With four out of five businesses using some version of Microsoft Office and 64 per cent on the current version (Office 2007) Microsoft’s cash cow is in the clover.
With the release of a shiny new version, Office 2010, the pasture becomes even greener. Office 2010 extends changes found in Office 2007, adds a few more goodies, and rejigs the suite’s product mix. And, it marks the advent of Office Web Apps, a free online companion to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote that will allow users to view, edit and share their Office 2010 documents stored on Windows Live or SharePoint 2010 from a Web browser. The Web Apps don’t provide the full functionality of the desktop versions, but they should be handy complements. All components of Web Apps aren’t yet available, however, watch for them to arrive as the year progresses.
The core suite, dubbed Microsoft Office Home and Student, now consists of the old standbys of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, plus OneNote, a notebook application that surfaced a couple of versions ago targeting the Tablet PC. Now it is finally being given the exposure it deserves as a full member of the Office suite – and no, you don't need a Tablet PC to get good use out of it.
Picture editing in Microsoft Power Point
Outlook, the e-mail, calendar and contact management application that is a member of all versions except the aforementioned core suite, has had a major facelift, and the other apps are enhanced to varying extents as well.
The suite has had some unifying overall modifications that Office 2007 users in particular will appreciate. The Microsoft Office Fluent user interface, better known as the Ribbon, is now woven into every application. In Office 2007, it only appears in Word, Excel and PowerPoint, Access, and some parts of Outlook. For Office 2003 users, it's brand new, and getting used to it may be a struggle at first, but the rationale behind it makes a lot of sense: when the old familiar menu and submenu structure was designed, there were relatively few commands so navigation was simple. Now, with literally hundreds of options in every program, it takes too many clicks to perform all but the simplest tasks, and many users don't use some features because they have no idea they're even present in the product.
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The Ribbon was created to make it easier to find those elusive features. In its original incarnation, it was static, but it has been tweaked in Office 2010 to allow users to customize it. They can now rearrange tabs and add or remove selections to suit the way they work. And for those who'd like some help fathoming the new UI (or who are just after a little productive entertainment), Microsoft Office Labs has developed Ribbon Hero, a game to help boost Office skills and knowledge of Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007 and 2010.
Another bit of confusion in Office 2007 that's been eliminated is the Office orb, that circular logo that sits where the old File menu used to be and performs much the same function -- if people could figure out that it was, indeed, a button and not just a pretty graphic. Office 2010 has a more mundane but more comprehensible substitute: a File tab that opens a new interface called Backstage View.
Video editing in Microsoft Power Point
Backstage View pulls together options from the old File menu as well as things like the ever-popular (and now non-existent) Options menu; its contents differ depending on what makes sense in each application. And, as an added bonus, developers can create add-ins for Backstage, allowing things like custom downloads directly into an application.
