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I will like to know how to get headings to change on page 2 onwards when changing a heading on page 1. I want all my headings to be the same. I am using Office 2010

It would be appreciated if someone could kindly assist

It sounds like you might want to use the slide footer feature. You can display custom text in the middle placeholder, edit the slide master to move that placeholder to the top of the slide, and format it to look like a slide title. Whatever you enter into the slide footer will appear on every slide. You could also just make a custom text box on the slide master instead of repurposing the footer, but then you’d need to go into the master every time you want to edit the shared title.

You mentioned wanting to update headings automatically when you change them on slide 1. You could write a macro that loops through every slide and updates the actual slide title placeholder, which has the benefit showing up in the slide outline, but that’s probably more trouble than it’s worth.

Let’s say my sister and I are chatting on Messenger, and I see that she’s added an old high school boyfriend to her network. Wow! Maybe she’s started IMing someone at an addiction support group. Or a well-known religious or political figure. Or Isaiah Mustafa. What intrusive, privacy-busting malarkey. It’s none of my $#@! business whom she’s IMd.

Two points: First, the fact that she’s added Isaiah to her network does not imply she’s been chatting with him on Messenger. Yes Messenger requires that you add someone to your network in order to chat, but there are other reasons for adding someone to your network. Maybe she just wants an easy way to follow his social activity stream. Second, I’d assert that she does want you to know, otherwise she’d have configured her own updates to prevent “tattling” as you call it. Or she’s just too lazy to turn them off, which I suppose is sort of tacit acceptance.

The “what’s new” option pages you referenced (the ones with the lists of check boxes) really deal with what kinds of updates you’re choosing to put into your activity steam and consume from your network’s activity streams, whereas the “permissions” page (the one with all the sliders) really deals with the types of friends with whom you choose to share those updates. For instance, I may elect to report networks I’ve joined in my Windows Live activity stream, but only choose to share my updates with friends. A friend may not give a rat’s a$$ whose network I’ve joined, so she may choose not to consume that particular kind of update from her friends, including me. So those are really multiple points of articulation for all this.

I’ll concede that the privacy options are still a bit convoluted, but in fairness this is still a public beta (although we were not allowed to opt out), and the development teams have acknowledged they are working on consolidating and simplifying the controls even further. Name one social site these days that doesn’t have a million and one privacy and security options. I give Live credit for providing linkable URLs for them.

In the end, I suppose it’s a matter of preference. If you’re so bothered by the convoluted security options that you don’t want to use Windows Live, then don’t use it. But look at everything you get on Windows Live for free: e-mail, IM, social updates from over 70 popular activity partners, 25 GB of cloud storage, great online photo sharing experience, Office web apps, blog, calendar, contacts, groups, alerts, a suite of integrated desktop apps, a solid mobile experience, and pretty soon, all of it on a slick Windows Phone 7 device.

Oh, Woody. Must we go round and round about this again? I’ve just read your new article in the Windows Secrets newsletter, and it’s once again clear that either (a) you really don’t know what you’re talking about or (b) you like to create a lot of sensationalism in your writing by pandering to people’s fears about privacy on socially oriented websites. This notion of third party tattling (the first time I’ve ever heard anyone use that term) is really a tempest in a teapot. Yes, Windows Live Messenger requires you to add people to your network in order to chat with them, and yes, depending on your notification settings, your other friends may see that you’ve added that person as a friend. But this is really a non-issue for most people, because it’s easy to disable such notifications, most people who actually use the social features of Windows Live find these notifications extremely useful, and most people actually want the convenience of keeping their contacts in one simple, unified list.

To turn off the new friend notifications, you just have to modify your permissions, which can easily be done either from within Messenger or via the Windows Live web UI. George is on the right track, but he didn’t get the URL correct; the page he meant to link is at http://www.live.com/options. But I’ll go even one step further…the page that controls your Messenger Social updates is located at http://profile.live.com/whatsnewwithyousettings/. There’s a simple list of check boxes that allow you to control what kinds of updates you share with your social network. Smack in the middle of which is an option called “Network,” with a description that reads “Updates when people become friends.” If you don’t like to broadcast your acquaintances, then just uncheck the darn thing. Problem solved.

Wanna hide a previous update? Click that little gear wheel beside it on your Messenger Social stream, and remove it (and BTW, there’s also a link there to the aforementioned update settings). Done.

I think the genius of Windows Live is that it allows you to use just the bits you want. Don’t like all the social updates and public profile stuff? Fine, then don’t use it. Lock down your profile so nobody sees anything, and just use Hotmail, if that’s all you want. It’s not rocket surgery, folks.

