SuperSite Blog : Microsoft Office

The New Office 2010 Logo

pthurrott — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:00:02 GMT

Microsoft today made Office 2010 Beta 2 available for download to MSDN and TechNet subscribers. (Thanks to Mary Jo Foley for the heads-up.)

Here's a peek at the new Office 2010 logo.

My overview of the beta--which will be made available publicly at some point--will be up later in the week according to the schedule I agreed to with Microsoft. I assume that NDA is still in effect.

Microsoft Opens Up the PST Format

pthurrott — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:14:10 GMT

From Microsoft:

As more and more information is stored and shared in digital formats, the ability for people to reuse their data across various applications and platforms has become increasing important. As part of an ongoing effort to enable this kind of data portability, Microsoft is announcing that it will be releasing documentation for the .pst file format – the format in which data is stored in Microsoft Outlook Personal Folders.

Providing access to the documentation will facilitate interoperability, enabling customers and vendors to access their data in .pst files across a variety of platforms. This is important to organizations that need exchange key corporate data in and out of Outlook, upload to the cloud, or comply with corporate governance policies.

When it is complete, the documentation will be released under our Open Specification Promise, which will allow anyone to implement the .pst file format on any platform and in any tool, without concerns about patents, and without the need to contact Microsoft in any way.

Paul Lorimer, the Group Manager of Microsoft Office Interoperability has posted additional details on the Interoperability @ Microsoft blog.

SharePoint 2010 Revealed

pthurrott — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:02:02 GMT

At its SharePoint Conference 2009 today in Las Vegas, Microsoft revealed details about the next version of its SharePoint platform.

"By taming the overflow of information across systems and technologies, SharePoint enables organizations to thrive," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said. "SharePoint 2010 is the biggest and most important release of SharePoint to date. When paired with Microsoft Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 will transform efficiency by connecting workers across a single collaboration platform for business."

SharePoint Server is one of the fastest-growing products in Microsoft’s history, with over $1.3 billion in revenue, representing over a 20 percent growth over the past year. According to IDC, Microsoft attained a significant share of the collaborative content workspace market in 2008, and had the highest growth rate among top vendors with its Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.

During his keynote address, Ballmer talked broadly about SharePoint Server as a business collaboration platform and highlighted three key areas. One was how organizations can respond quickly to business needs with an improved developer platform that makes it easier to build rich content and collaboration applications. Another topic was the enhanced Internet site capabilities that help businesses drive revenue and retain customers on a single platform. The third was the choice and flexibility between on-premises and cloud solutions. At the event, Microsoft showcased the breadth of SharePoint Server 2010 that ranges from wikis to workflows, while Ballmer’s keynote address highlighted features and capabilities such as these:

A new ribbon user interface that makes end users more productive and customization of SharePoint sites easy

Deep Office integration through social tagging, backstage integration and document life-cycle management

Built-in support for rich media such as video, audio and Silverlight, making it easy to build dynamic Web sites

New Web content management features with built-in accessibility through Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, multilingual support and one-click page layout, enabling anyone to access SharePoint Server sites

New SharePoint tools in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, giving developers a premier experience with the tools they know and trust

Business Connectivity Services, which allow developers to connect capabilities to line-of-business data or Web services in SharePoint Server and the Office client

Rich APIs and support for Silverlight, representational state transfer (REST) and Language-Integrated Query (LINQ), to help developers rapidly build applications on the SharePoint platform

Enterprise features in SharePoint Online such as Excel Services and InfoPath Forms Services, which make it simple to use, share, secure and manage interactive forms across an organization

The addition of two new SharePoint SKUs for Internet-facing sites, including an on-premises and hosted offer

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is part of the next wave of Microsoft Office-related products, which includes Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Project 2010, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and Microsoft Visio 2010, that are designed to give people the best productivity experience across PCs, phones and browsers.

Availability

The public betas of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Office 2010, Project 2010 and Visio 2010 will become available in November 2009.

Microsoft Office 2010 Public Beta in November

pthurrott — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:54:36 GMT

At its SharePoint Conference 2009 today in Las Vegas, Microsoft announced that it will deliver a public Office 2010 Beta release in November. This follows a closed Technical Preview (see my overview), which shipped back in July.

Today, at Microsoft Corp.’s SharePoint Conference, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer announced that the public beta of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010 will become available in November.

