We can’t cover all of the changes coming with Microsoft Office 2010, but we wanted to highlight some of the more popular ones:
Customize the Ribbon: Microsoft is now allowing users of Office 2010 to fully customize the Ribbon, adding the ability to customize or create your own tabs on the Ribbon. The Ribbon also provides contextual tabs, for example, when you select a picture in Word a contextual tab will appear on the Ribbon allowing you to edit or format the picture.
Office Backstage: Microsoft ditched the “Orb” style from Office 2007 and decided to go back to the ‘File’ menu in Office 2010. The main reason behind this decision was users constantly asked IT departments and support lines “where’s the file menu?” The “Office Button” will be replaced with a menu button that leads to a full-window file menu known as the Backstage View.
Out-of-the-box PDF Support: Users will also be able to edit images directly within Office apps. These changes probably won’t be very popular with Adobe.
New Paste Preview: This will allow you to view your work to be sure it’s formatted correctly in the document before you finalize the paste command.
Free Web-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote: This will allow people to access and edit documents anywhere, anytime. The Web-based versions will work in all popular Web browsers, and can be used whether you’re working on a PC or a Mac. According to Microsoft, they will preserve the look and feel of a document regardless of the device you’re working on—even if it’s your smartphone.
PowerPoint Media Enhancements: You’ll now have the ability to slice and dice video into a presentation.
Outlook Social Connector: Microsoft has introduced a Outlook Social Connector (OSC) straight into Outlook 2010. The Connector provides a stream of content from SharePoint, Windows Live and other social networking sites. At the bottom of Outlook emails users will be provided with contacts’ latest Facebook and Twitter posts.
For those of you still using Office 2003, you probably already know that mainstream support for the product ended on April 14, 2009. Extended support is still available for a fee, but other than that Microsoft will only support this product going forward by delivering patches and bug fixes until April, 2014.
And for anyone who wants to upgrade their Microsoft Office Suite now, but doesn’t want to wait until June for Office 2010, Microsoft has also announced that anyone who purchases their current version, Office 2007, between 3/5/2010 and 9/30/2010 will get a free upgrade to Office 2010.
Microsoft has also announced that the Mac OS X version will be released in 2010 as well. Office 2011 for Mac will include more robust enterprise support and greater feature parity with the Windows edition.