Microsoft Excel 2007 Custom Text Alignment

The alignment section of the Home Tab of the Excel ribbon contains a number of options relating to the way in which your data is position within the cell. Perhaps the most familiar and the most frequently used buttons in this section are the three relating to the horizontal position your data: left, centre and right. However you'll notice that when you click in the cells of an unformatted worksheet, none of these three icons is highlighted, which indicates that none of them is the default. The reason for this is that Excel treats data differently depending on the data type.

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If you type text in a cell, your text is aligned on the left; if you type a number, the number is aligned on the right; if you type a date, it is also aligned on the right. To change the horizontal alignment, either select a range of cells or click on a column letter to highlight the entire column then click on one of the alignment icons.

Haven chosen one type of horizontal alignment, you can change it in two ways. You can either choose a different alignment or you can click again on the already selected alignment to deactivate it. For example, if your text is right-aligned and you click on the Right-align button a second time, this will deactivate right alignment and return you to the default alignment which, for text, is left-aligned. So, in fact, Excel has four types of horizontal alignment: left, centre, right and unspecified (or default), which is the alignment that applies when none of the alignment buttons is highlighted.

Microsoft Excel also allows you to specify the vertical alignment of your text. This setting becomes apparent when you increase the height of the cell and there is a definite default; text is normally aligned at the bottom of the cell. This default vertical alignment applies to text, dates and numbers alike.

To set the vertical alignment, either make a selection or click on the row number to select the entire row then click on one of the buttons to make the change: align middle, align top and so forth.

Excel also features the ability to change the orientation of text within the cell. This is particularly useful in those situations where your column headings are wider than the data in the cells. To change the vertical orientation of your text, just select the cells in question and then choose the appropriate angle in the Alignment dialogue.

Having changed the orientation of the headings, you can probably make the columns much narrower. Excel offers a very useful way of doing this: simply select all the columns that contain data then in the Cell group of the Home Tab of the Excel Ribbon, choose Format and then AutoFit Columns. This option makes each of the highlighted columns no wider than it needs to be to display all the data it contains.

What’s up with Service Pack support

What’s up with Service Pack support
The Service Pack Support policy is sometimes misunderstood by our customers. As I mentioned on some of the previous postings, support in the Mainstream Support and Extended Support phases is only provided at the supported service pack level. This means that you must be running a supported service pack to continue to receive security updates or be eligible for any of our other support options (such as Premier, Pro or Pay Per Incident cases).

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When a new service pack is released, Microsoft will provide either 12 or 24 months of support for the previous service pack, varying by product family. We no longer make the decision of 12 or 24 months of support for each individual service pack release. Instead, this decision is made at the product family level (for example, Windows, Office, Servers, or Developer tools) and will be consistent across a product’s service pack releases.

Of course, when support for a product ends, support for the product’s service packs will also end. The product’s Support Lifecycle supersedes the Service Pack Support policy, to ensure that we don’t provide support for a service pack when the parent product is no longer supported.

Let’s try an example... When Windows XP SP2 was released in September 2004, it started the end of support clock for Windows XP SP1. For the Windows product family, we provide 24 months of support for the previous service pack. Therefore, support for Windows XP SP1 ended 24 months following the release of SP2 -- on October 10, 2006. When Windows XP SP3 is released, it will begin the end of support clock for SP2 -- ending 24 months following the release of SP3.

Here's another example, this time using Office 2003. When Office 2003 SP3 was released in September 2007, it started the end of support clock for Office 2003 SP2. Since the Office family provides 12 months of support for the previous service pack, support for Office 2003 SP2 will end on October 14, 2008. Support for Office 2003 SP3 will continue until 12 months following the release of SP4 or support for the product ends.

You may notice that we don't end support for products or service packs on the same date they were released. Instead, we round the end dates to the second Tuesday after the end of the quarter. We'll discuss this in a future posting.

In the meantime, please tell us what you think! Does this better explain the Service Pack Support policy? What can we do better to explain this on our main site?

