(Toney Sisk is a writer for Microsoft Office, and his focus is on Project and Project Server.)

No, computing in the clouds doesn't mean your computer (or you) can suddenly float. But you might ask yourself, Why would anyone want to leave the security of their Microsoft applications to start roaming around in the clouds, anyway? Versatility is one answer. Ease of sharing information, is another. Let's look up at the clouds a little longer to see what's going on with all those servers and services.

Your documents everywhere

Fundamental to cloud computing is the Web browser as the one window into all the documents you care about. For example, with OfficeLive Workspaces, you can view and share Word documents, Excel --spreadsheets, a PowerPoint presentation, or a host of other documents=--from anywhere you might be sitting, whether at home, at work, at the library, or in a hotel room with internet access. Gone are the days of sending e-mail attachments back and forth, or using a thumb-sized memory stick that too often gets lost between the sofa cushions or in the car.

Your computer everywhere

Computing in the clouds gets even more fun when you see your desktop computer in the clouds. No, nothing has been abducted from your home. Welcome to Mesh, your network of your own computers in the sky, viewed in your favorite Web browser. Once your computers are adding to Mesh, you can view any of your computers from all the other computers—and all for free.

Your business everywhere

Or if you're an entrepreneur, you may not know that you can conduct most of your internet business entirely from the clouds, from designing a business website, to analyzing business statistics, to taking orders from customers, to making money from online advertising. OfficeLive Small Business is a Web-based business tool that will send you on your way toward that dream business that you've always thought about. Who knows, maybe you'll be able to quit your day job.

And It doesn't stop at Office applications. Higher up in the clouds are more services and servers that go far beyond Office applications. Welcome to Azure , a services platform for more serious business adventures. Thousands of Web developers are beginning to love the idea of not buying and maintaining computers to run their own internet business, applications, and other services.

Not everything is free, however. It all depends on who is making what up in the clouds. If a developer is creating a encrypted data storage service for clients who are attorneys, well, those storage services might cost something. Someone designing a new social technology that increases a visitor's ability to communicate and collaborate might charge nothing for it. After all, who wants to pay for a new social tool. You get the idea.

Just be careful out there. If you look up at the clouds too much, you might bump into something.

Being at a Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) summit -- where I was surrounded by subject matter experts from around the globe speaking passionately about their journeys in the art of database management -- was a humbling experience. Yet, it was also a Zen moment for me to hear these masters talk about their introduction to Microsoft Office Access.

While every journey into the art of data management is unique, the varied paths of these Access MVPs (Most Valued Professionals) had one common and familiar challenge that they all had to meet and conquer to gain their mastery in the art of data management. This one common challenge sounded so familiar to me and perhaps will to you too.

Recalling the day long ago (I was engaged in sprucing up the data at a non-profit organization), when I was handed a box that the board members had all agreed was the key to all their data management issues. My challenge was to achieve the Zen with the contents of the box- the Access program on a few floppies (remember those?) and an oversized user manual. Yes, it was a long time ago, before the days of Office Online and all those blogs and user forums.

Though my journey ended happily with the creation of a data management solution that worked for the organization, the journey was slow due to the lack of information and directions and I hear that the challenge remains today because of an overload of information so, if you are considering or have started your own explorations into the art of data management with Access, here are some directions that might help make your journey a happier one:

· Begin with the demystification of Access terms.

· You wouldn’t start building a house without a blueprint! A database is no different: grasp the Database design basics.

· There are many ways to crack an egg: Check out the 6 key considerations when creating Access 2007 databases.

· Get moving and create a new database.

