Desktop Support - Linking Contacts in Office 2007

When working for a small company, I am finding that it is often necessary for me to be the desktop support technician as well as the backup gal, server dudette, and network wirer. I guess this is perfect for me, since I have always been more of a jack of all trades, master of none type of person anyway. I can also usually track down the answer to any question, if given enough time and resources (usually 2 minutes and Google).

That is what it took to find the answer to the question for today. I had a user ask me today how to link contacts in Office 2007. He said he had done it in the older version, but could not find any information on how to do in 2007. I personally have never linked contacts, so I had no idea what he was talking about, but as he seemed quite distressed, I jumped on Google to see what I could find. Thankfully, this article by Jennifer Kershaw was just what I needed to be the hero today.

Here is the quick rundown; Open Outlook 2007, go to Tools --> Options --> Contact Options --> check the box next to "Show Contact Linkin gon all Forms" and wallah! Now each contact has a box at the bottom right allowing you to link contacts to other contacts in your list.

Office Demos

It is almost Christmas, so I have set aside my studying for a few days, but still needed to work on some training for Office 2007 and stumbled upon a site many probably use all the time, but was new to me.

Microsoft has really become more user friendly in the past couple of years, and one sure sign of that is the wealth of information they have on their Office Online sites. In addition to some really great trainging materials, the also have some great demos.

I took some tips and created an article for our newsletter, but I will also be sending my customers more often to the Office site so they too can get the information that they need.

I often find that desktop support takes up a large part of my day if I let it, and I also have found that the more training and guiding I do is less time I have to spend later answering the more basic how-to quetions from my users.

By the way, I also have some users who are still using Office 2003 and one or two stuck on Office 2000 and there are links from them from this site too.