See, you assume wrongly that Microsoft is either (a) inept at configuring security or (b) out to trick you into revealing more about yourself than you want. I don’t get why everything has to be so cloak and dagger with you guys. Windows Live is a social experience. That’s how it was designed. IM is inherently social and always has been. E-mail to a lesser extent. Other Windows Live services are blogging and sharing updates…all social. To function, these services all depend heavily on lists of established contacts, so it makes sense to provide a unified list of contacts. What’s tripping you up is the recent attempts to interconnect more previously detached Microsoft services. You signed up for Hotmail or Messenger a decade ago, and now you’re bummed that it doesn’t work exactly the same way it used to. But here’s the thing, most people who use Windows Live as designed actually want to know when their common friends are using it. That fosters better and deeper connections with people you actually care about. For instance, let’s say that my sister and I are chatting on Messenger, and I see that she’s added my mom to her network. Wow! I didn’t know mom was using Windows Live! Then I can invite her to my network, too. I might come back and inquire why you’re using Messenger to talk with people you really don’t want others to know about, but that’s your business.

You know, your own WS Lounge website has some rather social features. I have a profile with an avatar and interests and everything. I can even make friends on here! While I was perusing the bowels of my profile, I noticed that the site reported the last threads to which I’d replied and the last few users who’d viewed my profile. The information beside this posts tells people where I’m from! How dare you share that kind of information with other users?

So I remain unimpressed with your little exposé. Stick to covering Office, Woody.

PS: The Skeptic Geek has a pretty favorable review of Windows Live’s social features. You should really check it out. http://www.skepticgeek.com/socialweb/is-windows-live-delivering-what-google-buzz-promised

Interesting news on this front this morning, courtesy of LiveSide.net: Windows Live Profile Wave 4 to come with enhanced privacy controls

They’re not folks who have been invited to join her WL network. She doesn’t have a WL network – never used Windows Live, doesn’t have a Windows Live Spaces account. These people are selected from Windows Messenger buddies. At no point did my wife or her buddies say “Dear Microsoft, you may collect information about me and display it on my buddy’s Hotmail login page.”

To be fair, everyone who has a Live ID has a WL network. Your Messenger “buddies” (kind of a dated term, but alright), WL network, and Hotmail contacts are collectively part of your WL People service. There’s a nice post on LiveSide that summarizes how it all works in Wave 3. Granted, it’s convoluted, but don’t get too comfortable with that layout. Scuttlebutt is that is expected to be simplified in Wave 4.

If you have a copy of my Windows 7 All-In-One For Dummies book handy, there are screen shots of exactly what you agree to when you ask someone to become your Messenger buddy, and what your buddy agrees to, should they accept. (See Figure 7-8 on page 577.) Although both screens say, “Messenger contacts are part of your network on Windows Live,” there’s absolutely no indication of what that entails. Certainly, neither of the screens say anything like, “Dear Microsoft, you may collect information about me and display it on my buddy’s Hotmail login page.”

I don’t actually have a copy, and the Messenger client is not available to me at work. Might you be gracious enough to send me a freebie? I’ll take an e-book, I’m not picky. Either way, I’ll check this out in WL Messenger when I get home this evening. Standby for additional opinionated response…

I don’t doubt that I left that comment somewhere – but I can’t find it, using any search engine, so I don’t know where it came from. I’ve never accessed a SkyDrive file. Never posted anything on anyone’s personal blog (although I have posted on Microsoft blogs, even as an MVP). I don’t know who Kim is, and I only have a guess as to what PDF file is being referred to. In short, Microsoft mined this information from somewhere, mashed it so it isn’t factually correct, and then dished it up on my wife’s Hotmail login page.

Gotta call bull on that one, Woody. Not to drag “Kim” into this, but she’s Kim Spilker, the marketing manager for Microsoft Press. You commented on a PDF draft of the First Look Microsoft Office 2010 eBook she had shared on her public SkyDrive. I can say that because it’s still up there. In fairness, it appears she actually deleted the document dated 12/11 on which you commented and shared another copy of it on 12/15. Though the document has the same filename, the SkyDrive URL is different. The newer version of the document is still out there and has pages of comments. Your comment was likely deleted along with the original document. The funny thing about WL updates is that they occasionally hang around in your “What’s New” feed, even if the underlying comment has been deleted (that’s occasionally gotten me in trouble during “spirited disagreements” with my network mates that I’ve later tried to retract). Still, the fact remains that you made the comment on a public SkyDrive file on 12/11, WL pulled the update into your public feed, and your wife’s What’s New with My Network feed consumed it from there.

Your article implies that WL goes around willy-nilly fabricating updates on comments that never existed, but this is hardly an inaccurate mashup of information. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it’s information you didn’t intend for others in your network to see, which puts the onus on you to configure your permissions properly so that kind of information isn’t shared.