Office 2010 sports improved ribbon across all apps, servers, services

pthurrott — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:28:33 GMT

Virtually every single end user experience with Office 2010 will involve an improved version of the ribbon user interface that debuted in Office 2007. This includes the traditional Office applications, the Office Web Applications, and even Office servers like SharePoint 2010. Here's the story, from my Office 2010 Special Report:

Office 2010 adopts the ribbon user interface across all applications, and it's an improved version compared to the one that debuted with many Office 2007 apps. Gone is the round Office Orb, replaced instead by a more traditional looking application button that is very similar to the application button that appears in Windows 7's ribbon-based apps, Paint and WordPad. The Office 2010 ribbon also picks up a handy Minimize button--it's the caret-looking thing over on the right next to the Help button--that minimizes the ribbon with one click. You could do this in Office 2007 by double-clicking any ribbon tab, but that isn't particularly obvious.

Microsoft stops Grooving, pushes SharePoint instead

pthurrott — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:26:54 GMT

Groove, no more: Microsoft has renamed the Groove client in Office 2010 to SharePoint Workspace 2010, as noted in my Office 2010 Special Report.

Microsoft simplifies the Office 2010 product line-up

pthurrott — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:25:13 GMT

Wondering which product editions Microsoft will ship with Office 2010. Well, there are some surprises, including a simplified line-up and a brand new SKU called Office Home and Business. Here's the complete rundown, from my Office 2010 Special Report:

Fortunately, the software giant is backing off a bit in Office 2010, and instead of the 8 product editions we saw with Office 2007, we're getting just five in Office 2010. These include:

Office Professional Plus. Aimed at enterprise businesses, this edition now includes OneNote and SharePoint Workspace.

Office Standard, Also aimed at enterprise businesses, this edition includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote, Outlook and Publisher.

Office Professional is the premium product for home and small business use.

Office Home and Student is the best-selling version of Office. It will continue to include Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote.

Office Home and Business. New to Office 2010 and replacing Office Small Business edition, this version includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote and Outlook.

(In Office 2010, the Enterprise, Small Business and Ultimate product editions have been removed.)

Yes, there's an Office 2010 Mobile too

pthurrott — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:23:40 GMT

But it's not in beta (yet). Here's a bit of info from my Office 2010 Special Report.

There's not much to say yet about Office Mobile 2010, but it will appear in early 2010 on Windows Mobile-based smart phones and will further Microsoft's promise to make Office functionality available beyond the PC desktop. Office Mobile 2010 will include new versions of Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, PowerPoint Mobile, OneNote Mobile, as well as a SharePoint client that will allow you to access SharePoint-based Office documents.

Waiting for the Office Web Applications? Keep waiting

pthurrott — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:22:40 GMT

I'm not sure what all the hubbub was about regarding the Office Web Applications, but if you were expecting to access web-based versions of Microsoft Office today, you're reading the wrong blogs. Find out what's really happening in my Office 2010 Special Report.

Microsoft announced the Office Web Applications in October 2008 at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) and said that it would ship a beta version of the tools by the end of 2008. That never happened and, contrary to widespread public reports (guesses, as it turns out), the company won't be releasing the beta this week either. Instead, I was told that a beta of the Office Web Applications won't happen until later this year.

Office Web Applications consists of stripped-down, web-based versions of Word, Excel, OneNote, and PowerPoint. Microsoft sees this technology as key to the future of Office, and the company's expectation is that we will lose the distinction between the PC desktop and web-based versions eventually. Seeing the difference won't be all that hard in the first generation version, however, but most of the work being done now is to ensure that the web applications preserve the fidelity of documents moved between the web, the PC apps, and the Windows Mobile-based mobile apps.

The Office Web Applications will be made available in three different ways. Individuals will be able to access them for free via Windows Live. (And not Office Live, which is being discontinued and rolled into Windows Live.) Corporations will be able to host the Office Web Applications on-site. And those who sign up for Microsoft Online Services (MOS) will be able to access a hosted version of Office Web Applications as part of their subscription.

I'll have more information about Office Web Applications as soon as I get my hands on the beta. But here's one fun tidbit: They will work equally well in IE, Firefox, and Safari.

