Preview Of MS Office 2010 Software!
Microsoft’s intention to respond to all those that offer online productivity software free for personal use is on the verge of becoming a reality. It is all set to provide all of its Office software online, just like Google, Zobo, Adobe and others are doing.
This move will benefit both corporate and smaller customers. While corporate customers will be able to get in on the paid subscriptions and tap into the online services, others can sign up for a service, where their online files will be stored and get help with data backup and security.
The best thing about this is that, everyone will be allowed to use the online versions of different applications, such as Word and PowerPoint without it being necessary to buy the desktop versions. All they need to do is sign up for the free Windows Live account.
The technical preview engineering milestone for Office 2010 has been announced, and this allows thousands of people, mostly software engineering partners, to test drive the software by downloading it. The beta version of the software is expected to be released by the year-end and the final version may be shipped in the first half of 2010.
Results of several technical previews reveal that improvements have been made to the office suite, such as the Ribbon being the default interface OneNote, Outlook and all other Office applications. Not only is Ribbon made default but it has also been tweaked a bit.
The new features added include better mail handling in Outlook and video editing in PowerPoint. Among the other changes that enhance productivity are the photo-editing tools and an improved paste operation.
Let’s take a look at the most important Outlook. The new version adds a wide variety of new features that solve the major issue of e-mail overload. With the use of a full-blown Ribbon, most functions are within easy reach. Quick Steps is a new feature that is said to speed up mail handling. As we all know, one of the main problems of Outlook has always been the confusion with following threads of messages. This version eradicates this problem and is sure to increase productivity. Now, a conversation can be “cleaned up” by deleting all the unwanted previous mail text and quoted text, which brings down the clutter by keeping only the unduplicated versions.
For all of you social networking fans, this version of Outlook may prove to be a disappointment as it does not have integration with Facebook and other social networking sites.
According to Microsoft, an estimated 400 million people have a Windows Live account with using services like Messenger and Hotmail, and 90 million corporate customers already have Office subscriptions.
There have been comments floating around that Microsoft is a bit too late to enter this arena and it may be difficult to catch up with the competition. In response, Microsoft says, “Lots of competitors are doing nothing beyond copying what we have done in our product for years. They have weekly releases to add things like bold and italics and more than four fonts. We have to redefine what productivity means to 500 million people.”
Redefining productivity means offering tools that allow people to work simultaneously on presentations, documents and other things on the internet. Applications such as PowerPoint have also been pepped up, making it easier to add high-definition video into their projects.
There is not much of a change in Word; although, “search” now comes with some new features that allows users to search tables and charts as well as some other things too. Documents can be prettied up with the use of special effects to text, such as reflect, shadow and glow. Document sharing has been given new life and allows more than one person to work simultaneously on a document online. Overall, you may find that this version of Word is not much different from Word 2007.
Although, there are no major changes in Excel, there is the addition of “Sparklines,” which is the option to embed small charts into a worksheet next to data. Another feature that could prove to be useful is the improvement in “Conditional formatting,” which allows the formatting to change based on the formula or value of the cell. For corporate users, Microsoft is planning on shipping with the final version, “Project Gemini” add-on for Excel 2010, with the capacity to handle data in large amounts, and worksheets containing millions of rows.
PowerPoint’s video features are one of the most used and this version sees many new features, such as a set of basic video editing tools that are now built into PowerPoint. They may not be as powerful as a high-end video editing software but they do their job efficiently. There is also a great improvement in animations in PowerPoint, with a wide choice of animations that can be easily edited using the custom animation feature.
While the above are the most known features of Microsoft Office, there are other important ones too, such as Microsoft Publisher and OneNote, which have been improved.
The new Office is available in 64-bit version too. The most important change to Office 2010 is the Web-based access and access for mobile phones and other mobile clients is expected to be introduced in the final version. There will also be mobile versions that allow viewing of documents on a smartphone or other mobile devices, as well as copy and paste between applications. Outlook is said to work even on mobile devices.
Although, it may not be completely different from the 2007 version, there are many solid improvements in Office 2010, which certainly makes it worth checking it out.
