Microsoft Office 2010 – Innovation is alive and well

The Year – 1983 – MS Word 1.0 for DOS is released Windows hadn't yet been created in 1983There were the days of DOS. The very first incarnation of Microsoft Word took place on 9/29/83. On this date, Microsoft introduced its full-featured word processing program, Microsoft Word for MS-DOS 1.00. OK, that might be too far back, but the first release of Microsoft Excel for Windows occurred on 10/6/87.   Microsoft Releases Office I remember those days. The days when word processors hit mainstream. I was mesmerized. I had spent years fussing with typewriters, white-out, scissors, trips to the copy store. Huge time was wasted.To be fair, I liked writing – it was just the process of re-writing with a typewriter that was an issue. Microsoft wasn’t first.WordPerfect ruled the word processing world for some time. Microsoft had a tough struggle to overcome WordPerfect.I was an early user of Office. I embraced those whole suite. That is because I also switched my spreadsheet program from Lotus to Excel. Decades later the world of software is moving faster than ever It isn’t trivial to innovate with the Office. First, it is huge in it’s code base and there are hundreds of millions of users. Everything must be as perfect as possible with previous versions. It is very difficult to innovate with such a big product. Kind of like changing jet engines while in flight.

Unprecedented support for the Web Office 2010 is deeply integrated with the Internet Saving, Sharing, Publish to the WebThere are 1.8 billion Internet users worldwide and this is a number Microsoft pays attention to. The way businesses and individuals use the Internet today is very different from just a few years ago. The internet now makes it possible to put our Office documents in front of millions of users. Microsoft Office needs to make this easy.

Better looking documents PowerPoint / SmartArt On an average day, 30 million PowerPoint presentations are givenSmartArt graphics add color, shape, and emphasis to your text and data, and they're a snap to use. You can easily try out a variety of SmartArt graphics to see which one works best for getting your point across. An organization chart? A time line? A process with sequential tasks? Non-sequential items? With SmartArt graphics, you can experiment as much as you want with different formats and styles.

 

SmartArt simplifies creating and editing Notice the red boxThe PowerPoint user can do all their work in the elegant outline format as seen in the red box. Even the images can be entered here.

 

PowerPoint in presentation modeNotice the SmartArt editor appears only when we are editing the slide. The end user doesn't care about that part.

Incorporating Screenshots You can easily choose the main window from any running applicaiton. On the Ribbon, click "Screenshot," then choose the application whose screen you wish to capture.

 

Getting your Office Documents in front of people There are many ways to present your office document You can save to a central shareIf you are an individual, you can use your Live Account to place your document in a shared location. This allows you to avoid sending email with huge attachments. If you are a corporate user, you can use more advanced features found in SharePoint, where you can track revision history, participate in workflow, create alerts once the document is edited, etc.

 

Sending your Word Document as an Email Attachment Word supports email directlyIt is easier than ever to work on a document in Microsoft Word and send it to an email recipient. The ability to send email is available directly from within MS Word.

 

Post to a SharePoint site directlyWord can post documents directly to SharePoint, which allows you to share a document with the appropriate security of that document. Once posted to SharePoint, a workflow activity can be triggered and allows you to route documents to team members. There is no need to go to your SharePoint site manually and do a document update - do it from within Word directly.

Blogging within Word Built in support to publish your Word Document to a Blogging RepositoryWord can be used as a blogging tool. Word supports many types of blogs, such as SharePoint, WordPress, Blogger, Windows Live Spaces, Community Server, and TypePad.

Office is everywhere 100,000,000 copies pre-loadedMore than 100 million PCs will ship with Office 2010 preloaded, which can easily be activated with the purchase of any one of the three versions of Office 2010, including Office Home and Student 2010, Office Home and Business 2010, or Office Professional 2010.

Social Networks and Outlook Email Outlook Social Connector Communicate with friends with popular social websites The Outlook Social Connector connects Microsoft Outlook 2010 to your business and personal social networks. Within Outlook, you can stay up to date on the status and activities of your contacts, whether they are from your organization’s network, or from social networking sites on the Internet. Using the Outlook Social Connector, you can see status updates, comments, messages and alerts from the social network sites, all in one location in Outlook. .