SEO Ripoff and how to avoid getting scammed

SEO Ripoff and how to avoid getting scammed


You want SEO services but who can you trust to provide quality SEO services?
How do you avoid getting ripped off?

We have seen it all with SEO and the truth is scary. There are big SEO companies all over like a plague and many are fly by night operations with little or no real world SEO experience. There is also an abundance of inexperienced individual scammers out there that have no real world SEO experience or knowledge in SEO but they have fooled many people and businesses that don’t know any better.

We have had businesses come to us after being ripped off by so called SEO experts seeking help.
One example is a new client that hired us and contacted us on a 3 way phone call so we could listen to what the BIG SEO company was offering to do. The SEO firm promised to make my client #1 on organic Google searches and stated they have special and secret relationship with Google. Ok this sounds amazing but the fact of the matter is THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE and this SEO firm tried to rip another company off.


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To make things more interesting I called the SEO firm on my own and spoke to the same salesman I spoke to earlier via a 3 way phone call and picked his brain to see where the conversation would go. This so called Web Master told me each SEO expert they employ is responsible for managing the SEO for over 100 client websites because they are so awesome!

I also asked them about Google add words which is something I also have extensive knowledge and experience with. I wanted to know how much do they charge to manage a small & simple Google add words accountant and they told me they charge per click instead of a flat rate to just manage the online marketing campaign. Not that I would ever consider outsourcing anything to them or anybody else, I was curious. I know and believe in the old saying if you want something done right do it yourself but that’s not so easy in these types of situations for people with no background or understanding of how SEO and the internet work.

Ok that’s just another way they choose to bill for a specific service and there is nothing wrong with that but when I asked how much do they charge for every click and they said $50. I researched the specific key words involved and Google wasn’t charging more than $5 yes five bucks for the specific keywords we talked about.
Talk about serious price gouging and what is really sad is many businesses fall for these types of scams because they don’t know any better or don’t know who to turn to for quality and sound advice.

Not only did this SEO firm promise things that are impossible to guarantee they demonstrated they are not capable of delivering the one on one attention to detail that is necessary to deliver quality SEO services and their prices for shoddy work is way over priced. Now I am not saying good SEO comes cheap because good SEO is very time consuming and required a lot of hard work, dedication, knowledge and most importantly real world SEO experience.

So how do you find a good SEO consultant anyways?
That’s a tough question to answer because good SEO consultants are usually very busy catering to their clients and know firsthand good SEO requires paying serious attention to detail and managing the SEO for 100 websites is a bad idea for just one SEO consultant.

PICK UP THE PHONE and call him or her.

The first thing you should be asking for is to meet the SEO consultant in person – face to face for a consultation. If they are not willing to meet you in person then STOP and keep looking.

What if the SEO consultant is not near you, IE another state?
Now things are different and meeting them in person is not so reasonable but that’s ok.
You can have a phone consultation and ask important questions.

Not every SEO consultant will meet you in person for free and there may be good reason for this. They are very talented individuals and their time is very valuable and most don’t want to deal with tire kickers – you know the potential clients that ask endless questions seeking free advice then never spend a dime.

After you get that out of the way ask to see some websites that the SEO consultant is responsible for. Ask to see natural – organic searches that bring up the websites. If the SEO guru can show you this and demonstrate their talent then you are on the right track to SEO success.

Other questions to ask are how much do they charge? And what will they do for X amount of dollars. If the SEO consultant tells you they have special connections with GOOGLE or they own thousands of websites that can drive traffic to your website then WALK AWAY NOW!

Other things to verify which you can do yourself are.
Is the SEO consultant a real business?
How long have they been in business?
Do they have any professional references?
Do they have their phone number on their own website? Or do they only communicate via email?

MOST IMPORTANTLY are they located within the United States?
NEVER EVER under any circumstances hire a SEO consultant that does not reside in the United States for obvious reasons. Lack of communication skills, lack of legal – laws to protect you as a consumer, lack of quality support. Nothing is worse than being transferred to India when you need help fast.

