Opening PowerPoint Slideshows

Scenario: Users want to store files in SharePoint and open them from another website. The users are on a network with Internet Explorer (IE) 6 or 7 and Office 2007. This should not be an issue.

However, files of type .pps (PowerPoint slideshows) were opening in a undesirable manner.

Instead of opening in full-screen slideshow mode, the PPS files were opening in Edit mode inside of PowerPoint.

After doing a bit of research and testing, I believe this is the only solution that will allow PPS files to open in slideshow mode when using Internet Explorer and Office 2007. This site talks about it too. In a nutshell, it requires a client side configuration. Nothing on the server side can do the trick if the user is on Internet Explorer and Office 2007. It's not even an issue with SharePoint. It happens on non-SharePoint sites too.

This solution references this Microsoft KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/299824/

Basically, each computer needs to have its registry changed:

1. Start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe).
2. Locate and click the following key in the registry:
   HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PowerPoint.Show.8
3. Edit or add the following registry value:
   Value name: BrowserFlags
   Data type: REG_DWORD
   Radix: click Hexadecimal
   Value data: (see below)

It appears that Office 2007 changes the default value to "a", which means PPS files open in Edit mode. You can change the value to 8 (open in a new window in show mode) or 0 (open in the browser window in show mode), but this is a local computer change that would need to be done on each PC. Not realistic. :-(

Accessing the files in Firefox works fine: PPS files open as slide shows, no problem.

OneNote rocks

I don't know if you have ever used Microsoft OneNote--it's still kind of a secret--but I recommend it to those who like to keep their meeting and other notes in electronic form.

It's a great way to keep your notes organized, instead of having to manage dozens of Word docs. But then it's easy to create Word docs (or PDFs) or email from your notes to send out to colleagues.

It also integrates with other Office applications, especially in Office 2007 where it links nicely to Outlook.

You can get a free trial of the new OneNote 2007 here.

I have been using OneNote for over a year now and upgraded to OneNote 2007 during the beta. It's been very helpful and has kept me more organized! I'm excited to finally get a tablet PC so I can use the writing and drawing features!

In case you missed it

About two weeks ago, Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office System were finished and are being prepared for "release to manufacturing" as we speak.

If you have an MSDN software subscription, you can find Vista RTM (x86) and some parts of Office 2007 RTM right now! (Though I haven't seen the Office 2007 RTM servers yet...) Most everyone else will have to wait until January to buy the boxed versions of Vista and Office 2007 or get them on new PCs.

If you happen to buy a new PC between now and then, you'll probably be able to upgrade to Vista for free or low cost via the Windows Vista Express Upgrade program. Most major PC manufacturers are listed, so if you're itching for that new PC or laptop (as we are) you can rest assured that you will get your Vista upgrade for free or almost free. If you want to stick to Windows XP (e.g. if you are afraid of Vista), buy now before the end of January so you can guarantee Windows XP is on your machine!

Happy installing!

Been

In case you were wondering, and even if you're not, where have I been?

Around.

Personally, I've been busy at home with our new son, Benjamin, who was born in March. He's quite the young gentleman. Very funny too.

Professionally, I've been bouncing around a few projects and have currently found myself between things. It's alright. It has given me a chance to reset.

I have been actively watching the evolution of the new "2007 Microsoft Office System." If you run Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista RC1 and want to try the beta client (Word, Excel, Outlook, etc.), check out the Office preview site.

I must say that it's quite different from any previous version of Office. Also keep in mind that it's an unsupported Beta, so you will find minor bugs. Lastly, make sure to download both the Beta 2 files plus the Beta 2 Technical Refresh updates. You need to install both.

The final release, slated for sometime in the next six months or so (maybe?) will be production quality. The current Beta 2 Technical Refresh is supposed to be the most stable yet, and I tend to believe it, though the faster your system the better it will run. This ain't your father's Word for Windows 95.

If you have the guts and time, check out SharePoint Server, aka MOSS 2007, also available on the preview site. Both client and server are a vast improvement over Office 2003 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003.

More on the Microsoft, Adobe spat

So, this is an interesting development:
Adobe Speaks Out on Microsoft PDF Battle

Who really knows what goes on in the negotiations between Microsoft and Adobe. However, this article states a very legitimate fear: Microsoft will extend the PDF format in a way that makes the format a) less useful than it's own XPS format, or b) incompatible with non-Microsoft OSes.