I’ve corresponded with Microsoft’s reps, and they inform me that the Hotmail login screen was changed in February 2009, after which time the login sequence shows the What’s New with Your Network pane. That may well be true, although PBear (see earlier post in this thread) says he still doesn’t see the WNWYN pane. I never noticed it – I log in to Hotmail infrequently, and changes to the screen don’t register. The only way this came to my attention was when my wife came into my office and said, “Who’s Kim?”

LOL, I’ve had similar conversations with my wife. She was curious about Windows Live for like a nano-second, after which she found Facebook and was lost to the dark side forever. Her Space has (had?) a whopping 1 blog post before she abandoned it. She now calls my obsession with WL “my little geek network.” Still she occasionally inquires about exactly who are these people she’s never heard of. It’s true that WL hasn’t (yet) matured into the kind of grass-roots social network that Facebook has. Most of my network mates on WL are other MVPs and WL enthusiasts. Very few of my meatbag (Jeffrey’s term) friends and family actually use WL.

To answer PBear’s question, Hotmail’s Today page can be disabled by clicking Options > More Options > Today Page Settings, and clicking Skip the Today page and take me straight to my inbox. I don’t typically show the Today page, because I use the WL Home page as my entry point for all things Live, and as you noted, it has it’s own version of the What’s New with Your Network feed.

I think if there’s a pearl of agreement in this discussion, it’s that Microsoft needs to be more transparent about the connections between their services, and they need to simplify their permissions customization UI.

Greg –

What you say is absolutely correct. (Okay, I take exception to the “obviously biased” jab, but factually you’re quite right.)

Still, I don’t agree. There are two underlying problems. First, the information that’s shared has been massaged, and in some cases it’s massaged incorrectly – thus the link to a lady I’ve never even heard of, as described in the article. Second, I was never made aware of the possibility that stuff I wrote in a specific, limited context could suddenly appear on the Hotmail login page of someone I briefly IMd six months previously.

I’m not a casual end-user. I didn’t understand the options because they were never presented to me. I still don’t understand the options because Microsoft won’t explain how it gets the contacts list, or where and how it mashes the displayed information. And never, in my wildest dreams, would I have thought that MS would harvest my posts in a very narrowly defined context and broadcast them to everybody and his brother.

Woody,

Thanks for your personal reply. Sorry about the “obviously biased” jab. As I said, I’m a big fan of yours but also of Windows Live (a Windows Live MVP, actually), so I sort of took it personally that you were calling my baby ugly. With a few days to cool off, I have some much needed perspective. I’m still not quite sure what you mean by “massaged;” information shared through WL social avenues is simply consolidated into a feed that does what its name entails, it shows you what’s new with your network. I looked again at your screen shot, and here’s my armchair analysis:

First, that’s a shot of your What’s New with Your Network feed shown on the Hotmail Today page (also on the WL Home page at http://www.live.com ). It represents what others in your network are sharing with you, not what you’re sharing with anyone else. You’re being allowed to see it because they chose to share it with people in their network, and that includes you. Furthermore, Kriss, M…@hotmail.de, and woody leonard (an alternate profile of yours, I presume) are all members of your network. That’s more than just a casual contact in your Hotmail address book, BTW. These are folks who’ve been actively invited into or asked to join your WL network. To my knowledge, there’s no option to automatically accept network invites. Inviting someone to chat via Messenger does not necessarily add them to your WL network either, unless you click the wrong option when accepting the chat request. In fairness, perhaps Microsoft should be a little more obvious about what adding someone to your WL Network actually means. I suppose they could have a prompt that says “are you sure?”, then another that says “are you really sure?”, and a final prompt that says “did you ask your mom first?”

Finally regarding the comment that you left on Kim’s PDF file (BTW, you’re seeing your own comments because you have two WL profiles that are in each other’s network, which can be quite confusing), please realize that this is a public comment left on a (presumably) public SkyDrive file, much like a comment on someone’s blog. If it is indeed a publicly shared file and I had the page’s URL, then I could see that comment right now on the SkyDrive page, along with all the other comments left by individuals regardless of network affiliation. All the What’s New feed is doing is aggregating updates that others have chosen to share with you, based on your relationship with them and your choice to consume those types of updates.