After you have mastered the art of data management with Access at your workplace, and have time to wonder about what next, try infusing the Access Zen into your home to help you with:

· Managing your contacts

· Organizing your nutrition and fitness needs

· Keeping track of your belongings

· Managing your personal accounts ledger

· Customizing your event planning

A parting Zen kōan (a question or statement containing aspects that are inaccessible to rational understanding, yet may be accessible to the intuition.) Access works in harmony with various other programs so, if your information is currently in an Excel spreadsheet, a Word document, InfoPath forms, or in Outlook e-mails, explore how to bring all your data into Access so that you can manage it from Access. Here are some video’s to get you started:

· Collect data in Access 2007 by using e-mail

· Merge Access data with Word

· Create an Access database/Excel workbook solution

Finally, if you’ve had your own Zen moments with Access, I’d love to hear any insights you’d like to share from your journey.

The templates linked in this blog might help to save your life — or at least help to eliminate complications — especially in emergency situations. When I started treatment for the blood clots I developed after having knee surgery, I was told that I should always have a list of medications and vitamins or supplements that I am taking with me. This way if I can’t tell the doctors what medications or vitamins I am taking, they can at least have the list, especially now that I am on blood thinners.

I was told to put the list in my wallet, preferably right behind my driver’s license, because my wallet is one of the first places emergency personnel look to see who I am and who my emergency contact is when I can’t speak for myself.

As a result, I created a Track Medicines and Vitamins template that you can use as a starting point for your list. I made the template about the size of a credit card that you can cut out and trifold (fold in thirds) to fit behind your driver’s license or other form of identification.

I was also told that I should make sure that my emergency contact has this list and the medical history for my family, because the family medical history can help to decide how best to treat me. As a result, I created a template for tracking family history. This template is a good starting point, but you might also want to check with your doctor to see what other information you should add.

Besides keeping a copy in my wallet and with my emergency contact, I also put the Word documents on my Mobile Device. If you have a Mobile device that uses Windows Mobile, you can do this too. Windows Mobile 5.0 and later supports the .docx file format introduced in Word 2007, and for Windows Mobile earlier than 5.0, you need to save the file in .doc file format (Word 2003 and earlier). You can also copy the documents to a thumb drive if you carry one of these devices.

SharePoint wikis help us wrangle some processes in our group, especially when they’re on the wilder side.

They work best when we need to capture knowledge from several people in an informal way. The authors are usually also the readers, so it feels less like one person “owns” the content.

As people add content, they can create “wiki links” as placeholders for future pages that other people will create and edit. This video interview with Ward Cunningham provides some insight.

To learn more about creating SharePoint wikis, watch this demo or read some wiki articles. In the rest of this post, we’ll tell you about some ways that we’re using wikis, and we’d love to hear from you.

Cross-functional teams – As we work more with new processes and media types, it’s important to share what we learn across teams. We use wikis to capture information, such as using multimedia, as our expertise and processes evolve.

Since we’re mixing it up more often with people who don’t share the same manager, it’s hard enough to find a common meeting time. Once we finally sync up, whether in person or virtually, people don’t want to chew up precious meeting time to plan the headings and styles of a traditional document.

Works in Progress (Tools, Processes, etc.)

When tools and processes are in their fledgling stages, information can change faster than a toddler’s mind. People need to know what’s working, what’s not, and how to work around issues.

People can add new information as it evolves, and we don’t have to round people up to revise a document. We follow up on issues by submitting them in a formal tracking database, but a wiki helps get the initial word out to the masses quickly, so people spend less time spinning wheels.

Onboarding of processes and people

A wiki is a great way to help people ramp up quickly or learn more about your team. Depending on your group’s style, you can include all serious information (Where do I find all the guidelines), or mix in some friendly tips (Where’s the vending machine and is it OK to eat the fish in the cafeteria?). Each author adds his or her own perspective – everyone is new once, right -- so the information is richer than if just one person wrote it.

On my team, we created a wiki to help people from other teams learn more about SharePoint technologies. If we find ourselves frequently e-mailing certain types of information, then it goes into the wiki. We also don’t have to worry about certain pockets of expertise living only in people’s heads, in case someone takes a Hawaiian vacation and decides they’d rather surf (and not on the Internet) for a living.

