There’s a lot new about Office 2010: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook all come with evolved UIs, taking cues from Office 2007’s “ribbon” UI by using tabs instead of traditional menus. Word offers the new “backstage view”, which replaces the old File menu with a sort of visual representation of it: You’ll get a sidebar with live previews, which could come in handy for things like print preview. Besides that, Word (along with PowerPoint and Excel) also adds minor photo and video-editing tools like colour adjustment, cropping and trimming. PowerPoint brings the new “broadcast slideshow” feature, allowing you to beam a presentation to any connected PC with a one-click interface; and Excel adds some smart enhancements like automatically shading the highest numbers in a given chart, and Sparklines, which are word-sized graphs that can be added inside charts.

There are a boatload of minor changes in Office 2010, and we won’t go into them all. The biggest change, and the one that’s most exciting to us, has been around for awhile in some form or another: SkyDrive, Microsoft’s online storage, now includes what’s essentially the Office take on Google Docs. With any version of Office 2010, you get 25GB of storage space. That storage gives you the ability to create and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents on the fly, with simultaneous group editing, just like in Google Docs.

There are two main versions of Office 2010: The full version, the price of which has not yet been announced, and the Starter version, which offers limited-feature (we might say crippled) versions of the three main programs in the suite, and will come free with many new PCs. With either option, you’ll get the 25GB of storage space and access to SkyDrive. Office 2010 will be released sometime in the first half of 2010. [Microsoft]

Not that bad, actually. Definitely usable. And if that column on the right serves any purpose, I wouldn’t mind using it. [Thanks León]

As part of Office 2010 software that will be pre-loaded by the PC manufacturers on their PCs, we’re introducing Microsoft Office Starter 2010. Office Starter 2010 is a reduced-functionality, advertising-supported version of Office 2010, available exclusively on new PCs. Office Starter 2010 will provide new PC owners with immediate exposure to the Office 2010 experience on new PCs right out of the box.

I wonder how many people will settle for that version. [Technet]

Yeah, I don’t see that happening. More likely is that they’ll figure out a way to remove the offending code before explaining its side of the story on September 23. And that’s the word. [Seattle Pi Microsoft Blog]

Yes, when the press conference was called, there was some speculation that we’d hear about an Office app for the iPhone, but alas, such was not the case. The first order of business was a streamlining of the current Office for Mac lineup into two editions, the Home and Student version currently on shelves, and the Business Edition ($US399 full; $US239 upgrade; available September 15), which has, in addition to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage, the new connected applications, Entourage Web Services Edition and Microsoft Document Connection. See what details there are here:

The more exciting news for Office devotees, however, was that Microsoft was building a true version of Outlook that could be as powerful as the Windows version of Outlook, but built on Cocoa to run smoothly and seamlessly in the Mac OS. No more second-class citizen Entourage—full Outlook is on its way.

Me, I still want to muck around with Excel spreadsheets on an iPhone, but oh well. [Mactopia]

According to plaintiff’s attorneys:

The injunction prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML

This comes after a federal jury declared that Microsoft Word 2003 and Word 2007 custom XML tagging infringed on the plaintiff’s—Toronto-based developer i4i—patents, ordering Microsoft to pay them $US200 million in damages. This injunction orders the payment of another $US40 million for “willful infringment” and prohibits any sales, testing, and demonstration of any Word version containing the custom XML tagging feature. [CNET]

Remember that insane water slide jump video? Unsurprisingly, it was a fake viral video. Surprisingly, it was made to promote…Microsoft Office?

The site is still in German, but now it’s covered in Microsoft Office Project 2007 branding. I don’t get it as I don’t speak German, but I can only imagine how well this makes a potential daredevil realise that they need a Microsoft product to complete their most ambitious of stunts.

[Mach es Machbar; Thanks, Adam!]

With free or cheap alternatives from Google, Zoho, Apple and Adobe, Microsoft didn’t really have much a choice when it came to pricing the online suite: it’d either be free, or a failure. Thankfully, the apps, which include Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote, will be available to anyone with a Live account, and judging by the (lone) screenshot above, will aim to compete directly, feature-wise, with other companies’ offerings—although hopefully with better handling of complex formatting.

GALLERY



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This announcement is paired with news that the actual suite, shown in the gallery above, has hit the “Technical Preview” stage, and that it’ll be available for testing to tens of thousands of users, albeit by invitation. (Although for the rest of us, it’s already been leaked) There aren’t a ton of surprises in the announcements, but PowerPoint video editing, new grou-editing tools, and a bevy of small tweaks and feature-adds can be expected. [Microsoft]

Office 2010 Hits Major Milestone and Enters Technical Preview
Microsoft showcases new product capabilities and announces Office Web applications will be available to nearly half a billion people at launch.

NEW ORLEANS, La. – July 13, 2009 – Today, at its Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft Corp. announced Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010 have reached the technical preview engineering milestone. Starting today, tens of thousands of people will be invited to test Office and Visio as part of the Technical Preview program.
“Office 2010 is the premiere productivity solution across PCs, mobile phones and browsers,” said Chris Capossela, senior vice president, Microsoft Business Division. “From broadcast and video editing in PowerPoint, new data visualization capabilities in Excel and co-authoring in Word, we are delivering technology to help people work smarter and faster from any location using any device.”
Office 2010 and related products will deliver innovative capabilities and provide new levels of flexibility and choice that will help people:

• Work anywhere with Office Web applications—the lightweight, Web browser versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote-that provide access to documents from anywhere and preserve the look and feel of a document regardless of device.

• Better Collaborate with co-authoring in Word, PowerPoint and OneNote, and advanced email management and calendaring capabilities in Outlook, including the option to “ignore” unwanted threads.

• Bring ideas to life with video and picture editing, broadcast capability in PowerPoint, easy document preparation through the new Microsoft Office Backstage view, and new Sparklines in Excel to visualize data and spot trends more quickly;

Microsoft also announced that it is streamlining the number of Office editions from eight to five and enhancing each edition with additional applications and features. The company also announced that Office Web applications will be available in three ways: through Windows Live, where more than 400 million consumers will have access to Office Web applications at no cost; on-premises for the more than 90 million Office annuity customers; and via Microsoft Online Services, where customers will be able to purchase a subscription as part of a hosted offering.
Partner Opportunities:
Microsoft also is preparing partners for the release of Office 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 through a number of new and refreshed readiness tools and training programs. These include: the Ignite program for SharePoint, Office and Exchange; Business Productivity Infrastructure Optimization (BPIO) University; Masters and Architect Certification for SharePoint; new Partner Business Productivity Online Services features and distributor model; and, Exchange 2010 Readiness Webcast Series and Demo Showcase. More information on these programs can be found at: http://partner.microsoft.com/businessproductivity

Availability:
All Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference attendees will receive invitations to participate in the Technical Preview program. Microsoft Office 2010 and related products will be available in the first half of 2010. More information about Office 2010 can be found at www.microsoft.com/Office2010 .