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Building Blocks Make Word Documents Easier To Construct
Posted by Angus Kidman at 3:00 PM on December 19, 2008
One of the aims of the Ribbon interface in Office 2007 was to make features easier to find, but there's still plenty of obscure options in Word and its siblings which most people will never discover. The official Word blog runs through one such feature, Building Blocks, a catch-all category that includes pre-defined headers, footers, title pages and other components, and explains some of the ways they can be used. It's a useful option to know about if you frequently produce similar documents but don't want to make use of full-blown templates (though the preview function in the Building Blocks Organizer is pretty awful and definitely needs a revamp in the next version).
Now you can create embeddable online versions of documents just by clicking send if you have an account with Docstoc. The service allows you to share Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Adobe Acrobat PDF files through a browser using Flash, which can also be embedded on third-party web sites. Sign up for a free DocStoc account with your email, use that address to send one or more files as attachments to uploads@docstoc.com, and you'll get an email back with links to your documents online which you can forward or embed. Most importantly, it works with anything that can send an email — you could even forward an attached document from your mobile device. 
If you have a bunch of older Office documents to convert to the Office 2007 format and you want to do it quickly, 
Google Docs now offers a gallery of spreadsheet, presentation, and document templates for use in your work. Whether you're designing a resume, invoice, calendar, or slideshow, there are a few templates here to get you started. Template categories include Business, Calculators, Calendars & Schedules, Cards & Certificates, Letters, Presentation Designs, and more. You can also sort them by how many users each has and user ratings. To use a template in your Google Doc, from the New menu drop-down, choose "From template..."
Free markup sharing site A.nnotate offers a simple tool for letting co-workers or friends comment and review a document or web page without installing specialty software or hosting a web conference. Upload a Word document, PDF, or other file, or just pass A.nnotate a web page address, and you can start highlighting text or choosing areas to leave notes, either in the margins or as floating boxes. Once a page is started, the creator can email links to as many people as they want to comment. A free account at the site gives one person about 25 pages per month to offer for markup with unlimited annotators, but advanced offerings are available starting at $10 per month.
Linux only: Tag and organise documents of nearly any kind and generate complete bibliographies with Referencer, a free utility for Linux systems. PDF files, office documents, saved web pages, and whatever else you have laying around can be tagged and organised, and you can enter the metadata needed for a bibliography report by hand, or have Referencer jump onto arXiv, PubMed, or CrossRe to see if any titles match up with what you're looking at. For those with a lot of nested folders' worth of documents or anyone harnessing Tux's power for academic pursuits, Referencer can be a great tool and freak-out-preventer. Referencer is a free download, available as source and pre-compiled for many Linux distributions.
Windows only: Easy Microsoft Word Properties is a helpful tool for anyone who uses Word documents' details listings—Author, Subject, Title, and the like—to keep their work organised or incorporate Word files into databases and spreadsheets. Install and run the application, point it to a folder and tell it which files to search for. In the next tab, all the standard properties of the documents returned can be edited in batch fashion, no right-clicking required. If nothing else, editing the "key words" line can be helpful in guiding along Windows and other search tools. Easy Microsoft Word Properties is a free download for Windows systems only.
Windows only: Open OpenDocument Format (ODF) files in Microsoft Office using the OpenXML/ODF Translator, a free plug-in for Microsoft Word. One of the most obvious benefits is being able to open OpenOffice.org-created word documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, although other apps (like Google Docs) are starting to hop on the OpenDocument bandwagon as well. Users of Office 2007 should be able to install the plug-in and get right-click access to ODF files; those with earlier copies may have to install the 