“While much of the press coverage to date has centered on disputes over PDF and XPS [a competitive technology to PDF] in MS Office and Vista, the real issue is the protection of open standards,” Adobe explains

There's no proof that this will happen, and I'm not sure Microsoft would even want that to happen. However, look at what happened with Microsoft and Sun with regards to Java. Maybe that's why Adobe is doing what they're doing, much like Sun did six or seven years ago.

I would love to see Microsoft and Adobe come to an agreement that a) PDF will be a PDF in Office and Vista, not Microsoft-extended PDF, and b) PDF creation can be left in the OEM version of Office and Vista.

Office team splits up

So it looks like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will now have a different step-daddy than SharePoint and MCMS:

Microsoft names two Office leaders to replace Sinofsky

2007 Microsoft Office System Beta 2 has liftoff

In case you haven't heard, beta 2 of the 2007 Microsoft Office System is available on the Microsoft website.

You can try out the new versions of old standby Office applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. You can also try out the new Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 suite, which includes SharePoint, Enterprise and Web Content Management (ECM/WCM), Forms Server, and Project Server.

Download the beta. Set up a virtual machine or two. Install the client and server applications. See how they work together. Send Microsoft your feedback.

And the best part, it's all free to try during the beta!

Workaround for opening Office documents as read-only in SharePoint

In an earlier post, I ranted how opening Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) from SharePoint is a pain when you are using SharePoint from a different domain than your computer is logged in to. We finally found a workaround, which now seems obvious. Here's a review of the situation:

If your Windows machine logs into Active Directory domain "Homer," but the SharePoint site you access is on the domain "Lois" in a different location, you have to deal with login prompts instead of a streamlined integrated login. This is expected behavior.

In addition, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents opened from SharePoint need to authenticate the user as well, because the documents are actually opened from the web server, not the local browser cache. This is also intended functionality: the idea is that the user can edit the files and save them back to the server directly from Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. The user must type their username and password when each separate Office application is opened via the link for the document in Internet Explorer. Usually this is not a big deal.

However, opening documents from a SharePoint site in Internet Explorer is sometimes impossible when a third-party single-sign-on system is in place and the user doesn't actually have the Active Directory username and password handy. If the SSO doesn't know how to handle Office applications, it's impossible to open the files at all because they get stuck at the SSO login process. A workaround is to have users right-click the documents in SharePoint and "Save as," but chances are users would not get the message or forget.

So we finally came up with a workaround while we wait for a permanent solution via the SSO: Convert all Office documents to Adobe PDF. For documents that need to be available in the native Office format (.doc, .xls, .ppt, .vsd, etc.), compress them as .zip files. Use the .pdf and .zip files in the document libraries instead of native Office files.

This can work well for sites where SharePoint isn't being used for document collaboration, or where collaboration doesn't rely heavily on document editing. As far as I know, there's no other way around this problem other than converting the documents to non-Office formats or using a browser like Firefox, which doesn't try to open Office documents for editing from the web server.

We will figure out a permanent solution, but for the meantime the workaround will suffice.

Sign up for the Office beta

If you want to see the "2007 Microsoft Office system" in action before most everyone else, sign up for the beta that will be released in the next few months.

Must be possible

It must be possible to allow SharePoint users to open documents from a WSS site without requiring them to authenticate!

Just not possible

I do not think the following scenario is possible using the current version of Windows SharePoint Services 2.0:

We need to have end-users open Office documents (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) from a SharePoint site and NOT have IE and Office open the documents from the web server. E.g. have the Office documents opened from the browser cache, which would not require any authentication against the server.

This works as desired if browsing the SharePoint site with Firefox, for example. It also works as desired for non-Office documents like PDF. But IE makes the Office applications open the document from the server, which we do not want.

There are a few reasons we need this to work this way, which I won't go into now. Suffice it to say, I've been on Google, Yahoo, and the newsgroups and none of the solutions that I've found works the way we desire (htmltransinfo.xml, DOCICON.XML, ONET.XML, etc.).

Jakob Nielsen blogs about Office 12

And it appears that he likes what he sees.