Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview – First Impressions

(Read this post in Hebrew at Newsgeek.co.il) 

As you probably already know, Microsoft Office 2010, the next version of Microsoft Office has a Technical Preview release.         This release is not publicly avaliable but I’m sure you can manage to get a copy if you want to… ;-). Several builds of Office 2010 TP were already leaked to the internet,  but be aware that Microsoft checking those builds and they confirm that several copies  are infected with Malware…

If you want to get a genuine copy of Office 2010, check out Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview Program, that’s where I got my copy from. The Technical Preview Program build is the Professional Edition which includes Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Access, Publisher and OneNote.

Office 2010, including Office Web applications, SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010 — entered a technical preview in the third quarter of 2009 and are scheduled for RTM in the first half of 2010. Other Office-Related products like Microsoft Exchange 2010 will become available in the second half of 2009.

After mumbling enough about the release, lets see what Office 2010 has to offer. Forgive me for not covering all of Office 2010 application. I will focus on, what I think, the most used applications: Outlook, Word and PowerPoint.

Outlook 2010

The New Ribbon

In Office 2007 Applications, a new Ribbon was introduced, providing more flexible and intuitive way to get the job done, showing us features we didn’t know about and made them easier to use. This new Ribbon was not built into Outlook 2007, but now, in Outlook 2010, the new Ribbon is built-in. The Ribbon in Outlook 2010 is divided  to four sections: Home – for general mailing operations, Send/Receive – for Send/Receive operations, Folder – for folders management and View – to manage your Outlook and mail way of view.

If we’ll compare Outlook 2010 to Outlook 2007, we can see a big difference:

Quick Steps

One of the new features in the new Office Ribbon, providing quick access to new mail operations. If the built-in commands are sufficient for you, you can add other commands:

Conversation

This new nice feature, group mail items with the same subject into one email that you can expand, taking less space in the Inbox:

Word 2010

New Formatting Tools

New formatting tools, easy to access from the Home tab, enhance and improve the look of your documents by using WordArt-like fonts with effects like Shadow, Reflection and Glow.

New SmartArt Shapes

The new SmartArt shapes help you illustrate processes and more:

Document Map

This new feature, maps the document according to the documents heading

Using Document Map, you can edit Headings configuration and change the document view to a Thumbnail View:

Collaborate

If you are using SharePoint Workspace 2010, you can publish the document to a team workspace, check if someone is editing the document at the moment, chat with him, call him and a lot more.

PowerPoint 2010

Photo Effects

New photo editing tools let you edit the photos you are using in your presentation: correct to brightness and colors of photos and apply artistic effects.

Video Editing

New Video editing tools let you format the shape of the video and recolor the video (Brightness, Contrast, Grayscale,…):

Another great video editing tool, Trim Video, let you choose the start and end point of the video.

Slideshow Transitions, Animation and Recording

New Transitions and Animation effects, gives a better look and feel of your presentation:

Another cool thing is the Slideshow Recording that lets automate the time between slides transition:

Office 2010 Backstage

Another great new feature, is the Office Backstage, available on all Office 2010 applications. Office Backstage will give you tools and options you need according to the application you use. Among others, you will find media compression in PowerPoint, New Print Preview functions in Word and Mailbox Cleanup in Outlook:

Off Topic

Running Office 2010 as a Virtual Application

I’m running Office 2010 on Virtual Windows XP that’s installed on Windows 7 RC. I had to try running Office 2010 applications directly from Windows 7 as a virtual application, but unfortunately its not working… for now… :-\

Office 2010: The Movie

Microsoft also came up with a site called Microsoft Office 2010 Backstage, with Office Backstage-like design, avaliable at http://www.office2010themovie.com.

If you’ll check YouTube, there is also a funny Office 2010 Movie teaser:

Summary 

Office 2010 has a lot to offer and as you can see there are lots of new features and enhancements in the applications I covered here and a lot more on other Office Applications like Visio, SharePoint Workspace, Project and more.

You can find more information about Office 2010 applications on the Microsoft Office 2010 Engineering Blog and at the Office 2010 Home Page where you can also register for the Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview Program. If you are encountering bugs and other problems after installing Office 2010, check out Office 2010 Forum.

After getting your invitation and installing Office 2010, don’t forget to send a feedback, using the Microsoft Office Send-A-Smile utility, by pressing the Frown or Smile icons at the taskbar:

Have Fun!