When Microsoft released Office 2008 for Mac, they did something that I must applaud -- they joined the ranks of Mac developers creating Automator-able applications. When you do a search in Automator for "Microsoft," it will reveal all of the Automator actions that ship with Microsoft Office 2008. There is lots of great stuff included, so we'll be covering some of it in this four part Mac Automation series. I will take you through how to automate each of the Microsoft Office applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage.First off, let's take a look at what you can automate in Word 2008. Doing a search for "Word" in Automator will display the available actions for Microsoft Word. As you can see, there are plenty of actions that you can automate. For this how-to, we'll focus on a workflow that does the following:
- Creates a new document
- Sets document properties
- Gathers text from the clipboard
- Places a watermark in the document
- Saves the document
- Prints the document
Happy Friday everyone! From Down Under it emerges (via 
If, for one reason or another, you don't have or don't want Microsoft Office installed, but you still need to view a doc, spreadsheet or presentation, the 
Discovering Automator is a new book from Hanaan Rosenthal that delves into the many facets of making your Mac
do more work in less time for you with the power of Mac OS X Tiger's Automator. From 
MacTech has
published what I am fairly certain are the comprehensive 
Recently, I learned the importance of keeping old files current, and why it's helpful to keep a working vintage Mac around. The school I work for was audited by both the state and Federal Departments of Education earlier this summer (we passed with flying colors, by the way). They wanted to see everything we could hope to show them, and many of the faculty and directors were pulling out research they had conducted years ago to satisfy their demands. However, none of the files could be opened. This is how they landed on my desk.
