Office 2010
Overview and Opinions from the Team
Microsoft has announced that Office 2010 will be released to their business partners and the general public in May and June respectively. Many of CIO’s engineers have already been testing the Beta version of Office 2010 and are currently using the released version. In this article a brief overview of the new and improved features will be presented as well as opinions from our team.
Office 2010 includes the following product lineup (depending on the type of suite purchased): Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, Access, Communicator, InfoPath and SharePoint Workspace. General improvement and additions to Office 2010 will be discussed as well as a deeper look into the new and improved features of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.
Office 2010 includes more design options and picture formatting with tools such as SmartArt. The Co-Authoring capability stretches across most of the suites and gives the user the ability to edit the same file at the same time with other people, even if they are in different locations. This functionality requires SharePoint Foundation (for business use) or a Windows Live account (for personal use). Office 2010 has improved on the existing Web Apps and Mobile access as well as the SharePoint Workspace. These improvements focus on quickly and securely accessing, viewing and editing documents via the web. The Backstage View replaces the traditional File menu and gives the user a centralized space for file management tasks. A feature that is related to this function is the enhanced Ribbon which allows the user to access commands quickly and customize the menu tabs.
Some of the features of Word 2010 include: improved search and navigation, co-authoring capability, web access, improved formatting for document text, increased design options, picture-editing tools and special picture effects, improved auto-recovery, translation options and customization of the File menu and command menus. These improvements and new features seem to focus on flexibility, creativity and ease of distribution.
Excel 2010 includes many of the same features of Word 2010 with the addition of Sparklines, PivotTables and PivotChart, Conditional Formatting and a 64-bit version which allows analysis of larger file sizes. Sparklines is an interesting feature providing in-cell charts to quickly discover patterns in the data. Excel 2010 also includes the co-authoring feature and the improved Web and Mobile applications.
Some of the interesting features of PowerPoint2010 include: Video Editing and Formatting, Broadcasting capabilities to users who don’t have PowerPoint, improved transitions and animation effects and the ability to work on more than one presentation at once (opening in separate windows).
Outlook 2010 includes the following new features and improvements: Synchronization of multiple e-mail accounts, Management of e-mails (condensing and categorizing), Customization of tasks and actions (e.g. execute a Reply and Delete in one click), improved Scheduling and Calendar views, including visual aspects into emails, MailTips (insures that unnecessary emails are not sent) and the ability to receive voice mail and faxes directly into your inbox.
As for the reviews from our team here is what they have to say:
“Office 2010 runs fast, stable and smooth. The new look and functionality of Outlook 2010 alone is worth the upgrade” – Craig McClellan, Remote Engineer
“Having upgraded from Office 2003 directly to Office 2010, I was at first a little bit intimidated by the Ribbon bar. Now that I have had a chance to get used to it, I really like it. I’m a big fan of keyboard shortcuts and the new system makes it very easy to access any command without using the mouse” – Nicolas Neilson, Remote Engineer
“All the applications in Office 2010 seem to be faster, both loading and using. When I double click the icon to load the application it comes up right away, no splash screen. Like Vista to Windows 7, it seems like Microsoft has found a way to eliminate the code bloat. Previous Office versions would take a while to load and sometimes seemed to need to “think” before doing acting on a command. Office 2010 does not have this issue.
Another thing that I like is the Ribbon verses the old style toolbar. It was difficult to get used to in the beginning, but, since they are intuitive it makes it easier to find the function I need. They work the way I think: contextually. I also like that I don’t have to remember complicated key commands, I can just press <alt> and the letter to perform a particular action will show up on the Ribbon” – Burt Ribet, Senior Engineer
More information will be provided once Office 2010 is officially released. If you would like to learn more about how this new offering from Microsoft can help your business please don’t hesitate to call ( 805-692-6700 ) or email (sales@ciosolutions.com).