Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with office

microsoft office volume licensing

alcahofa — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 07:54:54 -0800

how do i buy a microsoft office for the mac volume license? I need to buy 10 microsoft office licenses for macs for my small non-profit. When I get into the the interface on the microsoft site, they refer me to 407 value added resellers. None of the web sites for those VARs suggests that they sell volume licenses. I sent e-mails to 3 of them and they don't respond.

Has any one been able to buy volume licenses for microsoft office for a small business? If so, who did you work with?

Word 2007 formatting question

jujube — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:20:50 -0800

How do I keep a particular tab in Word2007 from automatically disappearing? And other Word2007 and Excel 2007 questions inside. Really, I HATE Office 2007. It now takes me multiple steps to do what used to take one click of the mouse. Below are a list of items that I'm hoping folks have answers to.

1) Keeping a particular tab open in Word. Let's say that I want to change the font and change line spacing. I click the home tab, then change the font. Instead of the home tab remaining, it disappears, so I have to click the home tab again before I can change the line spacing. How to leave the tab visible until I click on the body of the document?

2) Permanently change style setting. Whenever I open a new Word document, I want a specific setting (e..g, specific font, size, header style, etc.) to be in effect. Currently, I have to save the setting I want as a "style" option, then click on it every time I open a new document.

3) In Excel 2007, how to single space my cell formatting? Some of my cells are text heavy, and I want them to appear single spaced. The default is double, and can't change it.

Thanks!!

Dwight's nutcracker

willcosgrove — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:31:17 -0800

What type of nutcracker was Dwight given on The Office episode "Secret Santa"? I'm trying to get my Office-loving friend the same nutcracker that Michael got Dwight for secret Santa. I've looked online for a bit, and I can't find it anywhere. I'm wondering if maybe some of you have some good suggestions about where I could buy one. Thanks!

3-Ring A4-sized Binders

sdis — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 16:19:46 -0800

EuropeanOfficeFilter: Is there such a thing as a 3-ring A4-sized binder? How about a hole-puncher that works with A4 paper? American 3-ring binders are infinitely superior to the silly 2-Ring "PageRipper" Binders or the 4-Ring "CantTurnPages" Binders that are normal out here.

Anyone know of a 3-ring binder that fits A4 paper? (Most American binders, the paper is taller than the binder)

Bonus points for finding a 3-hole puncher that has a centering guide for A4 paper.

Obsolete? He wants it.

functionequalsform — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:46:14 -0800

Help me give my friend a thoughtful but useless piece of crap! Ok, so my friend's very webby company is movin' on up to a sweet office in SoHo.

I'd like to get him a gift. I'd also like for it to be the most obsolete, dinosaur-est office supply item we can think of— something that we OBVIOUSLY don't use in offices anymore, and something they OBVIOUSLY can't use, because of said webby-ness. (OBVIOUS is the key word here.)

And don't just say "Stapler! Yay me!" and call it a day, pretty please! Get creative with me! Yes?

Looking for a colorful desktop nameplate

yersinia — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:41:06 -0800

Looking for a colorful/artsy name plate to sit on an office desk. Does such a thing exist? If so, where? And if not, what might be some possible substitutes? I'd like to get this as a gift for someone who was recently promoted-- one of those desk name placards seemed like a nice way to recognize the person in their new role. The job is in higher-ed administration, so not a very formal working environment; her office is filled with lovely, colorful objets-d'art, and I was hoping I could go beyond the usual blah Lucite/marble/brass/wood rectangles and get a colorful or otherwise artsy and unusual nameplate holder that'd fit into the existing decor. Bonus points if engraveable, and/or possessing a math-y or abstract theme or feel.

I thought such a thing should be easy to find-- heck, I'd like one. But after combing pretty much every single website in this list and on the Gift Wiki, I've had zero luck. Does anyone know if this kind of nameplate exists? And if no, does anyone have any ideas for creative substitutions-- personalizeable, colorful, office-desktop-appropriate-- that might serve the same purpose?

