I must have accidentally deleted my original post on this while editing it a week ago, because I could not find it when I started to refer somebody in another thread to the resources. I sent the same counsel to my Mac user group colleagues and just copied and pasted that here.
• • •
Because I've been there all too often, I empathized with some of the Microsoft Office questions and problems I've seen posted here and at other forums. I scan the questions and responses to see what I can learn if ever I should have a similar issue. But I've been guilty of not sharing a couple tips that have been invaluable to me over the years and different versions of Office. By the way,
my only relationship to Microsoft is as a consumer.
TIP #1: Office for Mac Newsgroups
I've found the Office MVPs (volunteer experts who are frequent contributors) exceptionally helpful in the several Office Newsgroups for Mac. (I've received valuable info in them since Office 2004 came out.) I scan those newsgroups that concern me most several times a week and copy and paste into Entourage Notes useful scraps of info I pick up from some of the responses. I do searches when I have a problem, and *post questions when the searches don't yield info for my particular need.
microsoft.public.mac.office
microsoft.public.mac.office.entourage
microsoft.public.mac.office.word
microsoft.public.mac.office.excel
etc.
Each of these newsgroups can be accessed via Entourage Mail.
When I had a problem one day with Entourage working in the early Office X days, I discovered one can reach these newsgroups with a browser at:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/community/community.aspx?pid=newsgroups
*One lesson I learned the hard way about posting questions on an Office newsgroup is to [u]alter your return address[/u] on postings to these newsgroups so that you don't end up on a lot of mailing lists by spammers and pranksters (or any of the robotic address grabbers). Typical email address altering example: <'myname@nospam.aol.com> or some garbling of letters in the added word after the @ symbol.
TIP #2: MVP and other Office FAQs
I may start my search here sometimes, rather in the Newsgroups.
One can begin a search after clicking the Office support tab at the MacTopia url
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/default.aspx
But I frequently find it quicker to go directly to the FAQs, particularly the webpages created by some of the MVP volunteers
I'm partial to the MVP volunteer experts because some of their pointers are "out of the box" and because I respect the independence of the MVPs, who are not afraid to speak up, even if not towing the company line.
Here's a place to start:
http://www.mvps.org/
After that, however, one
may have to use a browser other than Safari to access a given MVP site.
For instance, all I can get with Safari on my machine when I click on the MVPs' Word FAQs link is a blank page. If I enter the same url
http://word.mvps.org/ in Internet Explorer, I can see the FAQs.
A valuable site for Entourage can be accessed with Safari:
http://www.entourage.mvps.org/
Some individuals' sites, are very valuable, such as Excel tips at
http://mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm
or
http://www.mcgimpsey.com/excel/
Tip #3: Free Tech Support Calls After Purchase
Here's another tip: after buying Office, one gets at least one free Tech Support call. I don't know how up-to-date the info is because I think I copied it a year or more ago from a Microsoft website page, but here's a note I pasted in my iData Pro X phone dialer/phonebook/notekeeper:
In reply to:
If you purchased this (Office) product at a retail store, you are eligible for unlimited no-charge Installation Support and two no-charge Personal Support incidents. Personal Support is designed to provide support for everyday product usage to help U.S. consumers, home users, home office customers who use Microsoft consumer products."
Respectfully, Norm 
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