At the lease try to use common sense when in doubt and understand good SEO isn’t cheap.
The old catch phrase I live by is cheap is not good and good is not cheap.
This doesn’t mean just because the SEO consultant isn’t cheap that he or she is good.

Now before you sign any contract or agree to a deal, find and pay a good business lawyer to review the contract to make sure you completely understand what the contract states and ask the business lawyer to clarify anything you may not understand. Spending a few hundred dollars to have a business lawyer review and edit the contract if necessary may save you thousands of dollars and prevent you from signing a bad contract.

In conclusion you now know what to look for, what to ask and how to weed out the SEO scammers that are out there.

GOOD LUCK with your quest for high quality SEO services!

Here you have' threat subsides, but comeback possible

Initial malicious file has been removed from Web, but variants could follow
Head: "Here you have" threat subsides, but comeback possible

The first wave of the "Here you have" virus seems to have run its course with removal of the malicious file from the site from which it was being downloaded, but keep an eye out for follow-up versions.
10 Enterprise iphone OS Security Best Practices: Download now

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The top 10 'most wanted' spam-spewing botnets

It's an old-school e-mail virus that used the same subject line as the 2001 Anna Kournikova virus and has the same impact -- forwarding the e-mail to entries in Outlook address books.

The message inside prompts readers to go to a Web site, where victims are then urged to download a file that appears to be a PDF but is actually a .scr executable that infects the victim's machine.

"The files to which the links attempted to connect were taken offline rather quickly," says the F-Secure security blog, "so it was not widespread in Europe where it was too early in the morning to snare anybody. In the USA, several big companies noticed the worm moving through their systems."

But SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center says the virus could make a second attempt. "The original file seems to have been removed," the blog says, "so further infections from the initial variant should not occur, but new variants may well follow."

In its initial state, the spam used at least two messages within the e-mail to lure victims, according to a McAfee Labs blog. One reads, "This is The Document I told you about, you can find it Here. Please check it and reply as soon as possible." The other reads, "This is The Free Dowload Sex Movies, you can find it Here. Enjoy Your Time."

Business-to-business transmission of the virus seemed inconsequential because most e-mail filters caught the mailings as suspicious, F-Secure says. But within companies where filtering is not as common, the virus spread widely in many cases, the company says.

Read more about security in Network World's Security section.

Microsoft to lead SMBs to the cloud with new Windows server

Microsoft to lead SMBs to the cloud with new Windows server
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Microsoft's newest Small Business Server, codenamed “Aurora” works great. If so, Microsoft will be doing a big service for the small and mid-sized business -- leading them gently to the cloud. A preview version of Aurora was released by Microsoft yesterday.

The next-generation of SBS created quite a bit of buzz in July during Microsoft's annual worldwide partner conference. It is a Windows Server 2008 R2 build billed as a hybrid server that operates both on-premises and links to cloud services.

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Microsoft's marketing details are fairly scant when it comes to exactly what Aurora will do in the cloud. (Here's a PDF of the SBS "Aurora" Brochure.) It is unclear if it will offer users access to an Azure-like infrastructure, where they can upload their own applications. I'm a little doubtful that it will, but am liking what Microsoft has said about cloud support so far. The server will allow users to integrate pay-as-you-go and third-party SaaS services such as online storage or security monitoring. Presumably, it will let users access Microsoft services such as Windows Live. And Microsoft has said it will link to Microsoft's own hosted software offering, known as Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). This suite includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Live Meeting, and Office Communications Online.

The VAR guy is similarly hopeful about the product. He writes,

"The VAR Guy is paying particularly close attention to SBS Aurora. During recent meetings with a range of VARs, channel partners indicated that SBS 2008 sales were a bit slower than expected because customers weren’t ready to open their wallets for new hardware. But SBS Aurora potentially changes the rules of the game. By integrating with a range of cloud and managed services, some MSPs may wind up promoting SBS Aurora as the foundation for customers’ hybrid cloud systems."

