Microsoft ships Office 2010

Published: 01/05/2010 | Last Revision: 24/05/2010

Microsoft • www.greymatter.com/microsoft

Visual Studio 2010 isn’t Microsoft’s only major launch this spring – Office 2010, the latest release of the company’s all-conquering application suite, is already shipping to volume customers and due on retail shelves by early June. Key features include improved collaboration and rich media handling, ribbon toolbars across the whole suite, the first 64-bit Office versions and the release of the much-awaited Office Web applications. As with VS2010, the range of editions has been reduced, from eight to five. Office 2010 Home & Student includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, with Home & Business edition adding Outlook. Office 2010 Standard adds Publisher, Professional edition adds Access, and Professional Plus adds InfoPath (forms-based data collection), Communicator and SharePoint Workspace (formerly Office Groove document collaboration). Standard and Professional Plus editions are only available through volume licensing.

Office 2010’s new Backstage View includes sharing options and the ability to view and compare previous versions of your document.

Office 2010’s ribbon interface has been updated with Backstage View, a new ‘File Menu on steroids’ document management centre which includes sharing via SharePoint or Microsoft’s hosted SkyDrive document space. Collaboration and accessibility are major themes, with new co-authoring capabilities in Word and PowerPoint, shared OneNote notebooks and a ‘social connector’ in Outlook to interface with sites such as Facebook and Linkedin. The Office Web Applications, free for individual use, will also serve as off-site access tools for Office 2010 documents, and allow PowerPoint presentations to be ‘broadcast’ via the Web. Detailed improvements include a new cross-range paste preview, integral picture and video editing for Word and PowerPoint, database templates and an embeddable web browser control in Access, and ‘conversation view’ message sorting and Team Calendars (via Exchange) in Outlook. Office 2010 runs on Windows XP SP3, Windows Server 2003 R2 and later. Updated Office Mobile applications for Windows mobile 6.5 are being shipped at the same time.