The Complete Guide To Microsoft's Office 2010

The web has been abuzz the past few weeks with chatter about Microsoft’s announcement today

at its Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans about the new version of Microsoft Office 2010. There’s even a mini-movie about its debut. Facing potential challenges from Google’s browser-based Apps products and its new Chrome OS, Microsoft has been touting its three screens strategy, which is the ability for products to synchronize across the phone, browser, and desktop, for some time now.

With the release of Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010 and Visio 2010, we finally see the implementation of Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie’s mantra. We had the opportunity to see an in-depth demo of the new suite of products from Microsoft’s Group Product Manager for Office 2010, Chris Bryant. Here’s a complete breakdown of all the functionality that has been added, including screenshots:

The Move To The Browser

Most certainly a direct response to Google Apps, Microsoft is rolling out lightweight, FREE, Web browser versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote. All based in the cloud, the web-based versions of these products have fewer features than their desktop cousins but still give users basic tools to edit and change documents.

PowerPoint 2010

PowerPoint has been upgraded not only with a new browser version, but also a slew of bells and whistles have been added to the desktop version. Users now have the capability of editing video and images within PowerPoint with a basic video editing tool (not so different from the capabilities of iMovie) and an image editing tool, which is like a basic, simple version of Adobe Photoshop. Microsoft has also added the ability for users to launch a WebEx-like live sharing feature with other users. So if you create a slideshow in PowerPoint, you can share it with other people in real-time (which can be run on top of Sharepoint).

Here’s what the video editing tools look like in PowerPoint:


To share a deck with other users, you send an email to individuals with a link. Once they click the link, they will see the slideshow within the browser. This feature can also be used on a mobile phone’s browser. You can also create a slideshow in the desktop version and then publish it to the web version to access it via the browser. The browser version of PowerPoint doesn’t include the video editing features, but most of the functionality of 2008 is included in the browser version.

Excel 2010

Excel spreadsheets can now run in the browser, and similar to PowerPoint, spreadsheets can be published to the browser via the desktop version. The browser version of Excel has limited features, but offers more in-depth functionality than Google Spreadsheets. Microsoft has added a particularly innovative feature called Sparklines, which gives a visual snapshot image of a data trend over time within a cell. You can also share Excel via the browser with other users and set special permissions on who can access the document.

Here’s what the web version of Excel looks like:



Word 2010

Bryant says that the number one piece of feedback from users producing documents on Microsoft Word is that they want to preserve the look and feel of a document created in the desktop version in the browser. Microsoft calls this “document fidelity” and created the browser version of MS Word accordingly. In the browser, documents retain the same look and feel as in the desktop. The browser version still has the “ribbon user interface,” where you can change fonts, size, formatting, styles etc.

An image of the web version of Word:



Microsoft has also updated the desktop version to have collaborative features so that multiple users can be editing a document at once. This collaboration is not available in the web version, unfortunately. Microsoft says that users don’t want this feature but this might be a move to protect the Office revenue model.

When two people are editing the same document (in the desktop version) at the same time, Word will notify each user when there are changes that need to be synced with their document. The copy/paste function of the desktop version has also received an upgrade, where you can see see a live preview for the paste function. The paste function also has an advanced option to create and insert screenshots. To make moving around a long document easier, Word now has a visual navigation pane and section header breakdown which makes it easy to jump around different sections of a document.



Outlook 2010

Outlook 2010 now has a ribbon user interface, like Word, PowerPoint and Excel. The UI of email conversations has been upgraded to look almost like a message tree, allowing users a more visual view of sent and incoming emails. Search functionality has been improved as well, making it much easier to find content. Also, you can preview calendars in emails and choose to ignore selective email conversations.



Sharepoint 2010

Like Outlook, Sharepoint now gets a ribbon UI, making the document-hosting product more similar to Microsoft’s flagship products, like Word. You can tag authors of documents now and can share documents and files more easily.