As the latest SMB product, it, too, supports only up to 25 clients. Microsoft is also working on what seems to me to be a successor to the Essential Business Server product, which it killed off this summer because no one needed a product that sat between SBS and the low-end WS2008 was cut off at 75 client licenses and offered fewer features than the standard editions of Windows Server 2008 (albeit for a lower price).

But if at first you don't succeed, try again by naming the product "7". So it is with Windows Small Business Server 7, which like the dead EBS and supports more users than SBS, in this case, up to 75 users. However, curiously, Microsoft has not yet proclaimed SBS 7 to be a cloud/premises hybrid. Without that, what's the point? So we'll see it how it goes this time.

SBS Aurora does all the usual things you would expect it to do, including running Windows applications with promised "tight integration" with Windows 7 and Office 2010. The brochure doesn't say if any fancy WS2008 R2 features are supported such as BranchCache, which improves the speed of downloading documents remotely, or DirectAccess, a VPN replacement. It also adds improved backup and recovery tools and an improved (but supposedly also simplified) management console.

Microsoft has a big opportunity with this server to bring small businesses into the cloud, without making them give up the Windows tools they depend on. SMBs make up an enormous number of Microsoft's most faithful customers -- in large part because they are serviced by resellers that take the sting out of managing IT for them. SMBs are most likely to the see the costs benefits of BPOS and other cloud services, too. They can act as a proving point for the cloud to help convince an enterprise to use the cloud for its bigger, more expensive and more demanding apps.

So I have my fingers cross that the latest incarnation of SBS lives up to its successful predecessors. Here's the link to join the beta program and download the preview version.

Microsoft MCTS Courses In Interactive Format Examined

Microsoft MCTS Courses In Interactive Format Examined
Considering an MCTS Training? Then it’s likely that it’s likely you’ll come into one of two categories: You could already be in IT and you need to formalise your skill set with the Microsoft qualification. Or this could be your first step into the computer world, and research demonstrates that there’s a growing demand for certified networking professionals.

When looking into computer training companies, make it a policy to avoid those who reduce their costs by failing to use the current Microsoft version. This will only hamper the trainee as they will have been learning from an out-of-date syllabus which doesn’t match the existing exam programme, so they’ll probably fail. Don’t rush into buying a course for MCTS before you feel comfortable. Look for a training company who will put effort into advising you on an appropriate training track for your requirements.

A fatal Faux-Pas that potential students often succumb to is to focus entirely on getting a qualification, rather than starting with the desired end-result. Universities have thousands of direction-less students who chose a course based on what sounded good – in place of something that could gain them their end-goal of a job they enjoyed. It’s common, for instance, to get a great deal of enjoyment from a year of study and then find yourself trapped for decades in something completely unrewarding, as an upshot of not doing the correct research when it was needed – at the start.

Should you be wanting to study to get an MCSE, it’s likely you’ll come into one of two categories. You might be ready to come into the computer world, and your research tells you the IT industry has a great need for people with the right qualifications. Alternatively you possibly are someone with a certain amount of knowledge attempting to gain accreditation with the Microsoft qualification.

As you find out about , be sure to steer clear of those that compromise their offerings by not upgrading their courses to the latest Microsoft version. This will only hamper the student as they will have been learning from the wrong MCITP Certification version which doesn’t correspond to the present exams, so it’s going to be hugely difficult for them to get qualified. Avoid businesses who are only trying to make a sale. Advisors should be helping to be sure you’re on the best program for your needs. Don’t allow yourself to be sold a standard product by an over-keen salesman.


A sneaky way that training companies make a big mark-up is via an ‘exam inclusive’ package and offering an exam guarantee. It looks like a good deal, till you look at the facts:

Patently it’s not free – you’re still paying for it – the cost has just been rolled into the whole training package. It’s well known in the industry that if students pay for their relevant examinations, one by one, they’ll be in a better position to qualify each time – because they’ll be conscious of need for professionally qualified IT workers. In addition, with the constant growth in the marketplace, it seems this will be the case for the significant future.