Wikis are one of many tools in the arsenal

We don’t use wikis for everything. We use lists with columns galore and workflows for planning our content. This enables us to slice and dice data for various stakeholders. We use a blog for sharing ideas, and specialized lists like surveys and calendars. When we need to collect ideas in a rapid way, however, wikis are a great tool.

We sometimes give wikis a head start with a starter TOC, a lightweight template, or a little info. This helps people feel more comfortable about contributing, especially those who don’t like to show up first at a party, sit in the front row, or write on a blank page.

We try not to go too far, though, so that it doesn’t feel like one person dominates. Like any body of information, wikis sometimes need a little TLC and some light weeding. Since it’s a community space, though, we don’t buzz through it with an editorial weed whacker.

Will wikis work for your group? Your mileage may vary, depending on your group’s working style and how you plan to use the information. This blog post links to articles from Kathleen Lau and Lee Reed, who provide insight about the people aspects of working with newer types of media, like wikis and blogs.

If you’d like a second opinion, you might like reading perspectives from Woody Windischman, blogger and Professional Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 author. He also shares some tips and tricks on using the preview pane view in a wiki-like style in other SharePoint lists.

If you’ve got any tips or tricks to share, or unique ways of using wikis, please comment away. Or maybe we should set up a wikis wiki.

What’s cool about mobility and technology is that it’s no longer just comic-book fantasy. Not that long ago, Dick Tracy had his wrist radio, which seemed amazing and impossible. Today we can call anyone in the world, take a picture, store information, play games, and be productive on small, hand-held devices.

Dick Tracy was usually on the go. Like him, we spend an increasing portion of our workweek outside the office. We’re blogging, podcasting, working at home, and using Facebook at the office. There’s a melding as mobility blurs our old border lines.

So how do we really take advantage of all this? Why, through Microsoft Office, of course!

If you’re just getting started in your career, starting over, or just need to be moving faster, netbooks are the way to go. Today these small laptops are available at prices starting at $275.00 and they usually come with built-in WiFi networking capabilities. On that computer you can install the very affordable Microsoft Works. Concerned about working with this version and the full version of Office? Use these tips to keep your pace moving.

Maybe you’re a Works user and have considered making your documents and presentations in a richer environment. Check out our 60-day free trial. You can select from Office Professional, Home & Student, Standard, and for those remaking their careers in their own way, Office Small Business. There’s one for you and your success.

Office Live is Office in the cloud. What’s that? Instead of storing everything on your computer, or working with a corporate network, you can store and collaborate using the Internet. It’s an online service. Not sure how it all works? Watch this great video by my co-worker. I’ve yet to see post-its used in such an effective manner.

One of the best aspects of mobility is that we’re not sitting in front of large, energy hogging machines as much as we were. Microsoft is focusing on how, as a corporation and as individuals, we can live with and create technology that pollutes less and less. Did you know that 60% of computers are being left on all night? That’s 19.82 billion kilowatt hours of electricity wasted and 14.4 million tons of associated carbon dioxide emissions. Intrigued? You can learn more about green computing or see the Microsoft top projects that seek to create a healthier planet.

I think Dick Tracy would be impressed with where technology is taking us.

Inbox out of control? Too many messages to go through? Well, when my four weeks of vacation turned into ten weeks of being out of the office, I was overwhelmed by the amount of e-mail messages in my Inbox.

For a while, I just went through the messages one by one. However, I quickly learned that doing that would take forever — actually days, but I didn’t have that much time to spend on just catching up on e-mail. So I stopped and thought about the best way to reduce my Inbox in the shortest amount of time.

I found something that really worked for me that I shared with another coworker who had been out of the office for five months. Because it worked for us, I figured that I should share what I learned.

The first thing that helped me was that I had the Reading Pane turned on, so that I could quickly view the messages without having to open them.

Another thing that I found very helpfully was to have a rule set up that makes messages sent to me a specific color. I have been doing this for a while, as this allows me to respond to messages sent to me quicker.

After I went through those messages, I sorted by type (Arranged By: Type), and then went through the Calendar items first. This was the easiest part, because most of the items could be deleted because they had already happened.

