I found a nice surprise in my Inbox this morning.  I went into an e-mail message that contained an Adobe Acrobat PDF file and clicked on the file to preview it like I normally would.  However, I happened to notice that it didn’t say Foxit PDF Preview Handler above the preview window anymore.  I wondered if Adobe had finally included an Outlook 2007 PDF Preview Handler in one of their recent software updates.  I did a little more research and found out that with the release of Adobe Acrobat/Reader 8.1 they did include a PDF Preview Handler for Outlook 2007.  Adobe’s version of the preview handler doesn’t seem to have as many features as the Foxit preview handler but it is still pretty decent.

More information on the Adobe 8.1 update:

• PDF Preview for Outlook 2007 via Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.1 Update
• PDF Preview Handler included with Adobe Acrobat 8.1
• New features and issues addressed in the Acrobat 8.1 Update - Adobe TechNote KB401730

Download Links:

• Adobe Reader 8.1 Download
• Adobe Acrobat 8.1 Professional/Standard Update 

If you would like to run Office 2003 and Office 2007 on the same computer I would highly recommend checking out the following tips from David Overton’s Blog:

• Installing Office 2003 and Office 2007 on the same system
• How to get rid of the installer / configuration dialog when running Office 2007 and Office 2003 on the same system - for Vista and other versions of Windows
• Information about using 2007 Office suites and programs on a computer that is running another version of Office (Microsoft KB928091)

I was just reading an interesting post on David Overton’s Blog talking about why small businesses should use Office 2007.  Here is a summary of the topics he covers in his post:

• For those with a version of Microsoft Office, but not 2007
  • More Professional and Impressive documents and materials
  • Customer Management
  • Mobile access to information
  • Greater Efficiency
  • Understand information better
• For those without a version of Microsoft Office - All of the above, plus
  • Document compatibility
  • Suite that has tools for 21st century
  • Access to thousands of applications that plug into the Office platform

If you would like some assistance with the deployment of Office 2007 at your workplace please feel free to give us a call.

Take Back Your Life!: Using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to Get Organized and Stay Organized - Sally McGhee

There always seems to be those little things that are a minor annoyance but always seem to get put on the back burner.  When I read my e-mail in Microsoft Outlook I usually use the preview pane.  However, after I get done reading the message it doesn’t mark my message as read in the navigation pane until after I click on a different message.  If I forget to do that the little envelope down by the clock doesn’t go away so it still looks like I have new mail even though I already read it all.  I found this tip posted on the Lifehacker: Outlook blog the other day and thought some of you might also find it helpful.

Microsoft Outlook 2007’s default setting is to leave the naggy little “new mail” notification envelope in the taskbar, even if you’ve viewed your last unread email in the reading pane. Luckily it’s easy to stop that madness: In the Tools menu, choose Options, and from the Other tab, hit the Reading Pane button. There you can check off “Mark items as read when viewed in the Reading Pane.”

Here is a tip from the Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog about how to reduce spam by using the new postmarking feature in Outlook 2007.

Postmarking is a new part of the Outlook 2007 junk e-mail feature; it complements the existing feature set to reduce the amount of spam in your inbox.

One of the great advantages of e-mail is that it is easy and cheap to send. Unfortunately, this is the very same reason that makes it so useful to spammers as it enables them to send huge amounts of email in bulk.

Think of Postmarking as computational “postage” imposed when sending email. This is a small burden for an individual user, but is a very large burden for spammers. Spammers rely on being able to send thousands of mails per hour, and in order to be able to send spam with postmarking turned on, they would have to invest a very large amount of money to expand their computational power.

Postmarking generation is only present in Outlook 2007 and postmark validation is present in Outlook 2007, Windows Live Mail , Exchange 2007, and Windows Mail in Vista.

So, how does it work?

Sending e-mail with postmark: Before messages leave your Outbox, Office Outlook 2007 stamps each message with an e-mail postmark. The postmark incorporates unique characteristics of the message, including the list of recipients and the time when the message was sent, making the postmark valid only for that message. As a result it takes a little longer for the message to leave the Outbox – however, this is not noticeable during normal day-to-day Outlook usage.

Receiving e-mail with a postmark: When a recipient e-mail application that supports Outlook e-mail postmarking receives postmarked mail, it recognizes the postmark. The postmark means that the message is most likely not spam and this is an additional factor evaluated by the junk e-mail filter when determining if an email is spam or not.

How to turn Postmarking off

To turn on/off Postmarking, use the following option in Outlook 2007:

1. On the Tools menu, click Options.

2. On the Preferences tab, under E-mail, click Junk E-mail.

3. Clear the When sending e-mail, postmark the message to help recipient e-mail programs distinguish regular e-mail from junk e-mail check box.

NOTE:  I updated the post to include a copy of the instructions (without including the screen shot at the end).  I also noticed after posting this tip that it is currently only supported within Microsoft’s e-mail software (i.e. Outlook 2007, Exchange, etc.).  That severly limits the effectiveness of this feature because there are a lot of people out there that use e-mail software that isn’t made by Microsoft.  You’re much better off using a server-based solution that works well no matter what client everyone else uses.  The solution we use ourselves, as well as resell and recommend to clients, is called ExchangeDefender.  It has cut the time we spend dealing with spam down to less than 5 minutes a day.