What makes a good office party?

juliplease — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 10:58:09 -0800

What makes a good office party? I'm in charge of throwing the holiday party for our group. They're great people and everyone gets along, but it's sometimes hard to get people to leave their desks, so we're going to do it in the office. This will also work out very well for our budget. I've suggested a Friday at 3pm so people can start their weekend early.

I don't think people will mind staying in the office, because when we've traveled in the past it seems a little inconvenient for everyone insofar as getting people rides, parking, and/or getting folks back to Metro. We went bowling last year and I think it fell a little flat.

There are probably going to be 20 people there or so, and that includes significant others who can make it. I have a budget of about $200. I'll get decent food and beverages and I think we're going to make a spiked cider or something fun. I can do the cheesy decorations and lights or whatever, and find some holiday music. (Is the Peanut's Christmas album appropriate?) We're also doing a Santa's Junkyard type-thing, where people are to bring something valued under $10.

It's going to be a modest event, but I have some time on my hands to plan and these people deserve a decent holiday party. What else can I do/bring/buy/provide to make sure people have a good time? Have you been to an office party that wasn't lame? How'd they do it?

MacgyverFilter: link sharing using MS Office

Monday, stony Monday — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:23:17 -0800

Macgyver IT: I want my team to use something like del.icio.us to share links. But since this is ask.metafilter, I can't use the obvious right answer. I need to make something like it myself, using ~~bubblegum and string~~ the MS Office 2000 suite and my knowledge of VB. What would be my best approach? This is clearly insane, but I want to try (please don't ask why I can't use something reasonable -- I just can't). I don't need the full del.icio.us, just links and tags. I'm also okay with having only one person at a time able to add a link to the dB, and everyone sharing a big ball of links.

I've thought about using an Excel file, but I don't know if there's a reasonable way to do that, or what that way would be. Could that work, or should I bite the bullet and go for Access? Is there a feature hidden somewhere (in Outlook?) that I'm overlooking?

Formatting Differences in MS Word on Windows vs Mac

spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:35:47 -0800

How consistent is MS Office between Windows and OSX? Will using MS Office on my Mac solve this formatting problem I'm having? I'm have a MacBook Pro running Leopard,and I've been using Open Office to write my papers. It's great. I love Open Office (and love that it's free). When I need to turn something in, I just save it in PDF format, e-mail it to myself, then go to a computer lab, check my e-mail, and print off the PDF document. Perfect.

The problem is that I have a professor who needs some documents turned in via e-mail, and they use MS Word. I can save an Open Office document as a Word file (.doc or .docx), and for plain text formatting that's fine, but as soon as an outline or numbered list is created, things look crazy. It seems fine when I save it in Open Office, and it's fine when I then open that document using Open Office, but if the document is opened with MS Word, the formatting is horrible.

I can buy the MS Office suite for Mac at school using my student discount (it's around $35 I think). If I install that, and use Word to create these documents, will they appear the same when my professor opens them using Word, on her Windows computer?

If there will still be differences then I'll skip the $35 and just keep going to the computer lab to tweak things.

If I save a document in MS Word on a Mac and send it to a person using MS Word on a PC, are there formatting differences?

Roles we play in business meetings

maggiemae — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:31:52 -0800

I am looking for something I saw on the web about people's behaviour during meetings. It was funny and lighthearted, might have been a comic strip or maybe even a video? There was the person leading the meeting giving everyone their roles to play in the upcoming meeting, for example he would point at one person and say 'you! you be defensive!', 'you ramble on about un-related topics!' etc. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Because I can't remember the format, I am having trouble googling this one.

Please help me come up with some great fundraising ideas so my co-workers and I can help feed DC's homeless.

