Office 14 Estimated Release Date

Office 14 appears to be scheduled to be released in Q4 of 2009 or Q1 of 2010. Given that timeline the Office 14 beta program will probaby not start until late this year or early next year. I remember participating in the Office 2007 beta program and I believe that started the same year that that Office system was released.

I also saw a rumor that Windows 7 could be released around that same timeframe, wonder if MS will do another Office - Windows launch.

"This document outlines the future direction of Microsoft Dynamics CRM through to the next major release, Microsoft Dynamics CRM “V.Next”, which will be aligned with the Office 14 wave of product releases due in late 2009/early 2010." from http://blogs.msdn.com/dynamicscrmonline/archive/2008/07/23/microsoft-dynamics-crm-statement-of-direction.aspx

Of course non of this is confirmed except for the information provided in the post by MS above about the estimated Office 14 release date.

Programmatically remove digital signatures from Excel document

Here is some sample code to remove all digital signatures from an Excel workbook. This can be run from a Windows app or Console app. I'm going to try to make it work within a SharePoint document library event handler. That should be interesting. Basically the idea is to have a document library that has a bunch of documents that are digitally signed and then every month get reset by removing all the digital signatures. Hope this runs in the event handler.

Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Application eApp = null; Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Workbook wb = null;

//gets our workbook
eApp = new Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Application();
wb = eApp.Workbooks.Open(textBox1.Text, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing);

//makes it visible and activates the workbook

//eApp.Visible = true;
//wb.Activate();

//get signatures

Microsoft.Office.Core.SignatureSet sigs = wb.Signatures;

//remove all the signatures

foreach (Microsoft.Office.Core.Signature sig in sigs)
{ sig.Delete(); }

//save and close the form

wb.Save();
wb.Close(Type.Missing, Type.Missing, Type.Missing);
wb = null;
eApp = null;

Remove Warning - this form is using your identity to connect to data sources

When connecting to a web service or SQL server from InfoPath client forms that you access from a SharePoint site you may receive this warning each time you open the form.

"This form is using your identity to connect to data sources"

This gets really annoying and your users may be confused. So advise them to Enable Access data sources across domains within IE -> Security Settings. The form should be within a Trusted Site or within the Local Intranet Zone so this should be ok because group policy should dictate what sites are in these zones, and if your IT group is good only very very safe sites should be in those zones, like for instance your local SharePoint intranet site.

InfoPath Tabbing Tab Index bug

I have an InfoPath form with controls defined below.

TextBox - Tab Index is 1

TextBox - Tab Index is 2

Date Picker - Tab Index is 3

TextBox - Tab Index is 4

TextBox - Tab Index is 0

If I tab through these fields, it goes down the line 1, 2, 3, 4, 0 as expected. However, if I tab from 1 to 2, 2 to 3 and then choose a date using the calendar and then tab again it goes down to the textbox with tab index of 0.

Why does this happen? Because the small calendar icon seems to be it's own control and gets focused on, it's tab index is presumably 0 even though the entire Date Picker control is 3. So when I tab from the calendar icon it goes to the next tab index of 0 which is expected. However, this is not an expected behavior from a user perspective or from any other perspective for that matter.

That entire Date Picker control should have a tab index of 3 not just the text portion of the control but the entire control including the small calendar icon.

This same behavior seems to occur for radio buttons and drop down controls as well. If instead you replace the Date Picker with a Drop Down control and the user selects a value, the next tab is to a control with a tab index of 0, even though it's expected that it should be 4 (using the example above).

I would consider this a bug that needs to be fixed for Office 14. Probably not important enough for them to fix it in a service pack for Office 2007, even though that would be nice.

Outlook Business Contact Manager (BCM) Custom Import Tool

BCM is a great tool provided by Microsoft to manage business contacts and vendors. It can be used as a sales tool or to keep track of approved vendors. Most of you probably have this data stored within an ACT! database, an Access database, an Excel spreadsheet or some other format. If you have ever tried to import this data into BCM you'll quickly find that it's not as customizable as it should be.

Now I don't know what version BCM is, I know it was at least around with Office 2003, but it could be improved dramatically. One improvement could be the import tool. My requirement was to import an Access database into BCM into custom fields. The Microsoft import tool did not fit my needs to I wrote my own import tool to do this. I can see from the newsgroup and complaints that a custom import tool may be desired by a lot of people.

If this is the case for you, please drop me a line. I'm more than happy to release the tool I've created so that it may help you. It is easy to custom to fit your needs with a little bit of development.

Office 2003 Web Parts (Components) Security Prompts

By default these two warning prompts will display because of a setting in IE.

This website uses a data provider that may be unsafe. If you trust the website, click OK, otherwise click Cancel.

This website is using your identity to access a data source. If you trust this website, click OK to continue, otherwise click Cancel.

To get rid of these Enable Access data sources across domains, instead of Prompt set it to Enable. And Automatic logon with current user name and password.