Figure 1 Sorting the Inbox by Type and Conversation

Next, I sorted by conversation (Arranged By : Conversation), and then looked at the last (most recent) message first. I looked for messages that dealt with things that had already occurred, such as people looking for something or servers being down, because I could delete these. I left the messages in my Inbox that would take some thinking about or had other actions item. My Inbox became my to-do list while I was catching up.

After getting through all the conversations, my Inbox was much, much more manageable. In fact, it was only about two screens in length. Now I use these tips even if I am gone for a day or anytime I have a lot of messages to go through. Hopefully, they will help you, too.

Last week, as I was dreamily staring out the window at the determined crocuses poking their heads up through the dirt, I received an e-mail from my good friend Randall, who is a principle test manager here in Office and who has supplied me with some great column ideas (printer security, for one). Spring fever had hit Randall too, but in a much different way. This time he suggested I write a column about March Madness, that college basketball tournament that rolls around every spring and whips many Americans into a fevered frenzy.

Don't get me wrong; I like sports as much as the next office lady in orthopedic shoes and support hose. In fact, I find basketball quite accessible compared to some other sports: The ball is big (unlike hockey where I can never keep track of the puck), the players aren't covered up with padding and helmets (again like hockey and football, too), and it's fast-moving, unlike "America's favorite pastime" which can be like watching grass grow (the grass is growing, actually, while you're sitting there staring at it and getting the sunburn of your life with a lapful of nachos).

But I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out what more I had to say about March Madness besides, "It's spring. We have NCAA brackets. Click HERE to get them." So, Randall roped in someone on his team, Kevin McDowell, who is as, uh, enthusiastic as a fan can get. Rather than me writing the column this week, I challenged Kevin to do it. I learned more about this tournament by reading his column than I ever thought possible (or, honestly ever wanted to know) but I do have more of an appreciation for the event. So go forth, read on, and prosper through bracketology.

Kevin waxes feverish about March Madness

So it's that time of year again: Spring time — the wearing of the green, Easter, flowers blooming, rain (if you happen to be anywhere near Microsoft's headquarters), and basketball. And I'm not talking just any basketball, but March Madness, that glorious experience of watching the nation's best (and a few that, to quote a certain ex-Journey member and celebrity judge, are "just all right") compete for the national championship. If you're like my dear friend Crabby, you may be thinking "Who cares?"

Well, let me tell you why I care. Although I now live in the Seattle area, I spent the first 30 years of my life in North Carolina. Growing up, I lived and breathed college basketball. From seventh to twelfth grade, whenever the NCAA tournament was being played, many teachers had TVs in the classroom with the games on. If a teacher didn't have the game on, many students skipped that class and went to one where it was on. It was rumored that my junior-high principal, Mr. Edelman, a Duke University grad, even sent a memo to the teachers encouraging study of the geometry and physics of a certain spherical, orange and black ball, up to and including watching said ball on TV. He might have been biased, but some of the best college basketball in the country was played by the Duke Blue Devils and the University of North Carolina (UNC) Tarheels. Two of the game's most storied coaches, Duke's Mike Krzyzewski (Coach K to those who get tongue-tied with that onslaught of consonants) and Carolina's Dean Smith (now retired), led those teams to numerous tourney wins. And I mean numerous: They are two of the only six college coaches to attain 800 career wins. I could go on and on, but you'd probably get bored and my own alma mater, Virginia Tech, may get a little jealous.

