Office Live Workspace hints and tips

webDotWiz has good reason to give you more information on using Office Live Workspace. This type of service which combines files in your documents folder on your hard disk with storage on the Internet (in the cloud to use today's jargon) is a pointer to the not-to-distant future of software plus service (to use a bit more jargon).

Last week Microsoft announced Live Mesh, a platform which will enable us to connect to all our devices (e.g., desktop PC, laptop, smartphone) to access our files and applications regardless where we are as long as we have a connection to the Internet. Now one sentence doesn't in any way describe the implications of the Live Mesh platform and it's best to read through (several times, it's suggested) Ray Ozzie's memo (Ray Ozzie is the brains behind Live Mesh).

Anyway it's time to talk about some hints for using your Office Live Workspace (http://workspace.office.live.com).

Opening and saving documents

When you're working in Word, for example, and you've saved your document for the first time using Save as on the File menu, subsequent saves using the quick save icon (the icon that looks like a floppy disk) will save your file to your hard disk (as normal).

Now you want to save your document to your Office Live workspace so you use Save to Office Live on the File menu. You'll be asked to sign in for the first time and the dialogue box will pop up asking for a file name. So give a name and click Save.

If you make some edits to your document and click the quick save blue floppy disk icon, your document is saved to the your Office Live workspace but not to your hard drive because your last Save as was to your workspace. So to make sure your document also gets saved to your hard disk, click on Save on the File menu.

When opening a file from the File menu, keep an eye on the Open dialogue box that pops up so you check whether you're opening a file from your documents folder on the hard drive or from documents folder on your Office Live workspace.

The screenshot above shows the normal view of a My Documents folder (notice the My Documents location is highlighted under the Look in: column on the left).

In the following screenshot webDotWiz has changed his location to Microsoft Office Live to open a document from his workspace.

For those with a version of Office earlier than Office 2003 you can save your document to your Office Live workspace using Add document that's on the toolbar in your workspace.

Using workspaces

Each new Office Live workspace user has a documents section automatically created. You could simply use this area in which to store all your different documents online (as well as on your hard drive). However you may want to better organise groups of documents into their own workspace (this is somewhat akin to setting up separate folders under My Documents on your hard drive).

As time goes by then, create new workspaces for each group of documents. You can create new blank workspace and add your documents.

Another option is to browse the different types of workspaces on offer - each has a group of files specifically targetted to a certain group of documents you can use for the job-in-hand such as class workspace, essay workspace, planning a trip or managing a sports team.

One of the options available after setting up a new workspace is to share this workspace with other people. As owner of the workspace, you decide who to invite and whether the members of your group will be able to simply view files or the privilege of changing files. Note that each member of your group will have a new workspace set up for them containing the same files as you do.

Using the Notes file and Activities pane

If you set up a shared workspace use the Notes file to jot down ideas for other members of your team to comment on and get feedback and ideas from your team. Each team member will see all the contents of the Notes file so it's a simple way for everybody to keep up to date.

The Activities pane on the right-hand side of the workspace shows the changes made to documents and by which team member. Even so, it's a good idea that each team member leave their initials with any idea or feedback they enter into the Notes file.

Office Live Workspace and Skydrive

Office Live Workspace gives you, at the moment, 500 megabytes of free online space for your Excel, PowerPoint and Word documents. Skydrive provides 5000 megabytes of free online storage. If you're ho-humming about whether to use these free services, answer this question: What would happen to your documents, photos and videos if your hard drive had an unrecoverable error and it had to be replaced?

On a positive note, Office Live Workspace and Skydrive are services that enable us to have access to our files regardless of whether we're at home, at work or visiting friends.

Here are some sites to get you started:

• ABC Local: www.abc.net.au/local/
• Brave New World of Work: blogs.msdn.com/atwork/
• Live Mesh Technology Preview Announced: windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsexperience/
• Microsoft Office Live Workspace: www.officelive.com
• Office Live Workspace - get started: webdotwiz.spaces.live.com/blog/
• Windows XP Service Pack 3 Released to Manufacturing: bink.nu

• All this week's Wiziest sites are listed on the webDotWiz Column sites page.

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