Essential SharePoint 2007, 2nd Edition

Chapter 2. Word, Excel, and Outlook

SharePoint works closely with Microsoft Word, Excel, and Outlook. In this chapter, I show you how to use SharePoint through those client applications. Both you and your users need to know these things, so you might consider using this chapter as a starting point for your internal user training.

SharePoint works best with Office 2003 and 2007, so I feature those product versions here. There is a big difference between the 2003 and 2007 Office versions: Office 2007 replaces the menus that most of us know with the Ribbon. The Office Ribbon is a tabbed set of toolbars with commands displayed as icons and text.

You can use SharePoint 2007 with Office 2003 if your organization isn't ready for Office 2007. Office 2007 offers some improved integration with SharePoint, but it is not a requirement. In this chapter, I note where features are specific to Office 2007.

Setting Client Security

Before you can fully use SharePoint with Office, you must change the security settings on your computer so that the SharePoint domain is trusted. If your computer is part of a domain, you'll probably also want to enable automatic logon so that SharePoint will automatically use your network credentials rather than prompting you for your user name and password. To make those changes:

1. Start Internet Explorer and choose Tools → Internet Options → Security → Trusted Sites → Sites. Internet Explorer displays a list of the trusted sites for your computer.

2. Type the address of your SharePoint ...