Using Microsoft Office on a Network

Microsoft Office is far and away the most popular suite of application programs used on personal computers, and it includes the most common types of application programs used in an office: a word processing program (Word), a spreadsheet program (Excel), a presentation program (PowerPoint), and an excellent e-mail program (Outlook). Depending on the version of Office you purchase, you may also get a database program (Access), a Web-site development program (FrontPage), a desktop publishing program (Publisher), a set of Ginsu knives (KnifePoint), and a slicer and dicer (ActiveSalsa).

This section describes the networking features of Microsoft Office System 2007, the latest and greatest version of Office. Most of these features also work with previous versions of Office.

Tip 

To get the most from using Office on a network, you should purchase the Microsoft Office Resource Kit. The Office Resource Kit, also known as ORK, contains information about installing and using Office on a network and comes with a CD that has valuable tools. If you don't want to purchase the ORK, you can view it online and download the ORK tools from the Microsoft TechNet Web site (http://www.microsoft.com/technet). Nanoo-nanoo, earthling.

Installing Office on a network-some options

You need to make some basic decisions when you prepare to install Microsoft Office on a network. In particular, here are some possible approaches to installing Microsoft Office on your network clients:

• You can simply ignore the fact that you have a network and purchase a separate copy of Office for each user on the network. Then you can install Office from the CD on each computer. This option works well if

  • Your network is small.

  • Each computer has ample disk space to hold the necessary Office files.

  • Each computer has its own CD-ROM drive.

• On a larger network, you can use the Office Setup program in Administrative Setup mode. This option lets you create a special type of setup on a network server disk from which you can install Office on network computers. Administrative Setup enables you to control the custom features selected for each network computer and reduce the amount of user interaction required to install Office on each computer.

• Tip 

  If you choose to use Administrative Setup, you can use the Network Installation Wizard, which comes with the Office Resource Kit. The Network Installation Wizard lets you customize settings for installing Office on client computers. For example, you can choose which Office components to install, provide default answers to yes/no questions that Setup asks the user while installing Office, and select the amount of interaction you want the Setup program to have with the user while installing Office.

Warning 

No matter which option you choose for installing Office on your network, you must purchase either a copy of Office or a license to install Office for every computer that uses Office. Purchasing a single copy of Office and installing it on more than one computer is illegal.

Accessing network files

Opening a file that resides on a network drive is almost as easy as opening a file on a local drive. All Office programs use the File Open command to summon the Open dialog box, as shown in its Excel incarnation in Figure 3-10. (The Open dialog box is nearly identical in other Office programs.)

Figure 3-10: The Open dialog box in Excel 2007.

To access a file that resides on a network volume that's mapped to a drive letter, all you have to do is use the drop-down list at the top of the dialog box to select the network drive. If the network volume isn't mapped to a drive, click Folders near the lower-left corner of the Open dialog box, select Network, and then browse to the file you want to open.

You can map a network drive directly from the Open dialog box by navigating to the folder you want to map, right-clicking the folder, and choosing Map Network Drive.

Tip 

If you try to open a file that another network user has opened already, Office tells you that the file is already in use and offers to let you open a read-only version of the file. You can read and edit the read-only version, but Office doesn't let you overwrite the existing version of the file. You have to use the Save As command instead to save your changes to a new file.

Using workgroup templates

A template isn't a place of worship, although an occasional sacrifice to the Office gods may make your computing life a bit easier. Rather, a template is a special type of document file that holds formatting information, boilerplate text, and other customized settings that you can use as the basis for new documents.

Three Office programs-Word, Excel, and PowerPoint-enable you to specify a template whenever you create a new document. When you create a new document in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint by choosing the File New command, you see a dialog box that lets you choose a template for the new document.

Office comes with a set of templates for the most common types of documents. These templates are grouped under the various tabs that appear across the top of the New dialog box.

In addition to the templates that come with Office, you can create your own templates in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Creating your own templates is especially useful if you want to establish a consistent look for documents prepared by your network users. For example, you can create a Letter template that includes your company's letterhead, or a Proposal template that includes a company logo.

Office enables you to store templates in two locations. Where you put them depends on what you want to do with them:

• The User Templates folder on each user's local disk drive: If a particular user needs a specialized template, put it here.

• The Workgroup Templates folder on a shared network drive: If you have templates that you want to make available to all network users on the network server, put them here. This arrangement still allows each user to create templates that aren't available to other network users.

When you use both a User Templates folder and a Workgroup Templates folder, Office combines the templates from both folders and lists them in alphabetical order in the New dialog box. For example, the User Templates folder may contain templates named Blank Document and Web Page, and the Workgroup Templates folder may contain a template named Company Letterhead. In this case, three templates appear in the New dialog box, in this order: Blank Document, Company Letterhead, and Web Page.

To set the location of the User Templates and Workgroup Templates folders, follow these steps in Microsoft Word:

1. Click the Office button and then click Word Options.

   The Word Options dialog box opens.

2. Click the Advanced tab.

   The Advanced options appear.

3. Scroll down to the General section and then click the File Locations button.

   The File Locations dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 3-11.

   
   Figure 3-11: Setting the file locations in Word 2007.

4. Double-click the Workgroup Templates item.

   This step opens a dialog box that lets you browse to the location of your template files.

5. Browse to the template files and then click OK.

   You return to the File Locations dialog box.

6. Click OK to dismiss the File Locations dialog box.

   You return to the Word Options dialog box.

7. Click OK again.

   The Word Options dialog box is dismissed.

Tip 

Although the User Templates and Workgroup Templates settings affect Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, you can change these settings only from Word. The Options dialog boxes in Excel and PowerPoint don't show the User Templates or Workgroup Templates options.

When you install Office, the standard templates that come with Office are copied into a folder on the computer's local disk drive, and the User Templates option is set to this folder. The Workgroup Templates option is left blank. You can set the Workgroup Templates folder to a shared network folder by clicking Network Templates, clicking the Modify button, and specifying a shared network folder that contains your workgroup templates.

Networking an Access database

If you want to share a Microsoft Access database among several network users, you should be aware of a few special considerations. Here are the more important ones:

• When you share a database, more than one user may try to access the same record at the same time. This situation can lead to problems if two or more users try to update the record. To handle this potential traffic snarl, Access locks the record so that only one user at a time can update it. Access uses one of three methods to lock records:

  • Edited Record: This method locks a record whenever a user begins to edit a record. For example, if a user retrieves a record in a form that allows the record to be updated, Access locks the record while the user edits it so that other users can't edit the record until the first record is finished.

  • No Locks: This method doesn't really mean that the record isn't locked. Instead, No Locks means that the record isn't locked until a user writes a change to the database. This method can be confusing to users because it enables one user to overwrite changes made by another user.

  • All Records: All Records locks an entire table whenever a user edits any record in the table.

• Access lets you split a database so that the forms, queries, and reports are stored on each user's local disk drive, but the data itself is stored on a network drive. This feature can make the database run more efficiently on a network, but it's a little more difficult to set up. (To split a database, use the Tools Database Utilities Database Splitter command.)

• Access includes built-in security features that you should use if you share an Access database from a Windows client computer, such as one running Windows XP or Windows Vista. If you store the database on a domain server, you can use the server's security features to protect the database.

• Access automatically refreshes forms and datasheets every 60 seconds. That way, if one user opens a form or datasheet and another user changes the data a few seconds later, the first user sees the changes within one minute. If 60 seconds is too long (or too short) an interval, you can change the refresh rate by using the Advanced tab in the Options dialog box.