Office

One of the disadvantages with having to manage multiple Exchange Accounts is that it is very difficult to get a unified view of the all the accounts. Be it email or calendar schedule, each Exchange account could potentially have a different set that have to be dealt with. Microsoft Products only allow access to one Exchange account at a time, and that complicates things.

For emails I just move them into PST folders organized by project, initiative, topic, whatever the case may be. Once these emails — whichever Exchange Account they came from — are in their folders, I can easily get a chronological view of what conversations were going on related to that piece work.

Getting a similar view of appointments is trickier. I always like to know when my meetings are scheduled and ensure I am not double-booked at any particular time before I respond to meeting requests.

Managing this with two Outlook Profiles is next to impossible. However, I found a rather unique way of handing this issue. I use the "Publish to Internet" feature in Outlook 2007 to do this.

All of us know that Microsoft Excel allows us to hide certain worksheets from view. Hiding sheets helps us in ensuring that any background lookup data or reference data that you want to utilize in your spreadsheets remain neatly tucked away from general view.

You may also want to prevent users from viewing certain numbers that are used in calculation on your spreadsheets. Hiding worksheets simply makes the workbook clutter free and helps readers focus on the spreadsheets that really matter.

The only disadvantage with simply hiding your worksheets is that it is equally easy to unhide them. Any Excel user worth his salt knows how to find and unhide a hidden sheet. To prevent users from unhiding your worksheets, you may choose to protect the workbook. However when you protect a workbook, you are also preventing the users from a myriad of other functionality that they may genuinely require.