Tips on free expert help with Office 2004 and earlier posted atMacOSXHints and MacFixIt

I posted variations in the last couple days of the following on the
MacOSXHints.com "Applications" forum and the MacFixIt.com "Microsoft Office"
forums.

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Office 2004, Office X etc.: Tips on how to get free, expert help

Because I've been there, I empathized with some of the Microsoft Office
questions and problems I've seen posted here and at other forums. I scan the
questions and responses to see what I can learn if ever I should have a
similar issue. But I've been guilty of not sharing a couple tips that have
been invaluable to me over the years and different versions of Office. By
the way, my only relationship to Microsoft is as a consumer.

TIP #1: Office for Mac Newsgroups

I've found the Office MVPs (volunteer experts who are frequent
contributors) exceptionally helpful in the several Office Newsgroups for
Mac, I scan those newsgroups that concern me most several times a week and
copy and paste into Entourage Notes useful scraps of info I pick up from
some of the responses. I do searches when I have a problem, and *post
questions when the searches don't yield info for my particular need.

microsoft.public.mac.office
microsoft.public.mac.office.entourage
microsoft.public.mac.office.word
microsoft.public.mac.office.excel
etc.

Each of these newsgroups can be accessed via Entourage Mail.

When I had a problem one day with Entourage working in the early Office X
days, I discovered one can reach these newsgroups with a browser at:
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/commun...?pid=newsgroups>

*One lesson I learned the hard way about posting questions on an Office
newsgroup is to alter your return address on postings to these newsgroups so
that you don't end up on a lot of mailing lists by spammers and pranksters
(or any of the robotic address grabbers). Typical email address altering
example: <'myname@nospam.aol.com> or some garbling of letters in the added
word after the @ symbol.

TIP #2: MVP and other Office FAQs

I may start my search here sometimes, rather in the Newsgroups.
One can begin a search after clicking the Office support tab at the
MacTopia url
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/default.aspx>

But I frequently find it quicker to go directly to the FAQs, particularly
the webpages created by some of the MVP volunteers

I'm partial to the MVP volunteer experts because some of their pointers are
"out of the box" and because I respect the independence of the MVPs, who are
not afraid to speak up, even if not towing the company line.

Here's a place to start: <http://www.mvps.org/>

After that, however, one may have to use a browser other than Safari to
access a given MVP site.

For instance, all I can get with Safari when I click on the MVPs' Word FAQs
link is a blank page. If I enter the same url
<http://word.mvps.org/> in Internet Explorer, I can see the FAQs.

A valuable site for Entourage also had to be accessed with a browser other
than Safari up to this week:
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>

Some individuals' sites, however, can be accessed via Safari, such as Excel
tips at
<http://mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm>
or
<http://www.mcgimpsey.com/excel/>

Tip #3: Free Tech Support Calls After Purchase

Here's another tip: after buying Office, one gets at least one free Tech
Support call. I don't know how up-to-date the info is because I think I
copied it a year or more ago from a Microsoft website page, but here's a
note I pasted in my iData Pro X phone dialer/phonebook/notekeeper:

"If you purchased this (Office) product at a retail store, you are eligible
for unlimited no-charge Installation Support and two no-charge Personal
Support incidents. Personal Support is designed to provide support for
everyday product usage to help U.S. consumers, home users, home office
customers who use Microsoft consumer products."

Respectfully, Norm