Have you played Ribbon Hero?

This week Microsoft released a new concept test prototype for Office called Ribbon Hero. It's a new approach to Office training that’s designed to deliver a fun, engaging experience to help people explore the features available in Office…whether it’s to help you learn how to do things faster, or uncover features you never knew existed. Unlike traditional training, Ribbon Hero presents a game-like environment for learning and lets people compare their scores and feature usage on Facebook. It currently works with Excel, PowerPoint and Word. Download it here.

Announcing the Blackboard Learn Toolbar for Internet Explorer® and Firefox® on Windows®

It's not about Microsoft Office, but many at UNL use the Blackboard system. Now you can get notifications directly from your Blackboard Learn system with an easy-to-use browser toolbar. You’ll receive regular updates of new content items, grades, discussions and announcements. And you’ll save time and energy with an automatically generated set of links that give you one-click access to all of your courses.

Got a question? Microsoft has an answer.

Microsoft Answers is a community-based support site where you can ask and answer questions, or just browse other's answers.

Still have questions?

• If you belong to LinkedIn, there are a number of groups related to Microsoft Office products you can join. Create a new discussion to ask a question and you'll have multiple people respond with the answer.
• If you are on Facebook, become a fan of their pages. Do a search for Microsoft and you'll get several page listings for Office, Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word and more. They provide great tips that feed directly into your news feed.

What you'll be missing in Access 2010

Access 2010 will be missing some features from previous versions. For most, I say, "meh" but I did like the snapshot tool. At least you'll be able to print to PDF, so I guess it's even better. So long!

Read about the Access 2010 deprecated features and components.

The New Slide Show in PowerPoint 2010

Lately, I've been getting lots of information via Facebook and Twitter from the PowerPoint Team about the new slide show experience. Transitions, animations, and video are said to look better and run smoother in PowerPoint 2010 thanks to the brand new rendering pipeline that ships with PowerPoint 2010. What does this really mean? Read this to learn more about it.

Use PowerPoint to Create Web-based Training

Here is a presentation that I've given for the ASTD-Lincoln Chapter and have presented for some UNL faculty. I just thought someone else might benefit from it as well. It is using PowerPoint to create web-based training.

PPT for WBT

See more presentations by ranellem | Upload your own PowerPoint presentations

Power Macros help

Here's a good place to go for help on using macros in Excel, the Power Macros blog. So glad I found this site. I'm not great at the programming and macros, but on occasion need to use them or help someone else who does. Here is a great place to go for a reference.

Excel: Weight-loss tracker

Each month I post a tip about Microsoft Office. This month I'm a little slow in my post, but I found a great post about an Excel weight loss tracker on the Contextures Blog. Instead of recreating something, I decided to share this with you. Thought it would be fitting for the new year. Enjoy!