GETTING THE LATEST OFFICE LETTER TIPS

Beginning in 2008, The Office Letter will post new tips to the Web site only. We will no longer be e-mailing a newsletter.

To get the latest tips, we strongly suggest one of these two methods:

1. Add our home page to your list of browser favorites.

2. Use an RSS feed to stay abreast of all changes to the site.

An RSS feed is a simple file that contains the title of each new story and a brief deion of what it's about, as well as the date it was posted. When they were first popularized, users had to purchase (or find a free) RSS feed reader to subscribe to feeds and read their content. That's no longer the case. Today you can access RSS feeds from IE, Firefox, Outlook 2007, as well as RSS readers.

Below are instructions for accessing the Office Letter's RSS feed from a variety of software applications.

RSS AND INTERNET EXPLORER 7

You can add the Office Letter RSS feed to a list maintained by Windows Internet Explorer 7.

1. Open IE7 and go to the Office Letter home page (http://www.officeletter.com).

2. In the upper-right corner (in the toolbar) of IE7, note that the RSS feed button turns from greyed-out to orange. Click on the orange icon and you'll see name RSS feed display.
3. Click on RSS feed name (The Office Letter) to add it to IE7's RSS feeds.

Now that you've subscribe to our RSS, you can view the articles this way:

1. Click on the Star icon (the Favorites Center) in the IE7 toolbar to list the feeds you've subscribed to.

2. Click on Office Letter in that list.
3. Click on any story in the Office Letter list to read the article.

RSS AND FIREFOX

In Firefox, adding an RSS feed is known as creating a Live Bookmark. Firefox should be able to automatically detect the Office Letter feed. When you visit our home page (http://www.officeletter.com), click on the orange icon in the bottom right portion of the Firefox browser (in the status bar) or in the address bar (depending on which version of Firebox you are using).

Firefox displays the Add Bookmark or Add Live Bookmark dialog box, where you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Add the Live Bookmark to the desired folder -- the list is in the navigation toolbar.

RSS AND OUTLOOK 2007

You can add an RSS feed to Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 in two ways.

TECHNIQUE #1:

1. On the Tools menu, click Account Settings.

2. On the RSS Feeds tab, click New.

3. In the New RSS Feed dialog box, type the URL of the RSS Feed: http://www.officeletter.com.

4. Click Add, then OK.

TECHNIQUE #2:

1. In the Mail Folders panel (at the far left), in the Personal Folders section, find the RSS Feeds header.

2. Right click on RSS Feeds, then choose “Add a New RSS Feed…”

3. Outlook 2007 displays a dialog box asking you for the URL to the RSS feed. Enter http://www.officeletter.com/tolrss.xml (see Figure 1).


Figure 1

4. Outlook reads the RSS file and displays the article titles and a short sentence about each article (shown in Figure 2).

   
   Figure 2

You can forward, delete, and flag any article from an RSS feed, just as you can any other e-mail message. However, you cannot reply to the sender.

To read the article, click the folder for your RSS feed (The Office Letter, in our example) and choose the message you want to read from the message list. If you have the Reading Pane turned on, that’s where you’ll find the message. You can also double-click on the message to open it.

The above instructions create the link to the RSS feed. However, when you open Outlook 2007 and a new RSS feed is available, you may need to prompt Outlook to update its list of articles. To update the RSS feed article list:

1. Click on any message within the current RSS feed.

2. In the Reading Pane (if you have it open) or in an open RSS message, right-click inside the InfoBar (the blue area at the top of the Pane), and choose Download/update all content.

This forces Outlook to read the latest RSS feed and populate the articles in your folder.

RSS AND A GOOGLE CUSTOM HOME PAGE

1. Go to http://www.google.com.

2. From the home page, click on the More link near the top of the screen. Choose Reader from the drop-down list.

3. If you have not signed in, enter your e-mail address and password.

4. Click on "Add Subion" in the left nav bar. Enter the URL of the RSS feed: http://www.officeletter.com/tolrss.xml

The Office Letter stories will now appear below the green "Add Subion" section in the left nav.

RSS AND MY YAHOO

1. Go to http://my.yahoo.com Enter your sign-in information if necessary.

2. Click on pull-down button icon to the right of the "Personalize this page" button, then choose "Add RSS Feed."

3. Enter the URL of the RSS feed: http://www.officeletter.com

4. Click on Add. Yahoo adds a box with the Office Letter stories to the current page.

RSS AND MY MSN

1. Go to http://my.msn.com Enter your sign-in information if necessary.

2. Click on Add Content at the top

3. In the "Search for content" field, enter the URL of the RSS feed: http://www.officeletter.com/tolrss.xml

4. MSN shows The Office Letter in a list. Check the box in front of the name Office Letter and choose the OK button. MSN adds the RSS stories to the page.

PUTTING OUR TIPS ON YOUR SITE