History of March Madness

For those who weren't raised in North Carolina, who prefer watching the Food Network to ESPN, or who are simply living under a rock, the NCAA tournament has been big news for the last week or two. Wondering why? Here's a little background, so you can be one of the know-it-alls at the office water cooler. The first NCAA (that's National Collegiate Athletic Association, rock-dwellers) men's basketball tournament was held in 1939 with only eight teams. Oregon beat Ohio State, 46-33. Teams that won their local conference tournament championship at the end of the season were invited to participate. As you can imagine, some good teams that had one bad game during their conference tournament didn't get invited, while some teams that got hot at the right time, did get invited. The NCAA began adding at-large bids in 1951, in addition to the automatic invitations, to include teams that had been successful through the season. And as interest and advertising opportunities grew, the field gradually increased until 2000, when it was expanded to 65 teams (the number 64 and 65 teams play each other for the last spot). Some other notable milestones:

• 1946: First televised tournament. Oklahoma State beat UNC, 43-40.
• 1982: Women's tournament added.
• 1996: First tournament Web page created.
• 2006:19 million video streams of games served online.

The men have held 68 tournaments, with UCLA winning the most at 11. The women have held 24 tournaments, with Tennessee running the court at 7 wins.

March Madness money

Now, why should you care about March Madness? After all, doesn't it waste valuable office time with people trolling the Web for game statistics, watching games online, filling out tournament brackets, wasting company ink and toner, and gossiping in each other's cubicles about who's the best team, who's the greatest player, how bad the refs were, and why their team should've won?

Possibly, but many companies whose employees get carried away in the madness help perpetuate it by buying television advertising during the tournament. The men's NCAA tournament championship is second only to the Super Bowl in ad revenue. In 2007, a 30-second commercial spot during the final game cost $1.3 million! If you figure in all the time-outs, halftime breaks and pre- and postgame analysis sessions, a lot of money is made during that championship game, plus a lot more during the games leading up to the championship. Advertising during the tournament brings in so much money that in 1999, CBS paid $6 billion to broadcast the men's tournament for 11 years. And in 2001, ESPN paid $200 million for an 11-year deal to broadcast the women's tournament (they got softball, volleyball, and swimming in the package). From 2000 to 2006, the top 10 advertisers alone spent over $1 billion. Those advertisers include such blue-chip companies as AT&T, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft.

Is the advertising worth it? In 2007, 40.3 million viewers watched Florida beat Ohio State, and 132.7 million viewers watched other games in the tournament. In 2004, the women's championship game between Tennessee and University of Connecticut on ESPN garnered 3.8 million viewers — the most-watched basketball game in ESPN history up to that point, for either men or women. The UConn women won that game, 70-61, their fourth national championship won by beating Tennessee. The current record for ESPN viewers of any basketball game was just set, on March 9, 2008, with 5.28 million viewers for the last men's game of the regular season between UNC and Duke. UNC won, 76-68.

Viewership isn't the only measuring stick by which you can judge the popularity of March Madness. Last year, more than 60,000 of you downloaded your tournament brackets from Office Online. So we really like the tournament. Download our NCAA basketball tournament bracket with tracker or the NCAA basketball tournament bracket.

There's much to appreciate about basketball on a corporate and social level — the advertising, the office pools, the parties, the competition. But that's not the best part of March Madness.

The beauty of college basketball

NCAA basketball, in this fan's opinion, is one of the last pure sports. While broadcasting companies, advertisers, and the schools and conferences reel in big profits from the madness, the individual players do not make any money. Unlike professional sports, where mercenary players bounce to wherever the highest paycheck is available, college players usually play their entire career at one school. Most collegiate players have little chance of making any money playing after college. The NCAA estimates only 1.2% actually go pro. They play merely for the love of the game and for an education. Furthermore, unlike college football, college basketball has a true championship playoff where the best of the best compete to win an outright championship, not some mythical championship bestowed by the sports gods or a panel of coaches, computers, and sportswriters.

College basketball showcases the best about sports: competition, innovation, and teamwork. Executing well on these three things can make a sports team — or a company — great. So March Madness exemplifies the best about us, as teammates, as colleagues, as enthusiasts.

So, while you or your co-workers may get a little distracted for the next week or two, maybe at the same time you'll get inspired to take on new challenges or tougher competition.

Find more NCAA brackets here.