Office 2010 is easier to use The Ribbon spans all Microsoft Applications What is the ribbon? The ribbon is an interface where a set of toolbars are placed on tabs in a tab bar. Microsoft Office applications have embraced this form with an intricate modular ribbon as the main interface. The Ribbon GUI provides the user interface of an application with a large toolbar filled with graphical representations of control elements which are grouped by different functionality. The Ribbon is a contextual interface that offers functionality based on the context the user is working in. How the Ribbon works The Grouping of TabsThe ribbon is formed as a panel that houses certain command buttons and icons; it organizes commands as a set of tabs, each grouping relevant commands. Each application has a different set of tabs which house the options for that specific application. Within each tab, various related options may be grouped together.

Office 2010 & the Internet Major browser support Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox supportMicrosoft is also ensuring that the Office Web Applications work identically in any browser, and they're specifically targeting Internet Explorer, Firefox, and, Safari. We will definitely support non-Microsoft browsers fully.

Office 2010 Exploits Modern Hardware Support for 64-bit and Graphics Accelerators 64-bit allows for gigantic spreadsheetsGenerally, you can expect to create bigger workbooks, whether that’s due to tons of data in the grid, tons of charts in your workbook, several really huge PivotCaches supporting your PivotTables, and so on. Most features take some amount of memory to use them, so you can essentially have more features and create bigger workbooks.

Better looking documents Office 2010 has built-in photo and image editing tools Background RemovalIf you need to include an image without its background in Word document or Powerpoint presentation and are not familiar with Photoshop or any other image processing tool, then there is no need to fret. Background Removal Tool in Microsoft Office 2010 can do it for you. Among the long list of enhanced features in Microsoft Office 2010, there is Background Removal Tool. Removing the background of any image is now only a couple of clicks away.

Removing the white backgroundTypically, you would need to start another graphics editing program to remove this white background of the guy sitting in the chair in the photo below.

Background RemovalNotice the tooling allows you to remove the white background (now in purple)

The finished image The white background is gone! Notice now all you see is the guy in the chair. The image looks much more natural without the white background.

Artistic EffectsThe beauty of Artistic Effects is that you can apply them quickly and you don’t have to perform complicated steps to get stunning results. If you have time to experiment, though, you might like to exert more control over the effects by using the Artistic Effect Options. Select the image and in the Picture Tools tab click Artistic Effects > Artistic Effects Options. The Format Picture panel is displayed where you can tweak all the different settings until you reach the effect you want.

Adding color overlaysYou may want to apply a color to your images.

Better looking documents OpenType What is OpenType? OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation   Fonts & OpenType Advanced Typographic Features OpenType is a scalable font format, built to be compatible with TrueType, but having many advanced typographic features like: Ligatures Numeric styling Fraction Styling Glyphs Style “sets” Contextual Alternates Notice we have chosen a stylistic set of ‘5’ and the letters have changed, such as the letter “g.”

Making Text Look Better Glows, Reflections, Shadows, Bevels Just highlight text and go to the RibbonEffects like Shadow, Glow, Reflection and Bevel now you can easily apply to text in Word 2010. You can add text effects to paragraph styles. Effects used for images are now available for text and shapes.

ReflectionsChoose from "Reflection Variations"

Reflection ExampleHere is what it looks like.

Glow ExampleHere is what a glow looks like.

Easier Management for account settings, automatic replies, etc Change the Outlook Configuration in one area BackStage ViewBackStage View sets a new level of application accessibility and usability, especially in Outlook 2010. Clicking on the Office button gives you access to Outlook settings and account information, including account settings, automatic replies to email, mailbox cleanup, and rules. Bringing all this information into one interface should be a boon to productivity, since users will no longer have to hunt around for management features in various Outlook menus.

