If you are a corporate Microsoft Office user...prepare for change.

Microsoft Office 2007 is going to be somewhat of a shock to your system. I am looking forward to attending the Launch Event next Tuesday in Louisville (also taking place in many other cities around the nation). Being involved in the beta was an interesting thing in itself as was trying out the online version. (Read the blog posts below to "try out" the new Office 2007 yourself online.)

When I say prepare for a change - it's not a small thing.Generally speaking, all the ways you have become accustomed to doing things with the menus across the top of the screen - these are gone. Now, items change according to your actions - which is a little challenging at first to grasp and work with. Of course, my focus was on Microsoft PowerPoint 2007, as you can expect - but the changes have taken place across all the core Office programs - including Word, Excel, etc.

I think it is going to be a learning curve for many of you out especially in corporate America and educational institutions. And while I do not see immediate implementations - they are likely to occur further in the year for a lot of companies. (IT departments always tend to wait a bit on the side of caution to feel out if the program will work for other companies of their own size and what kind of problems to anticipate.

But, as far as preparing, I would suggest first understanding if your system is "ready" first for the change. Look at the system requirements and make sure that your processor and hard drive, RAM etc. is compatible before you run out and buy a copy.

We at Brainy Betty will be helping throughout the year - watch for new tutorials every week that will help you to navigate and use Office 2007 and achieve the most productivity without the frustration. Make sure to subscribe to this blog by entering your email on the right or add yourself to our newsletter list and we'll notify you when new content is being posted to the site that can help you.

Have a great week! Be creative! Be productive!
-Nan

Thank you.

I am so grateful to have such wonderful blog subscribers and to read the emails I get from people who have found solutions to their presentation problems. Please keep sending me emails or post replies here. I do read and respond to every one.

This week has been an eye opener for me in many ways.

As I learn to use Apple Keynote more on my new mac laptop I find that there are a lot of creative and unique aspects to that program. However, there are still many features I find that Keynote lacks that PowerPoint excels in. Keynote is for the highly visual user - makes sense that Apple tends to market more toward the creative community. It does have a simple beauty when presenting information in presentations, though. I suspect that the new PowerPoint 2007 will have a lot of Keynote users surprised - the new presentations and slide shows are just visually elegant as well.

Which got me thinking about presentations in general - we all do them and in some cases it has become a requirement in places we work or study to create presentations and display some learning or data or process or result in this format.

I think what a lot of us lack is the creative skill and the underatdning of design and spce and what works best to "display" data in a way that is persuasive but also pleasing to the eye. What I think I will start to do is to create a set of materials for visitors of the site to understand some basic design principles - including colors, layouts and the idea of schemes. If you think something like this may be useful for your particular situation, drop me a line and let me know.

Thanks and have a great week!

Nan @ brainybetty

A Great Way to Get the Office 2007 product for free (Shhhhh!)

All attendees (nationwide) who register and attend the Ready for a New Day Office 2007 launch event will receive a free copy of Microsoft Office Professional 2007. I'm not sure if this is limited to business owners or IT department executives, so please make sure and read the details here.

You register for the event by clicking on the Find an Event button (big orange on top of the page right hand side).... I totally missed that for some reason and spent about 10 minutes in frustration trying to figure out how to register.

Brainy Betty will be at the Louisville, KY event on January 30th, so if you see me, (Nan Shastry) please do come up and say hello!

Have a great week!

It' Heeeerrreee! Welcome to 2007!

Hi everyone! Welcome to 2007! I had a great holiday with my entire family - all assorted sisters, brother in laws, nieces and nephews. It was wonderful to be able to take some time off and relax, but... I'm glad to start a fresh new year!

Right off the bat, the new version of Microsoft Office 2007 is now ready to order. It becomes available on January 30th but you can preorder here. I've already ordered my copy and am pretty excited about getting it and upgrading. I've even taken a look at the new Windows Vista operating system as well. If you want a sneak peek to go and play in the new environment - go here.

I don't like resolutions - I never keep them - but here are my GOALS for this year:

1. To post more faithfully to this blog at least once a week.
2. To add at least 4 or 5 new items to Brainy Betty every month. I have 4 new things this month already:

• new sound files for your presentations
• new free smileys for email and other applications
• new flash that you can embed in your presentations (5 new that say "Welcome to 2007!) along with a tutorial about how to embed flash in PPT
• A new tutorial about how to create an animated PowerPoint background

3. to incorporate more video and audio and media into my site - and for your presentations

4. Oh, and the big one: to get my new business intellipodcast up and running before the end of January!

Have a great month and a prosperous new year, everyone!

- Nan