"For sheer genius, brackets rank with the Rosetta Stone, the U.S. Constitution, and the trenchant observations of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. If Monet were only still alive, he would surely be painting brackets instead of haystacks." — Frank Deford

Maggie, Aeron, and Hannah are fifth graders who had the challenge of presenting a biography of William Shakespeare to their class—using PowerPoint. Did they balk at tackling the life of our greatest poet and playwright? Or at presenting it in a slide show? In a word: No.

The girls themselves chose Shakespeare as their subject. “We thought it would be interesting,” Maggie and Aeron chimed when I visited them recently to ask about their show.

And PowerPoint was their medium of choice. They’ve been using it since third grade, and it’s probably easier by now than picking up a pencil.

“I have a lot of PowerPoints,” says Aeron.

Maggie says they make up slide shows when they’re goofing around. “We like to find funny music.”

Maggie and Aeron

Presenting a life

Tantalizing as PowerPoint can be, the girls had some legwork to do. How did they research the Bard’s life?

Maggie: “Mostly from biographies in the school library.”

Aeron: “And our parents had some books.”

Based on what they found, they gave the show this structure:

• “In the beginning” (Shakespeare’s birthplace and family)
• “What was England like when Shakespeare was alive” (tidbits about the era)
• “Family and Career” (marriage, children, total plays and poems)
• “A Sample of Accomplishments” (play descriptions)
• “Death” (date of death, burial place)

Enter PowerPoint

To create the show, the girls tapped all available media resources and invested themselves in the material.

PowerPoint themes: They made an inspired choice for their slides’ design, using a theme called Paper. “We looked at the different designs and found what we thought looked the most Shakespearean,” says Aeron.

The theme gives a rough, parchment-like border to the slides, suggestive of an Elizabethan scroll. Its colors are earthy—green and rustic. The girls added their own touch with a brown title banner that has a leather-like texture. Here’s an example:

Tip: They got that brown-leather look by applying a style from the shapes gallery.

Captivating details: They gave specifics their class would appreciate, such as this, about Shakespeare’s England:

Lively writing: They showed their own feelings in their play descriptions on the “Sample of Accomplishments” slide:

Pictures: For visual punch, the girls found Shakespeare-related images online. “We searched up some of his family members,” says Aeron, “and his house, like Anne Hathaway, and stuff.” They used an ink drawing of Anne in a period cap and ruff-style collar. They found photos of Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon, and of Holy Trinity Church, where he is buried.

“If music be the food of love”: These students love finding musical effects in PowerPoint. They use the clip-art library to try out sounds. Each slide got unique music, ranging from Bach piano, to baroque brass, to the stately “Pomp and Circumstance,” which went on the “Death” slide.

Transitions: They used Newsflash, Checkerboard, and Wheel transitions between slides.

Zounds! Where are my sounds?

The girls were ready to present. Maggie says, “We practiced in the classroom, who would read what slide, and if we had to split the slide.”

But there was one problem. “We’d spent all this time doing the music,” says Maggie, “and then the sound wouldn’t play!”

Alas, my dears—we feel your pain. PowerPoint makes it so easy to insert sounds, or to think that you’ve inserted them. What isn’t obvious is that your presentation might be linking to the sounds, which stay located outside the slide show. When you copy the presentation to another computer, the sounds don’t come along. PowerPoint isn’t trying to trick you, here, but to keep your presentation file from becoming huge. Here are more explanation and steps to follow to ensure that your sounds play.

As true players know, the show must go on, and the girls persevered. How did their class like it?

“They applauded and asked questions,” says Aeron. “Some of them said they’d seen this or that play.”

“Someone asked why Shakespeare’s son was named that—‘Hamnet,’” says Maggie.

I say, were Shakespeare here, he’d doff his plumed hat to you, girls, with a sweeping bow.

I wondered what Aeron and Maggie would do next. Biography as a board game, they told me. And whom would they choose for that?

Maggie: “Pocahontas.”

Aeron: “Coco Chanel.”