DrDreidel — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:55:26 -0800

I need some fundraising ideas to help feed DC's homeless. Every year, my office of roughly 200 people is split into two teams to "compete" against each other to see who can raise more money to donate to the DC Central Kitchen. It's a great cause, and the competition is very friendly. I've been tasked with coming up with a few good ideas to raise money.

So far, here's my ideas:

- Charity Kareoke - everyone who attends has the option to buy songs at $5 a pop. The twist is that you don't have to sing, but can choose to assign the song to someone else.

- Keg Party - after work happy hour, charging $10 at the door. We're able to get a good deal on a keg though a contact at a beer distributor.

- Book sale - We're encouraging people to bring in books that they've read to sell to they're co-workers.

Has anyone had success with office wide fundraising?

Give My New Computer An Uncluttered Home

Xurando — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:50:02 -0800

I'm getting a 27" iMac soon. I have a corner hutch/desk and it is full of much necessary equipment (2 printers, fax). Help me unclutter and redesign my working space for the new computer. I don't want to block the light coming in the window.

Need inappropriate office party behaviors

arniec — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:29:06 -0800

For Christmas Card art--what are some inappropriate workplace party behaviors that can be portrayed in a single drawing? I'm working on having an artist do our company annual Christmas card, and this year we're doing a Far Side-ish cartoon of an inappropriate office party. For example, there will be someone Xeroxing their behind, and some people making out in the office supplies closet.

What other types of activities can be/should be included here? The funnier the better. But it can't be too involved, a single frame of someone "in the act" needs to convey the whole bit. But our artist is very very good, so if you have ideas, please post them and he might be able to make them work.

Thank you for ideas!

(and would a lampshade on a head be a workplace thing, or is that specifically a house party type behavior?)

Big monitor, big monitor, talk about eyestrain, my girl's got 'er

Madamina — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:17:34 -0800

We're a Mac office, and we rotate the computers around when we get new ones. So imagine my delight when I got my weird 15" G4 monitor magically replaced with my boss' 24" iMac! w00t!... except that the giant size really spaces me out. Help! I've seen this question, but I don't think that's the same thing.

The computer is in the corner of my L-shaped desk. I did place it farther back on the desk (it's maybe 18" away now), and that helps, but I still seem to be squinting at it. Which is weird, because it's perfectly clear and I have no problems with high resolutions. I think I just don't really know what to focus on.

I'm mildly nearsighted but still need to wear glasses; with glasses, I'm pretty acute.

I do enjoy having the space to keep multiple windows open. For reference, when I work I typically have maybe two or three Word or Excel windows open with an expanded Firefox window on the side and other stuff minimized or in the background.

Adding to all this is the fact that I have absolutely awful desk posture, and sometimes I end up slumping reeeeeeally far down. I've found myself doing this a lot since I've gotten the new monitor, for whatever reason.

So. What kinds of things should I be doing with this thing? Lower the brightness? Lower the resolution just for kicks? Move it back so it's a full yard from my head? Sit fully upright at all times at the highest level of my chair's extension? Get tinted glasses (are they expensive? do I leave them at work?) Any and all ideas, however wacky, are welcome.

Thanks!

How can I be a better leader when there's adversity?

Melismata — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:45:13 -0800

How do you carry out, and encourage, instructions that you really, really disagree with? I realized recently that one of the reasons why I was a mediocre supervisor at my last job was because I totally didn't believe in the way the higher ups were running things. (I wasn't the only one; there were lots of problems there.) For example, I would say that we needed a dedicated assistant to do administrative tasks, but the HUs would say, no, you all need to spread that work amongst yourselves, and it's your job as the supervisor to make it happen. Then, when people got aggravated and quit because the work wasn't challenging, HUs would yell at me for not encouraging people to stay. But the fact is, I couldn't do that because I completely agreed with them! They would complain and I could only reply, "yeah, it sucks, doesn't it, but the HUs won't give us any help." (I had the numbers to prove we needed administrative help, but HUs only reply was that I should get people to work faster, and then they'd have time for everything.)

