Advanced Business User Promotion Content

New Technical Content

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Blog TOCAs part of its continuing support for 2007 Microsoft Office system and the advanced business users who create solutions on this platform, in the spring of 2009, Microsoft published the following articles on the subjects of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), the Office Fluent UI, and Office Open XML.

A Guide to Customizing the Office 2007 Ribbon – This TechNet magazine article explains how you can manually edit Open XML packages to customize the Office Ribbon associated with a Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document or template.

Advanced Microsoft Office Documents 2007 Edition Inside Out, Stephanie Krieger, Microsoft Press

· Chapter 21: VBA Primer – An introduction to macros, the macro recorder, the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) language and the Visual Basic Editor (VBE), available in many of the Office 2007 programs.

· Chapter 22: Office Open XML Essentials – An introduction to the new XML format used by Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint 2007, and how these files are structured inside of a ZIP package.

Build SQL Statements That Include Variables and Controls – How to construct SQL statements in VBA that are useful for calling Data Access Objects (DAO) or ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) functions.

Constructing Modern Time Elapsed Strings in Access 2007 – How to use VBA and the DateDiff function in Access 2007 to display the time elapsed between the current date and another date.

Counting the Number of Working Days in Access 2007 – How to use VBA and functions within Access 2007 to calculate the number of working days between two dates.

Creating Combo Boxes in Access 2007 that Allow Users to Select N/A – How to include an entry in a restricted list in a combo box that represents a null value. The solution uses a simple Union query, an unbound combo box, and VBA code to handle a few events associated with this control.

Creating Page-Range Indicators on Reports in Access 2007 – How to add a page-range indicator to a report that contains a large number of items. This indicator displays the first and last items on the page, similar to a telephone book.

Creating VBA Macros to Manipulate Worksheets in Excel 2007 – How to write VBA macros in Excel to automatically name and sort worksheets, and create and name sets of worksheets based on data in the current workbook.

Customizing the Filing Format for Outlook 2007 Contacts – How to use a global option for new contacts and a short VBA procedure to change the format in which Outlook files and displays your contacts.

Expert Access 2007 Programming, by Rob Cooper and Michael Tucker, Wrox

· Chapter 8: Using Code to Add Advanced Functionality to Forms – How to use VBA to interact with form controls and events to customize the presentation and functionality of data in a form.

· Chapter 11: Creating Dynamic Ribbon Customizations – How to edit Open XML files and Add VBA procedures to customize the Office Fluent UI in Access, including

Exploring the Dynamic World of Word 2007 – An introduction to using fields, content controls, and building blocks in Word to create documents and templates with dynamic content—content that modifies itself in response to user actions or the current context.

Exporting Outlook 2007 Contacts to Access 2003 – How to use VBA to export user-defined fields (properties) from Outlook 2007 items to Office Access 2003.

Extending Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007 with a Single Line of VBA Code – How to use the Immediate window in the Microsoft Visual Basic Editor (VBE) to save time and accomplish tasks that are difficult or impossible to accomplish from within the user interface of VBA-enabled Office programs.

Getting More from Document Themes in the 2007 Office System with Office Open XML – An explanation of document themes in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and an introduction to why you would use Office Open XML to customize them.

Graphically Displaying Data from SharePoint Lists in Visio 2007 – How to use VBA to graphically display data from a Microsoft SharePoint list in a Visio drawing. This is a more flexible alternative to using the Data Selector wizard in Visio.

Highlighting the Current Field in Access 2007 Data Entry Forms – How to use VBA to create a custom highlighting for the currently selected text field on forms, which acts as a supplemental aid to locate the text cursor.

Introduction to VBA – Published as part of the OfficePalooza sweepstake, this article provides a light introduction to the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) language that is available in many of the 2007 Office programs.

Making a Searching List Box in Access 2007 – How to create a search list box by using a text box and a bound list box together, along with code that searches through a recordset or directly through a table.