I work in the Office Content Publishing group and manage a large internal Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 site. Recently, I had the task of putting together a list for requests that would be populated by people outside of our organization. To let these people know their requests were being monitored, we wanted to send them a simple confirmation email after they entered their request in the list – something like, “Thanks for your request. We will contact you shortly.”

I discovered how easy it is to do this by setting up a simple custom workflow using SharePoint Designer 2007. You can actually set up quite complex custom workflows in SPD, but I’m going to stick to this simple example of sending a confirmation email upon the addition of an item to a list.

Note: This procedure assumes you have a SharePoint-compatible email program such as Microsoft Outlook 2007.

Let’s assume you have a list created with the columns you want.

1. In SharePoint Designer, open the site that contains your list.

2. On the File menu, point to New, and then click Workflow.

3. In the Define Your New Workflow dialog box, type a descriptive name for your workflow, and then select your list under What SharePoint list should this workflow be attached to?

4. Under Select Workflow Start Options for items in <name of your list>, select the Automatically start this workflow when a new item is created.

5. Click Next.

6. Click the Actions button, and choose Send an Email.

7. Click the this message link in the Email this message string that displays next to the Actions button.

8. In the Define Email Message dialog box, click the address book button next to the To: field.

9. In the Select Users dialog box, select User who created current item and click Add.

10. Select other users, or type the email address of specific users to whom the email should also go to and click Add. When you’re finished adding users, click OK.

11. In the Subject line of the Define Email Message dialog box, type a descriptive subject line. Or, you can click the Function button next to the field to find and use a value from a field, such as the Title from the current item.

12. Finally, type your message in the text box, or click the Add Lookup to Body button at the bottom of the dialog box to insert a value from a field in the list.

13. Click OK.

14. Click Finish, and you’re done!

Now test out your workflow by adding an item to the list. How easy is that?

"Everyone is a genius at least once a year. A real genius has his original ideas closer together." George C. Lichtenberg

I come from a mixed marriage. My mother taught art. It was a family joke that she could never admire a view without comparing it to a Japanese painting. My father was a minister with great faith in human reason. Where blazing sunsets inspired her, rigorous debates inspired him. So I grew up associating creativity with art, leaving my dad out of the creative equation. It took years for me to realize that narrow definition of creativity was way off.

Dad wrote a new sermon nearly every week for 40 years except during summer vacations and a stint as a professor (when lectures took the sermons' place). Plus, both he and my mother handled the demands of parishioners, school principals, ornery students, extended families, and their own persnickety offspring. To do so, they relied on their capacity for insight and imagination and produced, produced, produced. They were both adept at coming up with new ideas under pressure.

The point being, if you've ever figured out how to get something done, you're creative. If you routinely solve problems or come up with new ideas, you may be very creative indeed. Creativity isn't about art. It's about imagination. And without it, all the otherwise sound business (and life) practices in the world add up to noise.

But being creative doesn't always require originality. Carl Sagan said "If you want to create an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." Nobody has that kind of time (or talent), so we have to build on the work done before us. And that (and I bet you saw this coming) is where Office comes in. For instance, and this is a mere snapshot:

• OneNote is how I organize manuscript projects and research at work and at home.
• The Excel template I used to jumpstart my household budget saved me hours.
• The tips in Doug Thomas' Office Casual videos free more of my time for writing the Inside Office Online blog.
• When I was learning Office 2007 like everyone else, this Get Started info made quick work of it.
• SharePoint sites bring my team's ideas and results together.
• ClipArt—No way I have time to design my own decorative touches for docs and presentation.
• And Outlook is the program I love to hate yet totally depend on. I don't use Outlook as a creative tool, but it does help me get more efficient with my time. That frees time to hatch good ideas, which translates into genuine innovation, which in turn helps the bottom line, which..….I'm sure you see where this is going.

We're all more creative than we tend to acknowledge. The trick is to practice—to cultivate creativity as a skill.

For ideas on how to do that, start with the free creative competency test I describe here.

--Holly L. Thomas