Another example: I head a national committee on some guidelines on how to format some stuff, and everyone has decided that we need to add some guidelines that are, IMO, unnecessary and a time-sucker. I know, because I had to follow them informally for a while and I asked some end users what they thought, and they agreed that it was a waste of time. But still, all the national people voted to add them and so I not only had to write the formal guidelines but encourage my committee members to use them. I wound up being very neutral in my emails about the whole thing, but I didn't go around promoting it, which perhaps I should have since I was the leader.

A third example: I direct a church music group, and the new head priest has decided to put us in a new location that everyone hates. He also has placed limits on our repertoire, because he has definite ideas about how the church service should go, something that has never happened before, and all our members are outraged. I wanted to be a good leader and say, "there there, it will all be ok," but the fact is, I'm just as pissed too. (In our denomination, the head priest has the final say on these matters.) I think the priest expects me to sooth the group, though he hasn't explicitly said so.

The president of my old company told me, when I was butting heads with my supervisor, that "it was my job to carry out her instructions, regardless of whether you agree, and that's what makes a good leader." So my question is, how exactly do you do that?

This is not a question of "how can I learn to get along with higher-ups better?" If you're going to answer with "just learn to suck it up and get along and stop nitpicking" or "just figure out a way to agree with them," then please give thoughtful reasons as to why you think so. There must be examples of some head honcho at, say, Microsoft, who thinks that Gates's new idea is crap but he'll have to promote it anyway. How does that happen? Does it require lots of bullshitting, or acting? Or becoming a tyrant to those I'm trying to lead, which is the only thing that might have worked in the first example? Perhaps I'm not cut out to be a leader, but before I throw in the towel I'd like to see if I can work on this issue. Is there some Leadership 101 book that I should read? I'm kind of introverted and don't expect to run a company any time soon, but I'm smart and don't mind taking charge some of the time, and I would like to have a better answer than "yup this sucks" or "don't complain to me, I agree with you!"

Thanks! Sorry for being so long-winded.

We need to argue for a local server

scruss — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:32:12 -0800

Our office is losing hours of productivity a week due to networking decisions from head office. We'd like to price out a server to replace the dodgy technology that's been foisted on us. Not surprisingly, HQ gets kind of defensive if we use that language. Please help me cost out a server, and make it seem like it was their idea all along. I work in a regional office of an energy company. Head office is many thousands of kilometres away. Head office likes to keep complete control of their data centrally, so offices that used to have servers were replaced by WAFS boxes on the end of a 10Mbit link.

Since the WAFS boxes went in, users in remote offices have had nothing but trouble. Accessing files over the network feels like dialup speed. MS applications zone out for minutes on end thinking about autosaves. We have been known to start applications, go down to the coffee shop, come back, and the application might just have initialized. The WAFS machines themselves are unreliable, needing replaced every few months and rebooting weekly.

Our office has about fifteen professionals in it - engineers, lawyers, developers, environmental and admin staff. We're told that we never quite manage to fully fill our 10Mbit allocation, and that our connection maintains a supposedly quite speedy ping time of 50ms to Head office.

We're not digging the slowness. We estimate that we're each losing several hours per week waiting for the system. Some users have taken to working from home, as using a Citrix connection over DSL to head office is many times faster than running local applications in the office. We've lost staff over this issue.

Head office is all about the centralization, though. So much so that, a couple of years back, a fire alarm knocked out our central data server for 18 hours and we had no offsite failover. We'd need to make a very good case that having a local server would be cheaper than what we're using now.

Head office admits that the WAFS didn't deliver all it was supposed, and are looking at a similar technology from a different vendor. We're worried it will be a big spend with the same result - slow performance, and yet more technology that local techs barely understand. We have some allies in IT at head office, but not the ear of the head of IT.

So just how much would a robust small server with local support and backup cost for a 15 user office? We're in a big Canadian city with good access to service and support.

