Getting ready for Office 2010
August 20, 2010 at 9:42 AM | Posted in General | Leave a commentTags: compatibility, office 2010, tool, upgrade
If you are a part of an organization’s IT department, and getting ready to roll out Office 2010 to replace any older Office versions, you better be darn sure that all the files and macros will still be working after the upgrade, or you are going to be flooded with complaints.
To that end, Microsoft has announced the availability of the Office 2010 File compatibility Tool via the official Office blog. For corporate environments, it’s a must-use before upgrading.
More new Office 2010 features
July 8, 2010 at 9:15 AM | Posted in General | Leave a commentTags: office 2010, pcmag
I’ve been using Office 2010 for a couple of months now (I had early access to it through a place I work for), but I would guess that for most of my readers it’s still considered brand new.
Michael J. Miller, a veteran PC-Magazine columnist, wrote about the six features he deems the most attractive for home and small business users (in his article he says 5, but I count 6, go figure).
In short, they are:
- Return of the File Menu (blessed be the guy who thought about this)
- Word’s Navigation Pane
- PowerPoint video editing
- Better Graphics Editing
- Sparklines (I’ve mentioned these a few times in the past)
- Online Apps
Ribbon Customizations in Excel 2010
June 15, 2010 at 9:26 AM | Posted in General | 1 CommentTags: customize, office 2010, ribbon, ui
I’ve mentioned the ability to customize Excel 2010′s ribbon before.
Here’s a nice article on how to use this new Excel 2010 feature.
On one hand, users felt that this feature was very much missing from Excel 2007, when the ribbon was introduced.
On the other hand, maybe the non-customizable ribbon of 2007 was the proper way to introduce the new concept to users, and get them acquainted with it…
Now that people are used to the ribbon, there’s no reason not to let them customize it.
What do you think?
New SmartArt features in Office 2010
May 21, 2010 at 5:51 PM | Posted in General | Leave a commentTags: chart, office 2010, smartart
When I first got to play with Office 2007, I didn’t like SmartArt at all. The shapes looked like toys, they had a clumsy feel and it wasn’t my taste.
I got used to it over time, though. Lately I often use SmartArt diagrams in presentations at work, and I have to say it comes out quite well.
In Office 2010 Microsoft has added some improvements to this feature. In addition to more diagram types, you can find better editing capabilities, like reordering and embedding images.
There’s a nice wrap-up of all the changes in the Microsoft Office 2010 Engineering blog.
Facebook Docs
May 7, 2010 at 5:31 PM | Posted in General | Leave a commentTags: cloud, facebook, office 2010, office-live
We’re now already used to Google Docs being a competitor of Microsoft Office.
Now there is a new player in town. Facebook Docs.
Facebook claims to allow sharing of documents as easily as it allows you to share pictures, but also to integrate seamlessly into Office 2010.
This is interesting, because one of the biggest pushes toward “cloud” office applications such as Google Docs and Office Live is collaboration and sharing of documents.
You don’t have to “send” your document through email and then get it back modified (and not touch it in between, or risk having to merge changes). Instead you grant your peer write access to the document and they can just edit it in place. You can even see the changes on the fly, as they happen.
By linking a social network with a could office suite, this gets even easier. The only thing that hinders the application of this new toy in business environments is that businesses don’t use Facebook much, except for maybe PR and such…
Maybe they will start now? (shrug…)
I’m intrigued to see what will come out of this.
A Babel-fish in Office 2010
April 24, 2010 at 5:35 PM | Posted in General | 1 CommentTags: office 2010, onenote, outlook, powerpoint, translate, word
Remember the talking spreadsheet?
In Office 2010, Microsoft has taken this a step further with a mini-translator, that automatically translates selected text and reads it back to you.
Very good for whomever works with text in language they do not know how to read.
The Office blog says it’ll work in Word, Outlook, Powerpoint and OneNote, but does not mention Excel. I wonder if they really left Excel without this new feature or just didn’t bother to mention it.
I haven’t dug deep into Office 2010 yet. I’m going to do so in the following weeks, though.
In the meantime, if anyone can confirm that this feature is missing, the world will appreciate it.
Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.
