Add-ins for Microsoft Office applications improve functionality and boost productivity.

The most effective add-ins are those that don't dominate the application.

Add-ins help customize and tweak applications for specific user needs.

SoftShadow by pptXtreme adds Adobe Photoshop-quality feathered drop shadows to any Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 element. Select any element, click the SoftShadow button from the pptXtreme toolbar or pull-down menu, and select color, offsets, transparency, and color. "It's a phenomenal tool," says Troy Chollar, president of TLC Creative Services, a graphic design specialist and Microsoft MVP in Murrieta, California. The shadows add a professional aesthetic to presentations, he says.

PFCpro by PlaysForCertain allows you to insert and edit movies directly in Office PowerPoint 2007 and automatically processes media for compatibility with Office PowerPoint 2007. Select the media you want to insert, test it, select animation from a predefined list, and click Finish. The program supports DVD playback and does not require that viewers have the program installed. For simplicity's sake, the PFCpro button is located directly on the Office PowerPoint 2007 ribbon. The addition of sound and video brings rich elements to one-dimensional presentations that convey more information in a more interesting format. "This program is plain and simple and has an elegant user interface," says Chollar.

ColorPicker by pptXtreme adds colors to any Office PowerPoint 2007 element by just pointing and clicking. Rather than go to an image editor to match colors, you can easily pick a color right off the menus on the Office PowerPoint 2007 ribbon. Chollar says ColorPicker is a "mandatory add-in" since it makes adding colors a snap.

ePreserver by Connected Software exports AOL e-mail, address book, and favorites to Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 or Microsoft Office Outlook Express 2007 in four steps. Choose a screen name to copy from, choose what to copy, where to put the address book and e-mail, and click Finish. According to Steve Turner, founder of Turner Time Management and a Certified Microsoft Partner in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, many small businesses start off using AOL e-mail, but as they grow they often prefer a more professional application like Office Outlook 2007. "People are scared to move to another e-mail application because they're afraid they'll lose all their stuff, but ePreserver converts everything," he says.

Foxit PDF Preview Handler for Outlook 2007 by Foxit Software lets you view PDF attachments in the Office Outlook 2007 preview window without having to install or launch the Adobe Acrobat Reader. This add-in augments Microsoft's own new file attachment viewers for Office Outlook 2007, which let users preview the contents of e-mail attachments in Microsoft Office applications, including the 2007 versions of Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office PowerPoint, and Microsoft Office Excel, without having to load those programs. (PDF Preview Handler is currently available for Windows Vista only.)

ASAP Utilities by A Must in Every Office BV offers more than 300 utilities and shortcuts to automate frequent tasks in Office Excel 2007. For example, users can create a hyperlink index of all worksheets, empty duplicates in a selection, apply formulas to selected ranges, convert formulas to values, select cells based on their value, and merge text from two cells. You can create a favorites folder to store your most often used functions. According to Turner, ASAP Utilities cuts down the time it takes to work on spreadsheets, and is useful for both heavy and occasional Office Excel 2007 users.

WordFix by Cimaware Software restores damaged documents, including corrupted files, for all versions of Microsoft Word dating back to Word 95. The program prompts you to browse your disk and select the corrupt or damaged file, open it, and click Recover. However, WordFix does not recover or repair password-protected documents or embedded OLE objects like spreadsheets and macros.

Classic Menu for Office 2007 by Addintools replaces the new Ribbon interface in the 2007 Microsoft Office system with the familiar Microsoft Office 2003 toolbars and menus. You can choose whether you want a new menu tab positioned at the left or right of the existing tabs. Press Alt-Q-Q to use many familiar Office 2003 keyboard shortcuts. Classic Menu helps ease the migration to Office 2007, and allows for easy enabling and disabling of menus and toolbars. But you don't have to sacrifice functionality for familiarity; all of the new features in the 2007 Microsoft Office system have been added to the Main Menu, Standard Toolbar, and Formatting Toolbar.

Office Templates by Microsoft extends the functionality of Office Word, Office Excel, Office PowerPoint, and other Microsoft applications like Access and Publisher with predefined layouts for documents. These include documents such as business cards, invoices, forms, budgets, brochures, and newsletters. The templates are ideal for small businesses that want to create forms themselves. "Users can modify these forms however they want," says Turner. "It's very useful, saves time, and looks professional."

"Microsoft has a very difficult charter because they have to develop products for such a large audience," observes McGhee's Wittry. "So customization gets harder to do." But, he says, add-ins give you a way to tweak the application to do something specific and beneficial for them that perhaps Microsoft hadn't intended.

Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 attachment previewers

Microsoft Office Templates

Microsoft Office Online

Get Results with the new Microsoft Office System