How to export AutoArchive e-mail exported & transferred from MS Outlook

willie11 — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:40:40 -0800

Help me get my AutoArchived e-mail out of MS Outlook and the info from off Exchange server before work shuts it down tonight, please. I'm dumbfounded. Old job is shutting down my e-mail account today and I'd like to take all of my contacts, calender and saved e-mails for my own use. I know how to export the contacts as an excel file but I cannot find the "AutoArchive" folder on my hard disk.

The IT folks delete all messages from the sever after 9 weeks or so, but my desktop version of Outlook tells me that it autoarchives the messages. Where can I find these and how to I get them?

Also, what could I import them to? Gmail? My iPhone?

The iPhone (not synched with the server, which uses something called GOOD) seems to import contacts, calender etc from Outlook. Is there a way to upload the contacts, calender and ESPECIALLY the AutoArchived email to Gmail so I have them permanently? Or at least save the AutoArchived messages?

Many, many thanks for your help!

How to start marketing a dental office.

beingresourceful — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:52:45 -0800

How do I start marketing a dentist? How do I effectively start marketing a dentist?

She has been a dentist for thirty years (many of those years as a professor), and now she has started her own practice.

She can do cosmetic dentistry, but she really likes pediatric/adolescent dentistry. She is also excellent (and I think prefers to work) at what I could call "major" dentistry, requiring going under. Her practice is located inside a hospital -- definitely something most dentists don't offer. She seems to think cosmetic dentistry is over-saturated (but if your idea is good I can convince her otherwise). I think she really likes those dental-insured patients that need extensive work.

I haven't marketed dentists before. How do I get this lady new clients? I want her to make lots of money, so I can ask for and make lots of money. If it's not win-win, I'd rather not take the job.

How do I deal with a lazy employee?

cronholio — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:02:09 -0800

I am a team leader in an IT company. One of the guys in my team is giving me a headache because he turned lazy all of a sudden. He is a very good developer, though very geeky and a bit antisocial, you know the type. He's been on the team for 3 months now and he is one of the key developers in the project we're currently working on. For 4 or 5 weeks now he has been working maybe half as much as before, probably even less. He comes to work very late and leaves early. He surfs the web most of the time. In our company the atmosphere is very relaxed, nobody cares if you don't come in from 9 to 5 or if you play browser games or whatever. What counts is the work that you do. And this guy stopped doing more or less anything. I've had a serious talk with him about the issue and he apologized and said he didn't see it that way, but he would try to improve. Nothing has changed since, if anything, it got worse. I keep reminding him and he seems to be alarmed when I do but other than that doesn't seem to care much. When asked if there is anything about his work that he doesn't enjoy, something that could be improved, he doesn't give me anything.

Now it would be easiest to fire him and it probably won't be long before I do just that, but I was wondering if I could motivate him somehow or try something else to get through to him. As I said, he's one of the most valuable developers and though I don't like him too much personally, I would hate to lose him for the sake of the project.

What are the etiquette guidelines for T-shirts referencing ethnicity?

Eater — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:36:30 -0800

How likely is it that a white American woman in NYC wearing this shirt in public and in the workplace will be deemed offensive?

Pregnant woman needs help controlling her moods

heytch — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 05:08:24 -0800

Anger management for beginners? Help me deal with pregnancy/hormone related rage at work! I have never been an angry person, and have never had to control my anger and I have never let my emotions "get the better of me". Until now! I am pregnant and am finding it very difficult to deal with annoying or upsetting situations at work.

I work in a very busy office at an educational institution, and am constantly the recipient of bad attitude and demeaning behaviour from my coworkers. For lack of a better description, my workplace has extremely bad karma and energy. That stuff you can't put your finger on. Smiles are rare and snarky emails and comments are common. The only thing everyone agrees on is that everything sucks.