Outlook - Schedule View Simplify scheduling wiht co-workersMicrosoft Outlook 2010 has a new feature called Schedule View that makes it easier to schedule time with your co-workers. Schedule View is a new horizontal layout for the Outlook calendar that displays many calendars at the same time. Schedule View is useful when you work closely with a team of co-workers who share their calendars. If you have a Microsoft Exchange Server account, the calendar group Team Calendar appears in the Calendar Navigation Pane. The Team Calendar group contains calendars for your manager, direct reports, and peers as determined from information in the Windows Active Directory. Example I am trying to schedule something with Lynn Langit and Anand IyerNotice I can see there schedule along side my own. This makes it dramatically easier to find a common time to schedule a meeting.

Outlook - Quick Steps Perform multiple actions at once with one click Avoid step-heavy repetitious work Quick Steps are easy-to-use one-click buttons which perform multiple actions at once. If you file your mail, they can be a life saver – one click and that conversation is filed away and marked as read. If you send e-mail to the same people over and over – one click and you have a new email to your team. As your work style in Outlook changes, you can configure Quick Steps to work the way you do.

Quick Steps in Outlook You may want to set the 'retention policy' Retention policy settings can help users to follow retention policy guidelines that your company establishes for document retention. Retention policy settings in Outlook can be configured to follow company policies and encourage users to retain documents and items for only a fixed period of time. Retention Settings implementation requires AutoArchive to be enabled, but Retention Settings take precedence over AutoArchive settings. Other 'Quick Steps' capabilitiesHere is a list of some of the things you can do using 'Quick Steps' Move To Folder moves the selected message(s) to a specified folder. Categorize And Move sets a message category and moves to a specified folder. Flag And Move sets a message flag and move to a specified folder. New Email To sends a new message to the specified recipient. Forward To forwards the selected message(s) to a specified recipient. New Meeting creates a new meeting request. Custom Action allows custom items to be chosen for use as a quick step

PowerPoint - Broadcast Slide Show Invite someone to see your presentation across the web Avoid emailing bulky attachmentsPowerPoint 2010 makes it easy to present on the fly to anyone, anywhere. Just send a link, and in one click everyone you invite will be watching a synchronized view of your slide show in their browser. You’ll never again need to email bulky attachments or make an announcement every time you change slides. Steps to Broadcast a Slide Show The workflow is simple: just open any presentation in PowerPoint, click Broadcast Slide Show, and connect to the PowerPoint Broadcast Service. You’ll receive a unique link that you can email or IM to remote attendees. Then, start the slide show and present the same way you do for every presentation you give with PowerPoint.

 

Excel 2010 - Top Improvements Improving the Ribbon Less shadowing, fewer boxesThe 2010 ribbon has the same density of controls as in 2007, but it looks cleaner because of its lighter background and the elimination of much of less popular features. Instead of boxes around all of the groups of controls, as in 2007, the groups are separated by a single light line, and the shadowing is much less pronounced.

Snappy chartsWeb 2.0-like controls for the chart are now available.

Choosing Chart TypesNotice there is an extensive collection of chart types.

New Excel 2010 Charting Features Sparklines & FiltersNext to the Charts group on the Excel 2010 Insert tab are two new groups: Sparklines and Filter, which houses the Slicer. These much heralded features are probably the most talked about new tricks in Excel 2010. The advance press for Sparklines on the MSDN Excel blog is very promising. Benefits of sparklines Produce powerful intense graphics, condensed into a single cell Consolidate all your information into a single worksheet Visualize large quantities of data for different scenarios Compare and spot trends to get the big picture Get all the information you need in a single screen Well suited for financial, scientific and business visualization

SparkLines are on the Insert Tab Excel SparkLines How to add a SparkLine Choose "Column/Sparkline" from the "Insert" menuYou will then enter the (1) Data Range and the (2) Location Range.

Conclusion Office 2010 is available today Thanks for readingI have not posted about EVERYTHING, but should give you a good start. Would love to hear from you regarding what you like and don't like in Office 2010 at bterkaly@microsoft.com (Bruno Terkaly).