One feature offered by some training providers is a programme of Job Placement assistance. This is to assist your search for your first position. With the great demand for appropriately skilled people in the United Kingdom right now, it’s not too important to become overly impressed with this service however. It’s not as difficult as you may be led to believe to secure a job as long as you’ve got the necessary skills and qualifications.

Update your CV at the beginning of your training though (advice and support for this should come from your course provider). Don’t procrastinate and leave it until you’ve graduated or passed any exams. You’ll often find that you will get your first job while you’re still a student (even in the early stages). If your course details aren’t on your CV – or it’s not getting in front of interviewers, then you won’t even be considered! Most often, a specialist independent regional employment service (who will get paid commission to place you) is going to give you a better service than a centralised training company’s service. It also stands to reason that they’ll be familiar with the area and local employers better.

A regular grievance for a number of training course providers is how much students are prepared to study to get top marks in their exams, but how un-prepared that student is to get the position they’re trained for. Get out there and hustle – you might find it’s fun.

The way in which your courseware is broken down for you can often be overlooked. How is the courseware broken down? And in what sequence and do you have a say in when you’ll get each part? Usually, you’ll enrol on a course taking 1-3 years and receive one element at a time until graduation. This may seem sensible until you think about these factors: What if for some reason you don’t get to the end of every single exam? And what if you find the order of the modules counter-intuitive? Without any fault on your part, you mightn’t complete everything fast enough and not receive all the modules you’ve paid for.

Truth be told, the best solution is to obtain their recommendation on the best possible order of study, but get all the study materials at the start. Everything is then in your possession in the event you don’t complete everything within their ideal time-table.

Microsoft goes through another small round of layoffs

Microsoft goes through another small round of layoffs
Microsoft has quietly laid off "hundreds" of workers this week, although the company has not yet made a formal announcement to the SEC or on its Investor Relations website. I heard from a friend of mine who got the pink slip (and a nice package).

Rumors have been building for weeks that Microsoft was poised for another round of good-byes, but the total headcount this time seems relatively small.

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In 2009, Microsoft laid off about 5,800 employees, but then turned around and hired about 2,000. Some media reports are trying to connect the Microsoft layoffs with the company's botched mobile strategy resulting in the embarrassing Kin phone and it's even more embarrassing fast failure. But I'm not buying that. The Softie I talked to this morning had nothing to do with Kin. Others say that most of these layoffs are from the sales and marketing organizations, which jives with the first-hand account I heard.

Microsoft is set to announce its fiscal year-end earnings results on July 22. The reduced headcount is a bit of a surprise because Microsoft had a record-breaking second quarter that ended Dec. 31, 2009 and another record-breaking third quarter that ended Mar. 31, 2010, thanks mostly to the popularity of Windows 7 and an increase in mojo for Xbox and Xbox Live. (Recent news reports suggests that Xbox Live will make $1 billion in revenue this year.)

The best reasoning I've heard is that the layoffs are part of a routine restructuring, some kind of end-of-fiscal-year housecleaning. Some say if Microsoft really wanted to be lean and mean, it would cut its workforce by 30,000 or more. I personally don't advocate cleaving the company so harshly, but I can see the rationale for it. Microsoft has over 88,180 employees today, up from about 32,000 at the start of the decade. 53,363 are in the U.S., with 39,738 in the Puget Sound area. Half of the employees are in a "business" group making Microsoft's products, most of the rest are in a group that sell its products, with about 10,000 in overhead-ish operations positions. Do you really need one salesperson for every product person?

Some Microsoft employees are none-too-pleased with this idea that layoffs are an automatic part of the fiscal year. They say that the current system creates an atmosphere where even high achievers can be punished. If an employee has been meeting expectations, but has been in a role for a long time, and the hiring manager doesn't see further advancement potential within the group, that is reflected on the employees twice-a-year performance review, and is akin to branding the person with a scarlet layoff letter.

Will Microsoft report another great quarter, or are the layoffs a sign that the peak results of 2010 have headed toward the valley?