Normally I'm a very zen and positive person, and have managed this job pretty well by turning the other cheek, so to speak. I am generally very good at finding the silver lining. But now that I'm pregnant I'm no longer in posession of this zenness. I get SO ANGRY at my coworkers, and feel that I am very very close to losing it, I want to scream in their faces and tell them where to shove their menial complaints already. I want to slam doors and scowl and swear at them. All of this is the complete opposite to my normal non-knocked up behaviour, and is quite frankly shocking me!

How do I avoid this? How can I manage my strong feelings and subsequent actions when I'm in a mood (and brain chemistry) that's so very unfamiliar to me? Any experiences? Techniques?

Is co-working best for us?

christopherbdnk — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:38:19 -0800

Is co-working best for us? My business which had been run out of home offices for the past few months has grown large enough that we'll need a central location for working sometimes, a conference room where meetings can be held, and most importantly, maybe, a legitimate address where packages can be delivered and queued for shipping. I've read about local offerings in NYC/Brooklyn, where a group of entrepreneurs and established businesses share a central space, but I'm not sure if it's the best thing for us.

Are there other options? We're not yet at the point where we want to budget for our own office ($1500+), but we do need something a bit more sophisticated than a UPS Store box.

Looking to up my presentation skills in NYC

kenzi23 — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:04:30 -0800

I'm looking for a job doing presentation graphics (in law firms, possibly financial firms); this is about 30% of my current job at a law firm. I'm one of very few "experts" at my firm which isn't very technologically advanced in this area, so I'm afraid that my skills won't cut it in the outside world. I need advice on how to upgrade my skills. I want to upgrade my skills so that I can show a better portfolio and talk about those skills with more confidence.

I'm pretty strong in all the Microsoft Office products and how they integrate, especially in Powerpoint and Visio. I also am quite skilled and experienced in Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.

Since we don't really use Powerpoint to its full potential at my current job, I want to learn more advanced skills, and I feel like I need to improve my Excel skills to integrate better with Powerpoint. From the job listings I have seen, I think I should learn Flash, but what else is essential for a presentations job?

I'm in NYC so if you have any recommendations for places to get the kind of training I need, I would love to hear them.

Dry erase/whiteboards walls and me?

alexherder — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 07:27:55 -0800

My animation company is moving into our first real office and we want to make a very large "brainstorming wall" with a dry erase surface so that we can collaborate and share ideas more intuitively. We are an animation company moving from a bunch of people working at home into our first office. I'm really excited about this because we'll be able brainstorm together without the intermediary of Skype. I want to make our new space as collaborative and creativity-nurturing as possible. To that end, I want to cover an entire wall of our office (~100 sq. ft.) in dry erase surface so that we can sketch out ideas together for sequences, characters, etc. Ideally I'd like this wall to also be magnetic so we could put up paper sketches or other multimedia materials and not break the brainstorming flow.

I have seen this question but it was posted in 2005 and asserts that there is no one selling dry erase paint anymore, which I'm pretty sure is not true. Lifehacker posted this in 2008 about Markee which sells gallons for about $100 and I have also discovered IdeaPaint who appear to be about twice the cost. My question is whether any one out there has used these products (or similar) and how successful they were? Was it helpful? Is this a good idea? Bonus answers as to how to involve the magnetic part.

Office Organization Tips?

Miko — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:26:08 -0800

For those of you who are managers or administrators: what are your pro tips on office organization? I have a new job and a new, totally clean and empty office. The job is going to require a lot of staying on top of things: staff, programs, frequent meetings, ongoing and long-term projects, and shorter-term event production.

What are your best tips on setting up a useful office environment that aids you in tracking everything? I know about 43 Folders and Getting Things Done, and already live by Outlook for calendar, tasks, and meeting reminders. So I'm really interested in hearing not what's a cool idea and something to try, but things that really work, on a practical level: like your arrangement of bulletin boards and file folders, what's on your desk vs. what's in drawers, your daily and weekly routines and habits and how your office setup makes them run more smoothly.