Microsoft Outlook 2007 Programming: Jumpstart for Power Users and Administrators, by Sue Mosher, Elsevier

· Chapter 5: Introducing Form Regions – An introduction to the new form regions feature in Outlook 2007, and how they are used, alone or in conjunction with an add-in, to change the appearance of Outlook items and provide them with additional functionality.

· Chapter 17: Working with Item Bodies in Outlook 2007 – How to use VBA to change the content or the characteristics of a message body, including the use of the Body, HTMLBody, and Inspector.WordEditor properties.

· Chapter 24: Generating Reports on Outlook 2007 Data – How to generate custom reports from Outlook data by using folder views, by copying data to Excel or Word, or by using the Outlook object model and VBA.

Retrieving Recurring Appointments in Outlook 2007 – How to use VBA and the Outlook object model to obtain the set of all appointments, including recurring appointments.

Searching Outlook 2007 Appointments by Using a Macro – How to use VBA to and the Outlook object model to filter items on a calendar that occur within a specified date range and that contain a specified term in the subject.

Taking the 2007 Office System Further with VBA and Open XML Formats – An introduction to how you can use VBA and Office Open XML to automate and extend Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Top 10 Reasons to Learn More about SharePoint Products and Technologies  – An introduction to some of the top features and benefits of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

Troubleshooting Word 2007 Documents More Easily Using VBA – An overview with examples of best practices for troubleshooting Word 2007 documents, along with tips for using VBA to help simplify troubleshooting.

Using a VBA Variable to Filter a Query in Access 2007 – How to filter the results of an Access query by using a fixed expression, a built-in VBA function, or a VBA variable of a custom function.

Using Excel Date Functions in Access 2007 – How to use VBA and Automation to take advantage of Excel functions directly from your Access 2007 application.

Using Excel and Visual Basic for Applications to Create a Game – This TechNet magazine article explains how to use VBA and the Excel object model to create Word Maker 2009 game in Excel 2007.

Using Office Open XML to Customize Document Formatting in the 2007 Office System – Introduces and demonstrates how to apply custom formatting not available from within the user interface to a document in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint by using Office Open XML.

Using Office Open XML to Save Time without Writing Code – Explores the structure of an Open XML Format document ZIP package and introduces ways to save time by directly editing the contents of the ZIP package.

Using Styles to Dress Up Your Worksheets in Excel 2007 – How to modify existing styles, create new styles, and use sample VBA subroutines to dynamically interact with styles to create professional, easily maintainable workbooks in Excel.

Using VBA to Access Document Content in the 2007 Office System – How to use VBA, with emphasis on working with collections and ranges, to access content without first selecting that content in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Using VBA to Control Built-In Commands in the 2007 Office System – An overview of common ways to use VBA to control built-in commands, intercept user actions, and automate Office programs in the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

Using VBA to Enumerate All Word 2007 Documents Containing Revisions and Comments – How to use VBA to enumerate all the comments and revisions in Word documents contained in a specified directory and use this information to populate an Excel 2007 spreadsheet.

Using VBA to Format Long Documents in the 2007 Office System in a Fraction of the Time – How to use basic flow control statements in VBA—including loops, conditional statements, and grouping statements—to format long documents.

VSTO for Mere Mortals: A VBA Developer's Guide to Microsoft Office Development Using Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office, by Kathleen McGrath and Paul Stubbs, Addison-Wesley

· Chapter 4: Moving from VBA to VSTO and Visual Basic 2005 – An overview of the differences between VBA and VSTO development environments and general strategies for moving to the latter.

· Chapter 12: Migrating VBA Solutions to VSTO – An introduction to the overall strategies and specific steps necessary to move an existing VBA project to a new VSTO project. This chapter also considers interoperability between VBA and VSTO code.

Working with Lists and Tables: VBA Samples – Provides some VBA subroutines that can make you more productive when using tables or lists.