Microsoft says that its browser versions have been tested on all major browsers aside from internet Explorer, including Firefox and Safari. Office 2010 is still being tested and reworked to function on Chrome. Microsoft also announced that it is streamlining the number of Office editions from eight to five. Office Web applications will be available in three ways: through Windows Live, where consumers will have access to Office Web applications at no cost; via on-premises versions; and via Microsoft Online Services, where customers will be able to purchase a subscription of MS Office. Microsoft says Office 2010 will be available in the first half of next year.

The key part of all of this news is the free, browser-based versions of Microsoft’s most popular Office products. Bryant says that Microsoft expects the browser products to be especially popular amongst student, but I think that the web-based applications will be hugely popular in the enterprise space as well, as long as there are security precautions taken to put documents in a secure part of the cloud.

But as more and more businesses are becoming comfortable with trusting cloud environments, Microsoft’s move to the browser could pay off in a big way, especially because it’s so easy to use both the desktop and browser versions of products interchangeably. The more successful Microsoft is in its browser strategy, the more they validate Google’s approach in the space, which will eventually put price pressure on Office.

Top 10 reasons to try Office Professional 2010

*Edit photos in your documents without leaving Word, Publisher, or PowerPoint.
Enhance the visual impact of your Word and Publisher documents or PowerPoint presentations with easy-to-use picture editing tools that let you crop, control brightness and contrast, sharpen or soften and add artistic visual effects.

*Analyze finances at home and work with improved features in Excel.
Use Sparklines in Excel 2010 to create mini-charts that make it easy to highlight trends in expenses at a glance. Use Slicers to dynamically segment and filter PivotTable data to display precisely what you need, and let the improved Conditional Formatting highlight specific items in your data set with just a few clicks.

*Access, edit, and share from virtually anywhere with Office Web Apps.
Get things done when you’re away from the office, home, or school. Create documents in Office 2010 desktop applications, then post them online to access, view, and edit with Office Web Apps from virtually anywhere you have Internet access.*

*Create dynamic marketing materials with improved photo tools in Publisher.
Get professional results in Publisher 2010 with improved photo tools that let you insert or replace photos easily while preserving your look and layout. You can also preview formatting changes before applying them, add photo captions from a library of layouts, and choose from editing options such as changing the shape of photos, pan, zoom, crop, color, and brightness.

*Find the features you need fast, and personalize your work experience.
The new Microsoft Office Backstage™ view lets you save, share, print, and publish your documents with just a few clicks. An improved Ribbon lets you access your favorite commands quickly and customize or create tabs to personalize the experience to your work style.

*Build a top-notch database quickly with Access.
Start with prebuilt Access 2010 templates or select from community-submitted templates and customize them according to the needs of your project to make collecting information and creating reports easier than ever. Use professional-looking data bar charts created with improved Conditional Formatting to communicate your analysis clearly and easily..

*Organize customer information efficiently in OneNote.
Create a digital notebook in OneNote 2010 to capture and organize all your important customer information — text, images, video, and audio from documents, Web pages and e-mail messages — in a single, easy-to-access location.

*Track and manage e-mail conversations easily in Outlook.
Save time and take control of your e-mail with Conversation View in Outlook 2010. This feature lets you condense, categorize, and even ignore lengthy e-mail exchanges with a single click, so you can manage large amounts of e-mail with ease.

*Present from virtually anywhere with PowerPoint.
Broadcast your PowerPoint 2010 presentation instantly through a Web browser to a remote audience of one or 50 — even if audience members don’t have PowerPoint — with Broadcast Slide Show.

*Simplify and streamline printing in Publisher.
Get the results you want the first time with an improved printing experience in Publisher 2010. It instantly shows you the impact of changes as you adjust print settings, lets you simultaneously view the back and front of a document, and even lets you see “through” the paper to preview the other side of your publication to make sure it reads just right.

