Microsoft has released several updates for quite a few of its major pieces of software including Microsoft Excel, Windows, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Host Integration Server. This is part of its monthly Patch Tuesday releases which now includes more technical details to give developers more time to fix problems before any public announcements. There is also a new ‘exploitability index’ to assist system administrators in prioritising the patches they roll out. The new ‘exploitability index’ has three tiers, 1 means that the patch is a critical update, 2 is of moderate concern and 3 is of least concern.

All of the updates can be downloaded through Windows Update.

Often people overlook the importance of formatting documents. Spreadsheets are no exception so we’ve written a small tutorial on how to highlight alternate rows in Microsoft Excel 2007.

• Open the workbook (spreadsheet) and highlight all the rows.
  
• Select the ‘Conditional Formatting’ drop-down from the Home menu and select ‘Highlight Cell Rules’, then ‘More Rules’.
• Select the ‘Use a formula to determine which cells to format’ rule type from the list and enter the following formula to tell Excel to highlight alternate rows.

  =MOD(ROW(),2)=0

  

• Select the ‘Format…’ button and set an appropriate cell style then hit the ok buttons.
  
• Your spreadsheet should now have alternate row highlighting.

What is a zip file?

A zip file is essentially a folder containing many files which have been compressed. Zip files are easier to email as you only have to attach one file, they can also be password protected/encrypted and take up less disk space.

What do I use to open a zip file?

To open a zip file there are several options. If you use Windows XP or Vista you do not need to use a separate program as there is a compression utility built in. If you would like a more advanced way of creating zip files you can use one of the following free utilities: WinZip or WinRAR.

How do I open a zip file?

In order to decompress a zip file and view its contents you should right-click on it and select “extract to…” the application you are using should then run and the files should be decompressed and ready to be viewed.

How do I create a zip file?

To create a zip file simply put all of the files you want to compress into a folder, then right-click on the folder and select “add to archive”.

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO has announced that he will unveil details of its ‘Cloud operating system’ at the end of the month at its Professional Developers Conference. Microsoft Cloud as it has been dubbed will allow the rapid development and deployment of Internet applications and services. Windows Cloud will look like Microsoft Windows but operate over the Internet.

Windows Cloud will focus on the browser and as such Microsoft has stated it will be integrating its .NET programming capabilities further into the browser, this has already been developed through Silverlight, Microsoft’s alternative to Flash. Ballmer pointed out that Microsoft Cloud will not be a replacement for Windows 7 (which is due to be released later this year) but is a step in the right direction for future releases of Windows.

What is a Codec? A codec compresses or decompresses digital media formats, some examples of codec are MP3 (audio) and MPEG (video). Codecs are used by your operating system (for example Microsoft Windows Vista) to translate these differing digital media formats.

The problem with having so many different formats is that the operating system requires more software to be able to decode the video/audio. Thankfully Shark007.net with the help of the MSFN community has released a codec package which bundles the most common codec’s into one simple installation for Windows Vista.

You can download the Windows Vista Codec Package here