en 2009. Ça ne dit pas quand en 2009, maius au moins ça vient 🙂 Une démo…

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Antidote RX v8

(in French since the application is mostly directed at people who at least understand French) Antidote RX vient d’être mis à jour en version 8. J’avais parlé précédemment de cette excellente application permettant de corriger le français en s’intégrant dans de nombreuses applications (dont Office). Au menu, de nombreuses nouvelles locutions, des corrections de bogues divers et une intégration améliorée à de nombreuses applications. Les notes de la mise à jour sont ici.

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PocketMac iCalScreenSaver

The PocketMac folks just gave me access to their latest app: PocketMac iCalScreenSaver. I must admit that I like it 🙂 It’s a MacOS X Screen saver that will display your calendar for the day, then the week, then the month. You can select which calendar to display, and they offer a few themes. One limitations though: The application only works with iCal. If you manage your calendar in Entourage, you will have to enable SyncServices in the Preferences to let Entourage sync your calendar…

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Extract media files from PPT, Word, etc, / Extraire des fichiers multimédia de PPT, Word, etc.

Once in a while, I am send a Word or Excel document with a bunch of pictures in it. Sometimes, I need to get these pictures (usually to modify them, or reduce the file size, etc). There is no really easy way to do this in Office. Of course, you can copy and paste the image from Office to whatever image editor application you want to use, but you never know what format the image was in, etc… It’s usually not a lot of fun.…

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EndNote X2 for Mac OS X

Thomson Reuters just announced the release of EndNote X2 for Mac OS X. EndNote is a bibliography manager that integrates in Word (usually used for complex scientific manuscripts where you have to cite dozens of references in a specific format). The new version has an improved UI (still far from Papers IMHO), supports smart groups, and downloads PDFs automatically for your references. It’s an improvement for sure… Thomson Reuters vient d’annoncer EndNote X2 pour Mac OS X. EndNote est un gestionnaire de bibliographie qui s’intègre…

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Silence…

(en français plus bas) I’ve been rather silent lately. It’s a bit sad since there was a lot of things to talk about. It’s just that I’ve been really overwhelmed and I just could not find the time to sit down and post here everything that was going on… One of the most important news is that VBA is coming back in the next version of Office. That means that everybody who relies on VBA (and I know quite a few) will benefit from a…

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Word 2008 blog (in French/en français)

(Since this is about a site in French, I’ll post the rest of this post in French too) Yves Cornil, un des MVP pour Office:Mac vient de lancer un nouveau blog sur Word 2008 Beauoucp d’information sur Word (qui restent pour beaucoup également valables pour les précédentes versions). Vous trouverez notamment des informations pratique sur la façon dont on peut effectuer un nombre important de mises en page. À visiter donc 🙂

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Office 2008 Scripts: Fix double-click issue/Correction du problème du double-clic

Steve found yet another file type affected by the 12.1 update for Office 2008 (“XLS ” for Excel files downloaded through FireFox 2). I therefore added it to the scripts found on this page. FireFox 3 apparently corrected the problem and no longer assigns obsolete file types to Office files. Steve a trouvé un type de fichier supplémentaire affecté par la mise à jour 12.1 d’Office 2008 (« XLS  » pour les fichiers Exel téléchargés par FireFox 2). Je l’ai donc ajouté aux scripts que l’on…

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CrossOver 7 Mac

CrossOver 7 for Mac OS X came out today. The new version now supports Office 2007 for Windows. With Office 2008 for Mac, I should be all set, but it’s sometimes nice to be able to use the Windows version for a few things not supported on the Mac one (VBA for instance) and CrossOver is a pretty good, light-weight solution to run these applications without requiring to install Windows and run it under a virtualization environment. CrossOver 7 pour Mac OS X est sorti…

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Excel 2008: Error bars / barres d’erreur

Virtually every time I use Excel, I use it to play around with data and plot the results. Excel 2008 had a nasty issue: you could not add custom error bars to a chart. The application would display it if it had been created in a previous version of Excel, but the user interface to create a new one was simply not there. Well it’s fixed in the Service release 1 🙂 I can finally trash Excel 2004 and use 2008 instead (I don’t really…

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Scripts (again) for the File Type issue in Office 2008

Thanks to Steve Maser, I’ve been able to correct additional issues. I now have two scripts. The first one works through Drag & Drop. You can drag files or folders on the script and it will scan for the old file types and replace them with the new ones (recursively in the entire folder if you dropped a folder). At the end of the process, it tells you that the files have been converted. It doesn’t necessarily mean that files were outdated and were converted,…

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Second version of the Office 2008 converter script

Well Steve Maser asked me to come up with a version that would work recursively on all files inside a folder you would drag to the script. He also suggested that I added the W6BN type (for Word 6/95 files). So I based the script on one of the examples provided by Apple, and here is the result: — This droplet processes files dropped onto the applet on open these_items    repeat with i from 1 to the count of these_items       set this_item to item i…

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Converting files for double-click in Office 2008

In the Service release 1 for Office 2008, Microsoft decided to prevent files with old file types to open through a double-click or a drag and drop (and don’t know why and that’s not the point here). There is a workaround to open these files. MS recommends that you use the Open dialog from within Office applications. If you have hundreds of old files affected with this problem, that’s hardly a decent solution. You can batch-wipe out the creator code of your files as well.…

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Réparation automatisée des fichiers refusant de s’ouvrir avec Office 2008 SR1

Grâce à l’aide de Steve Maser, nous sommes parvenus à trouver une solution plus automatisable pour réparer les fichiers qui refusent de s’ouvrir dans Office 2008 SR1 d’un simple double-clic dans le Finder. Le problème semble être lié aux codes Type et Créateur de ces fichiers. Leur suppression permet de pouvoir à nouveau ouvrir ces ficheirs d’un double-clic. Il existe de nombreux utilitaires pouvant vous assister dans cette tâche. Celui qui me vient en premier à l’esprit est bien sûr File Buddy. Il est un…

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Batch-fixing files that won’t open with 2008 SR1

Thanks to the help of with Steve Maser, we found a solution that should allow to batch process files that refuse to open through a Double-click with the Service Pack 1 for Office 2008. The problem appears to be related to the file Type and Creator. Wiping out the file and creator for these files fixes the issue and allows you to open them through a regular double-click again, There are several utilities that allow you to batch process files to wipe out the file…

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Office 2004 11.4.2

Office 2004 11.4.2 is now available on the Mactopia website This one is a simple security update, but as always, still well worth installing. Office 2004 11.4.2 est désormais disponible sur site Web de Mactopia Juste une mise à jour de sécurité, mais ça vaut toujours le coup de l’installer.

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Office 2008 Service Pack 1

A second major announcement bout Office from Macworld. It looks like the Service Release 1 for Office 2008 is just around the corner. It is to be released today and bring a ton of improvements in all Office applciations. It will be avilable on MacTopia and probably shortly after through auto-update. EDIT: It is now available. Roughly 180MB… Une seconde nouvelle pour Office de conséquence annoncée par Macworld. Il semblerait que le Service Release 1 pour Office 2008 est ur le point d’être mis à…

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Macworld | Microsoft to bring back Visual Basic in Office for Mac

Macworld just announced tht Microsoft is to bring back Visual Basic in Office for Mac. Huge news indeed. It looks like the myriad of users who said that they had to rely on it for their day to day work made a difference. It should come for the next major version, in 2010, or 2011… Macworld vient juste d’annoncer que Microsoft va ramener le Visual Basic dans Office pour Mac. C’est une énorme nouvelle. On dirait que la myriade d’utilisateurs qui ont fait savoir qu’ils…

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