HTC Evo 4G

HTC Evo 4G (photos)

As expected, Sprint announced its first 4G smartphone on the opening day of CTIA 2010: the HTC Evo 4G. Known by its codename, the Supersonic, this is the first 4G smartphone to launch in the United States using Sprint's WiMax network. Neither it's price nor release date were announced, but, according to Sprint, it expects to ship the device this summer

New Microsoft Office 2010 test build leaks

Microsoft officials said last week that the company would release a new test build of its Office 2010 suite in July. But it looks like some testers got it at the end of this week and subsequently leaked it to the Web.

The build that leaked is not the January alpha. It likely is the invitation-only test build due to g o out officially to thousands of invited testers this summer. Ars Technica has screen shots up, showing the Ribbonization of the entire Office 2010 (”Office 14″) family. The new “SharePoint Workspace Manager” product (a k a, relabeld Groove synchronization client), which Microsoft acknowledged this past week would be part of the Office 2010 Professional Plus SKU, is part of the leaked bits. Windows-Now blogger Robert McLaws has screen shots up showing one way Microsoft is planning to “light up” Office 2010 when it is used with Windows 7 (via an Office jump list).

SharePoint 2010 is slated to go to a group of testers in July, as well. But it sounds like that SharePoint’s planned Community Tchnology Preview (CTP) will be conducted separately from the Office 2010 client one.

Anyone seen a leaked copy of the Office Web Apps — the Web versions of the 2010 client apps that also are supposed to go to testers in July?
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Upload and store your files in the cloud with Google Docs

We're happy to announce that over the next few weeks we will be rolling out the ability to upload, store and organize any type of file in Google Docs. With this change, you'll be able to upload and access your files from any computer -- all you need is an Internet connection.

Instead of emailing files to yourself, which is particularly difficult with large files, you can upload to Google Docs any file up to 250 MB. You'll have 1 GB of free storage for files you don't convert into one of the Google Docs formats (i.e. Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations), and if you need more space, you can buy additional storage for $0.25 per GB per year. This makes it easy to backup more of your key files online, from large graphics and raw photos to unedited home videos taken on your smartphone. You might even be able to replace the USB drive you reserved for those files that are too big to send over email.

Combined with shared folders, you can store, organize, and collaborate on files more easily using Google Docs. For example, if you are in a club or PTA working on large graphic files for posters or a newsletter, you can upload them to a shared folder for collaborators to view, download, and print.

You can also search for document files you've uploaded or that have been shared with you just like you do with your Google documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and PDFs. And you'll be able to view many common document file types with the Google Docs viewer.

To learn how businesses can take advantage of this new functionality, check out the post on the Enterprise Blog.

As always, we’d love your feedback and if you have any questions, please check out our help page. This feature will be enabled for your account over the next couple of weeks — look for the bubble notification when you sign in to Google Docs.

Importing Inventory with Excel

There are a number of reasons why you may want to use Excel to import items to your item list in QuickBooks: Converting a list from another program, making copies of existing items, bulk addition of a new product line, and more. Today I’m going to give you an overview of how to use Excel to manipulate the item list.
I’m going to use Premier 2008 in my examples, but the approach I’ll use works for older versions as well. Starting in 2008 intuit added an “import wizard” that simplifies the import process, but this method is very restricted and can’t be used for all situations. Instead, we’ll use the advanced import method – which is the method used in versions older than 2008.
Note that to be able to use Excel to import and export the item list you must have Excel installed in the same computer that you are using for QuickBooks.

In the Export window, if “csv” is the only option (the Excel options are “grayed out”), then you either do not have Excel installed, or QuickBooks can’t find Excel. Sometimes errors in your Windows Registry prevents QuickBooks from seeing Excel even if it is installed – if this happens, reinstall Excel and then this option should be available.

For the item list we don’t need any of the options on the Advanced tab, and you don’t need the explanation worksheet. Usually you will create a new Excel workbook – if you add to an existing one, the new export will usually be added in front of the highest numbered worksheet and will be assigned the name SheetX, where “X” should be the next highest number in that spreadsheet.
Your spreadsheet will look something like the following: