Microsoft Office 2010: A complete Overview

For a week now, there was much noise over Microsoft Office 2010 that was finally announced today at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. What’s most interesting in this conte is the blow-by-blow game between the tech-giants. It’s not been a week since Google released its chrome OS. In the  heat of events, Microsoft has announced that Office would include a free, online version of its four major software, a direct face off with Google’s suite of web-based office applications.

Things had already soured between the two technology superpowers, especially with Microsoft launching its new search engine Bing backed by massive ad campaign aimed at gobbling up greater pie of search market share, especially Google’s share. In a bid to take Google head-on Micosoft has adopted the three screen strategy that allows its products to synchronize across the phone, browser, and desktop. Well, the Office 2010 is clearly a reminder of Microsoft’s dominance over the Office productivity suite market.  Microsoft has also announced that it would streamline the number of Office editions from eight to five. I’m sure lots of questions about the latest Office suite are boiling in your mind, let’s find out the answers straightaway.    

MS Office 2010 for 32-bit and 64-bit versions

In a most surprising move Microsoft’s would be providing the 32-bit and 64-bit version in a single DVD. Another exciting revelation made by a spokesperson as told to Ars men read,

Customers will not be required to upgrade 32-bit PCs and laptops to 64-bit hardware to run Office 2010 suite products. He told that the 64-bit version would carry SharePoint Server 2010 and Project Server 2010. Those with SharePoint Server 2007 installed on 32-bit hardware are required to upgrade their hardware to 64-bit to deploy SharePoint Server 2010. Certain hardware configurations and operating system versions customers currently have deployed may require an upgrade to run server and client products.

Move To Free Browser edition

This is certainly a response to Google Apps Microsoft is offering a free, lightweight, web browser version of Word, Power Point, Excel and OneNote. All these have been included in the cloud. What’s lacking is that the web-based versions of these products have fewer features, but offers the basic tools to edit and change documents.

PowerPoint 2010

The desktop version of PowerPoint has been made all more powerful adding a number of bells and whistles. In PowerPoint 2010 the users can edit video and images within the Powerpoint using a basic video editing tool and an image editing tool, which looks somewhat the pre-versions of Photoshop. What’s more you can embed video from YouTube into PowerPoint. The latest Powerpoint come with a WebEx-like feature that allows live sharing with other users.With this feature you can share any slideshow in PowerPoint directly with other people in realtime.

In order to share a presentation you can send an email to the individuals with the link. Once the receivers click on the link they’ll be able to view the slideshow within the browser. Create a slideshow in the desktop version and publish the web version which can be accessed via the browser. Most functionality of PowerPoint 2008 are provided in the browser version.

Excel 2010

Like the Google Docs spreadsheet, Microsoft’s Excel spreadsheet can now run on the browser with limited features, but is more powerful than the former. Moreover, Excel spreadsheet can be created in the desktop version and published to the browser. One of the unique and innovative feature included in the latest Excel version is the Sparklines that offers visual snapshot of a data trend over a specific period within a cell. Further, the users can share Excel with the help of browser and set special permission for those who can access the document.

Word 2010

Microsoft’s Group Product Manager for Office 2010, Chris Bryant says that users creating documents in Microsoft Word want to preserve the look and feel of a document created in the desktop version in the browser.  The browser version of Microsoft Word 2010 has been made keeping up with the demand. The browser version retains the ribbon user interface offering most of the functionality including fonts, size, formatting, styles etc.

The desktop version of MS Word has also been upgraded including new collaborative features that allow multiple users to edit a document at once. Microsoft says although the feature is not popular with users, it is aimed at protecting the Office revenue model.

Now suppose if two people are editing the same document at a time, Word notifies the users when there are changes needed to be synced with their document. The copy/paste function has also been upgraded. The paste function shows live preview. Further, the paste function also offers an advanced option that allows the user to create and insert screenshots.

Word 2010 features a navigation pane that makes it easy to move around a long document. The section header breakdown makes it easy to skip over different sections of a document.

Outlook 2010

The New Outlook version has been upgraded with ribbon user interface similar to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The interface of the emails has also received an upgrade with which the users can receive the users a more visual view of sent and incoming emails. For more the search functionality has also received a thrust that makes it quite easy find the content. Now you can preview calenders in emails as well as choose or ignore particular email conversations.

Sharepoint 2010

The latest Sharepoint also comes with a ribbon User Interface. This will make document hosting more similar to Microsoft’s flagship products like Word. Now the users can tag authors of the documents and share documents and files in an easier way.

Compatibility and availability of the browser edition

Microsoft has confirmed that the browser versions of the products have been tested on all major browsers - internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. However, Office 2010 is being tested and worked upon to run on Chrome.

Office 2010 Web applications are available through three ways

• Windows Live: Consumers will have access to Office Web application at no cost
• On-premises version
• Microsoft Online Services: Customers can purchase a subscription of MS Office.

Key Fallouts for Microsoft in brief

Collaboration of features

With SharePoint and Office 2010 applications users can make realtime-based communications via Outlook. They can share and edit Word, Excel and other Office documents, simultaneously.

Access to databases more Web-friendly

Microsoft is allowing the users to embed Youtube video into Powerpoint.

Working to customer demand

Clearly, the re-engineering on Office 2007 Ribbon Interface indicates that Microsoft is listening to the customers feedback and stepping in the right direction. Still there remains criticisms of the new design.

Integration with Web 2.0

Microsoft has always been engaged in shipping products, this time its out for a different facet catching up with the shift of paradigm to the cloud-based environment.

Implications of Microsoft’s new venture

You might be interested to know what’s driving the largest selling Office suite maker to offer a free browser version. Although men at Redmond, Wash. are avoiding a mention of their archrival, it is almost clear that this strategy by Microsoft is driven by the urge to shield one of its most profitable businesses against Google, which is making a foray into Office productivity suites with its free Google Docs. Without a doubt the free product is Microsoft’s answer to Google Docs.

A survey by Forrester shows about 80% of companies recently  use Microsoft’s Office. Less than 8% use other document editing software, including IBM Corp.’s Lotus Symphony, Sun Microsystems Inc.’s StarOffice and Google Docs.

Offering the free browser version Microsoft would maintain its dominance on Office productivity suite market.
Looking at the future implications, Microsoft’s move to the browser could be a lucrative venture, especially with easily interchangeable desktop and browser versions. It’s just that you need to hang on till the Office 2010 becomes available in the first half of the next year.

Source: Techcrunch