Microsoft Office 2010 Preview Guide

Written by Christian Milsom on July 19, 2009 · Filed under Software, Tech 

Here at Zath we’ve already had a look at some online aspects of Microsoft Office’s impending release and now Microsoft have released a load more info that gives us a better idea of what will have changed in >Microsoft Office 2010 three years on, and whether it will actually be worth buying.

The Office line is a pretty important one for Microsoft, and with the recent rise of the open source market it is now competing with the likes of Open Office (which I am currently using due to the fact I’m on a netbook) on a bigger scale, as well as its Apple counterparts. So intrigued as what it will bring? Read on!

What Can We Expect From Office 2010?

Well first things first – it will be released early 2010 (surprise surprise) and will come in a 32 and 64 bit version (again, no big shock there). It will come in five different packages ranging from the basic Home and Student edition comprising of Excel, PowerPoint, Word and the relatively useless OneNote to Professional Plus which will contain everything under the sun. According to Microsoft the average customer will be likely to go for the Standard package which contains the main software – but I personally cannot see why most people would need anything more than ‘the big three’, but there you go!

With a beta expected later this year we can expect the full release date to be sometime in January next year, but as of yet Microsoft haven’t given any specifics – the same can be said about the pricing which we anticipate will be roughly the same as Office 2007 was two and a half years ago.

Whilst all the applications will have their own new features there are a couple that are universal, the most notable from the user interface side being the ‘ribbon’ which goes across the top of all the applications giving easy access to the features available – although how different this will be from the one found in Office 2007 is another story.

They will also benefit from the new ‘view backstage’ feature which essentially bundles together all of the more ‘backstage’ elements (such as printing or .pdf creator management) together making it easier to use (and find) all of the features that you wouldn’t normally use whilst creating a document. There will also be increased online integration across the board, although this does differer somewhat from application to application. So let’s have a look at what we’ve to look forward to with the ‘big three’:

Microsoft Word 2010

There are two main new additions to word in the shape of the ‘Document Map’ and increased online functionality. The former acts in a similar way to a .pdf index whilst also allowing you to easily edit and move things around; the latter moves Office into the world of Google Docs by bringing collaborative working to Word allowing you to not only see the changes made by people but by also linking to email addresses allowing easy contact to those you’re working with.

Microsoft Excel 2010

Excel could well be the application most benefiting from the online elements (at least within the business world) as you can now easily share things like expenses and accounts; there are also a host of new ways of displaying the data including single cell charts allowing you to have charts and graphs in a single cell.

Microsoft PowerPoint 2010

Offering a whole new world of occasionally-fun-but-more-often-than-not-horribly-tacky animations and multimedia element PowerPoint has little in the way of anything else new worth noting, other than increased web compatibility allowing you to show PowerPoint presentations to anyone easily without the need for a projector.

In Summary

So, it may not seem like there is anything drastically different, and it remains to be seen whether the user experience has been improved, but if past experience is anything to go by Microsoft will have renewed Office 2010 in a way that keeps it well ahead of the market not just in price, but in quality as well.

Via – PocketLint