What’s new in Office 2010

New improved Office 2010 is the more efficient, user friendly, revolutionary and smarter way of working

BY SUNIL RANADIVE

Microsoft’s release of Office 2010 has been somewhat overshadowed by the recent Apple iPad release; however the new version of Office has some fantastic improvements that are worth shouting about. According to Microsoft, the focus of this update was on three things: to make work flows more efficient; to effectively use Web applications to make your work available anywhere; and to make collaboration with others much easier. Here are the highlights of a few of the features that will make your life easier. Work better together: Do you e-mail files for people to review, managing revision numbers and tracking editing changes? Or do you use technology like Google Apps for internet-based sharing and collaboration? With Office 2010, your document can now be shared easily on the internet and edited by multiple people at the same time (for real-time co-authoring). This feature alone may change how teams work together internally and how businesses work with their customers.

Office wherever you need it (and it’s free!): Office Web Apps will offer lightweight versions of Word Excel and PowerPoint from your web browser, for free. Whilst these products are missing many features, they’re designed to complement the full products and provide great basic editing from any location.

Look before you paste: Even the humble paste feature is overhauled, with the new Paste Preview. You can now choose to keep the source formatting, merge the formatting or keep the text only of your pasted content. As you hover the mouse over these options, you’ll see a preview of what your content will look like before it is inserted. There’s now also a built-in screen capture tool and screen clipper giving you more control over the screen images you wish to copy.

PowerPoint embraces multimedia: Microsoft has stepped up the video capability of PowerPoint with advanced video editing functions now built into the application. YouTube videos can also be embedded into slides, though you’ll need an internet connection to display them when running your presentation. You can also distribute your slides as a video, or easily broadcast your presentation over the internet.

E-mail’s new look: Outlook inherits the wide ‘ribbon’ toolbar that other applications had in Office 2007. The new Conversation View lets you follow the threads of a discussion more easily and inside an e-mail you’ll see meetings, attachments and other emails that are related to the sender. You’ll even be able to include them as a social networking contact with the Add button. For repetitive tasks, Outlook introduces macro-like QuickSteps, enabling you to action several tasks with one click (e.g. reply to a message and delete the original). Never lose a document again: If you’re not happy with the latest changes to your file, the Autosave feature now keeps the last 5 versions that it saved and you can preview and compare their contents. If your computer crashes or laptop battery dies and you suddenly remember that you haven’t saved the masterpiece you’ve been working on for the last hour, Office 2010 now keeps unsaved documents for 4 whole days before automatically deleting them.

A favourite improvement to Office 2010 is what Microsoft calls the Backstage view. Offered as a replacement for the File menu, Backstage gives you a launching point to share documents, print out your work, set permissions, and other program specific options to get your project ready for distribution. You’ll find all of the usual document management features like ‘open and save’ here as well, but you’ll also get a nice layout of templates for new documents, several different ways to share your work, and print settings and page layouts all in one place.

People might initially be resistant to a new way of doing things (as is often the case), but once you get used to using the Backstage view for all of your file management, you’ll find it useful and efficient to have access to everything in one place.

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