Office 2010 plays catch-up ... with Apple's Keynote

pthurrott — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:19:02 GMT

Microsoft never uttered the "K" word in its Office 2010 briefing with me last month, but it's pretty clear that many of PowerPoint's professional new transitions, animations, effects, and video capabilities were, um, inspired by Apple Keynote. Find out more in my PowerPoint 2010 coverage in the Office 2010 Special Report:

With no mention whatsoever of the Cupertino product that no doubt inspired this work, Microsoft has dramatically improved PowerPoint's transitions and animations. Microsoft describes the transitions as "cinematic," and sure enough there are a number of subtle (fade, wipe) and moderate (checkerboard, blinds) transitions to choose from as well as associated effects for most of them. The animation capabilities have been also been improved, and you can now copy animation effects from object to object using a new Animation Painter that works much like the Format Painter.

PowerPoint has long been able to embed video clips in presentations, but what's been missing is a way to edit those videos. So in previous versions of the product, you'd have to use an external application to edit video. With PowerPoint 2010, you can edit the video right in the application and then compress it so that the underlying presentation isn't bogged down by unused video.

Office 2010 to allow live co-authoring of documents

pthurrott — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:16:37 GMT

The support for this feature varies by application and requires SharePoint 2010 Server. But Office 2010 will allow multiple users to simultaneously edit a document in real-time. The best support for this is in Word 2010. Here's the info, from my Office 2010 Special Report:

In tandem with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Word 2010 now provides the ability to co-author documents in real-time. That's right: Different members of a team can work on different sections of the same Word document, online, and simultaneously. Along the way, any edits are tracked and flagged so anyone working in the document can see what's changed. And thanks to a handy status bar-based notification system, you can easily IM (or phone) other team members if you need to discuss ongoing edits.

While working offline, you can also block sections of documents you're working on so that other authors don't trample over your work. When you're back online, the document can be synced up so that all the changes everyone made are finalized.

Office 2010 seeks to end Undo

pthurrott — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:14:55 GMT

One of the cool new features in Office 2010 is Paste Preview, which addresses a common issue: All too often, when users paste info into a document, they end up clicking Undo because they didn't get the results they expected. Here's the info from my coverage of Word 2010 in the Office 2010 Special Report:

One of the weird issues with Word, currently, is that if you're culling information from the web and paste it into a Word document, you often get a bunch of gobblygook that needs to be cleaned up. Using its application feedback tools, Microsoft found that the first thing most people do after pasting web content into a Word doc is to trigger the Undo feature. In Word 2007, you can of course change how pasted content appears after the fact, or you could try and find the application's default paste feature to manually configure how it works. With Word 2010, things are a lot simpler. You can set the default paste behavior directly from the Paste Options smart tag that appears when you do paste information into a document, but you can also use this tag to get a live preview of how each type of paste will work. So as you mouse over the various paste types, you can see how choosing each will change the content that's pasted before committing. Nice!

Office 2010 delivers Backstage pass

pthurrott — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:13:09 GMT

One of the cool new features in Office 2010 is the BackStage view, which replaces the old File menu with a full screen interface. Here's the info from my Office 2010 Special Report:

Office 2010 replaces the old File menu with a new interface called Backstage. This view, which is triggered by clicking the application button, takes up the entire application window and represents the "behind the scenes operations that you can perform on the currently loaded document." It's also the place where you can access application options and other items that were previously found in the File menu, including Print, another essential, or core, Office capability. (In Backstage parlance, the document content is considered "on stage.")

Coming in Office 2010: Office Anytime Upgrade

pthurrott — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 20:45:07 GMT

While I can't yet comment on all the blogger silliness I've seen about tomorrow's WPC announcements (let's just say the most obvious Office-related predictions I've seen are dead wrong), I recently found this little bit of UI in the build of the Office 2010 Technical Preview that leaked some time ago. Interesting.

Microsoft Office 2010 'Outspace', switching it on/off

pthurrott — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 14:46:39 GMT

Rafael has figured out a way to turn off the Backstage interface in the Office 2010 Technical Preview, which is codenamed Outspace.

Known only by its codename at the moment, Microsoft Office "Outspace" is one of the more noticeable changes to the new Office suite. Upon clicking of the Office button, you’re whisked away into a fancy task-oriented view that lets you manage your open document, presentation, or spreadsheet at a much higher level.

For those of us that hate change, fear not. You can revert back to the old way of doing things with a quick registry tweak. Simply navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Toolbars (creating that key if it doesn’t already exist) and create a DWORD named UseOutspace. Give it a value of 0 or 1 (representing disabled or enabled, respectively) and you’re done. You’ll notice with Outspace off, a piece of the original Office button shows up. This is a bug that’ll be cleaned up as the product matures.

Good stuff. Backstage is going to take some getting used to, methinks.