You say the options were never presented to you. Hmm. Well, I’m pretty sure I received several e-mail notices from Microsoft about the changes, and the first time I logged into WL, I received several pop-up notifications. There’s also a Help link on every page with a complete explanation of how it all works. You’re right that Microsoft has done a poor job of really selling its end-users on the value of WL as a complete service. Even we Microsoft junkies are frequently surprised by elements of the service we don’t use regularly. If you trace the evolution of Windows Live, though, you’ll find it’s because the service was compiled from disparate projects, some more mature than others, without a real sense of direction or cohesion for much of the last 5 years. Rather than explaining what WL is all about, Microsoft has been content to allow its user base (many of whom were grandfathered in from Hotmail) to just cherry pick the parts of the service the were comfortable using, instead of rolling out a completely new service and asking folks to join all over again. Maybe you’re right that some kind of global “kill switch” would be a good idea, but I’d rather people get to know what’s available via Windows Live before they decide to fight some social windmill in their minds.

I take exception with the commenters who want to discount the notion of social networking as some kind of herald of the apocalypse or a waste of time. Twenty years ago, I’m sure their types said the same things about e-mail and the World Wide Web. As we’ve since learned, it’s all about how you use it. I rather like the idea of the multiple integration points, many of which are social, to engage my network more deeply. Rather than pushing a bunch of links and info on people via email like a spammer, I like the ability to share something interesting on my blog or SkyDrive and have others notified via RSS, WL alerts, or yes, their own What’s New with my Network feed…however they choose to consume my content. I like to be able to consolidate things I’m doing all over the Interwebs, from Twitter, to Facebook, to YouTube, to Flickr, to Yelp!, into one convenient feed that my friends (i.e., the people I actively invited into my network) can see in one big stream.

FWIW, I don’t have any, but I have put a blocker on my server that now rejects -=all=- emails from Hotmail with a note explaining MS’s current policy of disclosing my reply in a ‘public’ area as the reason.

I’m sorry, but how does Hotmail disclose your email replies in a public area in any shape or form? And why is “public” in quotes? Is it not really public? I think you may have misunderstood the nature of the What’s New feed, which is easy to do based on this obviously biased article. For the record, Hotmail does not share your e-mail traffic with anyone, period. The items that appear on the What’s New feed only include items that you have chosen to share in a public context (i.e., posted on a public blog or profile, placed in a public folder on SkyDrive, etc.). I’ll give you that the permissions are a bit cumbersome, but don’t cripple a service just because uninformed, casual end-users can’t be bothered to understand their options. This mob mentality really needs to be kept in check.

Woody, I’ve been an avid reader of your newsletters for the last 10 years, and I frequently visit your Windows and Office-related websites for tips and tricks. So, suffice it to say I’m a fan of your work and opinions. However, I’m also a fan of the Windows Live services, of which Hotmail has been a component for the last few years. In fact, I use Hotmail as my primary personal email account, and I think it provides excellent and reliable service. I use as many of the tools as I can, including Spaces, Groups, Contacts, Calendar, SkyDrive, and the Home/Profile pages, most of which feed into a centralized activity stream called the “What’s New” feed. That seems to be the part of the equation that’s causing you concern.

I’d have to agree with Jeffrey and Jeremy that it’s not anything new. In fact, the What’s New feed has been around for well over a year now, and it’s the foundation of Windows Live social networking. I also see your point that many (most?) Hotmail users may not realize that their e-mail service is part of a larger community of services that include social networking. At least with a service like Facebook, you know going in that you’re using a social networking service. I’d also agree with you that the Windows Live permissions and settings are at times too cumbersome and granular. But it’s great that you can fine-tune your settings to control what others see, and how much of others’ updates you consume. The updates that you see on the Hotmail Today/Home page are limited to your network, so if you’re seeing updates from strangers, then it’s probably more of an issue with who you’ve allowed to join your Windows Live network.

Here’s my problem with your article: it’s a tad sensationalist and admittedly unresearched. You say a couple of times that you don’t know or understand how it works, and you seem to base a lot of your conclusions on observation and assumptions, which is not good journalism. In my experience, I can tell you that accidental oversharing of updates is far from the epidemic that you’ve painted it to be. Take a stroll around the Profile pages of your Windows Live network, or just try to find people at random using the people search on the Windows Live Home page. If anything, you’ll find a lot of empty-looking profiles with no names, no updates, or other shared information.

Social networking is nothing to be feared. In fact, it can really boost productivity by allowing us to connect with those we care about in some new and interesting ways. But like any technology, it does carry risks when it’s not used properly. A little common sense goes a long way. Mind who’s in your network, what you choose to share, and you’ll be just fine. Down the road, social networks are going to be the preferred tools to share what’s important to you with those around you in a meaningful way, as you naturally use the web. Sending email blasts to get people’s attention is (pardon the expression) “so five minutes ago.”

Anyway, keep up the good work and I’ll keep reading. Thanks!

PS: Know how I was initially notified about this article? It wasn’t via your email newsletter. Jeffrey happens to be in my Windows Live network, and I saw he’d commented on your profile about the article. Social networking FTW!