Co-authoring and Collaboration
What's New in Microsoft Office 2010
Microsoft Office 2010 offers many new improvements, most of them designed to make working on documents more intuitive, adding new media easier, and security much tighter.
Many of the updates are also especially useful for remote workers and mobile professionals who need to collaborate with others from afar.
Here's a look at the most notable updates that you'll see across all of the available Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access, and Publisher).
Ribbon Customization
The Office Ribbon menu introduced in Office 2007 can now be customized very precisely: you can add your most frequently used commands and tools to the Ribbon, group or regroup program features, add new tabs, and even save customized Ribbons and use them in other Office 2010 applications or installations. This is a very handy feature for administrators who need to create tailored interfaces for specific departments or for remote users to be able to bring home a customized version of Office that mirrors the user interface used by others at the corporate office.
People who were afraid of updating from Office 2003 to Office 2007 because of the new user interface may now see the Ribbon -- which was difficult to get accustomed to and also inflexible -- as a good thing. It may help increase productivity when working on Office documents.
Easier access to basic document settings in Backstage View
Office 2007 replaced the file menu in many of its applications with a big unintuitive Office icon; this has been corrected in Office 2010 with the new "Backstage View". To get to file properties where you can save the document in a different format, see embedded meta data, set permissions on the file, and more, just click on the new File tab for a much more user-friendly design.
Backstage View also provides an easy go-to place for settings relevant especially for remote workers: sharing files to SharePoint or the Web, seeing who has worked on the document previously, setting up file sharing, and checking file versions.
Built-in Multimedia Tools
You can now work with images, videos, and other graphics directly in your Office document. Some of the most commonly used media editing fuctions like fine-tuning brightness and contrast, adjusting saturation, and adding artistic effects are now integrated in Office.
PowerPoint also has enhanced video-embedding and editing features: you can import videos from the Web, trim videos, bookmark key points in a video, and style videos for more effective presentations.
These additional media controls can help you save money or at least simplify your work process, since many common multimedia tasks can be done without having to use a third-party editor.
Paste options and live preview
Pasting in Office 2010 is a lot more fun now (or, at least, robust). The paste menu now includes options to: use the destination template's formatting, retain the source formatting, paste the selection as a picture, or paste only the text. Hovering over these options in the paste menu offers up a live preview of the selection to be pasted, so you can adjust your preferences before actually pasting the information in.
Though this feature alone is not a reason to upgrade to Office 2010, it definitely can save you some time.
New co-authoring and collaboration features are particularly handy for those of us who need to work on documents with colleagues from afar.
Co-authoring in Word, PowerPoint, OneNote or Excel (Web App), for example, lets you work on a file at the same time your co-worker is working on it -- even if you're both not at the same physical location. Office 2010 keeps track of the changes (marking sections clearly with the author's name) and keeps all versions in sync.
The Backstage View has some options to help you check a document before you share it -- telling you if there is personal information or hidden properties contained in the document, if people with disabilities will be able to read the content, and if the features used in the document are supported by previous versions of the Office application (a useful feature if you've updated Office on your home/home office PC but your co-workers have an older version).
Saving options include saving the file to SharePoint, sending a link to the document via email (if the file is in a shared location), and saving it to Windows Live online storage. PowerPoint also gets a cool new Broadcast Slide Show option to allow remote viewers to see your presentation in a Web browser.
Companies always consider usability and productivity gains like the ones mentioned previously when deciding whether or not to upgrade or purchase new software. For IT administrators, security improvements are often even more compelling reasons to approve software upgrades, and in this case, Office 2010 may get the nod of approval. Among the enhancements to security for Office users:
New features in the individual Office applications are covered in more depth in the following articles across the About.com Computing Channel and Microsoft:
Microsoft Office 2010 offers many new improvements, most of them designed to make working on documents more intuitive, adding new media easier, and security much tighter.
Many of the updates are also especially useful for remote workers and mobile professionals who need to collaborate with others from afar.
Here's a look at the most notable updates that you'll see across all of the available Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access, and Publisher).
Ribbon Customization
The Office Ribbon menu introduced in Office 2007 can now be customized very precisely: you can add your most frequently used commands and tools to the Ribbon, group or regroup program features, add new tabs, and even save customized Ribbons and use them in other Office 2010 applications or installations. This is a very handy feature for administrators who need to create tailored interfaces for specific departments or for remote users to be able to bring home a customized version of Office that mirrors the user interface used by others at the corporate office.
People who were afraid of updating from Office 2003 to Office 2007 because of the new user interface may now see the Ribbon -- which was difficult to get accustomed to and also inflexible -- as a good thing. It may help increase productivity when working on Office documents.
Easier access to basic document settings in Backstage View
Office 2007 replaced the file menu in many of its applications with a big unintuitive Office icon; this has been corrected in Office 2010 with the new "Backstage View". To get to file properties where you can save the document in a different format, see embedded meta data, set permissions on the file, and more, just click on the new File tab for a much more user-friendly design.
Backstage View also provides an easy go-to place for settings relevant especially for remote workers: sharing files to SharePoint or the Web, seeing who has worked on the document previously, setting up file sharing, and checking file versions.
Built-in Multimedia Tools
You can now work with images, videos, and other graphics directly in your Office document. Some of the most commonly used media editing fuctions like fine-tuning brightness and contrast, adjusting saturation, and adding artistic effects are now integrated in Office.
PowerPoint also has enhanced video-embedding and editing features: you can import videos from the Web, trim videos, bookmark key points in a video, and style videos for more effective presentations.
These additional media controls can help you save money or at least simplify your work process, since many common multimedia tasks can be done without having to use a third-party editor.
Paste options and live preview
Pasting in Office 2010 is a lot more fun now (or, at least, robust). The paste menu now includes options to: use the destination template's formatting, retain the source formatting, paste the selection as a picture, or paste only the text. Hovering over these options in the paste menu offers up a live preview of the selection to be pasted, so you can adjust your preferences before actually pasting the information in.
Though this feature alone is not a reason to upgrade to Office 2010, it definitely can save you some time.
New co-authoring and collaboration features are particularly handy for those of us who need to work on documents with colleagues from afar.
Co-authoring in Word, PowerPoint, OneNote or Excel (Web App), for example, lets you work on a file at the same time your co-worker is working on it -- even if you're both not at the same physical location. Office 2010 keeps track of the changes (marking sections clearly with the author's name) and keeps all versions in sync.
The Backstage View has some options to help you check a document before you share it -- telling you if there is personal information or hidden properties contained in the document, if people with disabilities will be able to read the content, and if the features used in the document are supported by previous versions of the Office application (a useful feature if you've updated Office on your home/home office PC but your co-workers have an older version).
Saving options include saving the file to SharePoint, sending a link to the document via email (if the file is in a shared location), and saving it to Windows Live online storage. PowerPoint also gets a cool new Broadcast Slide Show option to allow remote viewers to see your presentation in a Web browser.
Companies always consider usability and productivity gains like the ones mentioned previously when deciding whether or not to upgrade or purchase new software. For IT administrators, security improvements are often even more compelling reasons to approve software upgrades, and in this case, Office 2010 may get the nod of approval. Among the enhancements to security for Office users:
- Protected View: opens documents downloaded from the Web with editing and macro execution disabled (until you approve the document in the Security Message Bar), protecting you from malware and other threats
- Office File Validation: only allows files with the proper format structure to open
- Other administrative and technical controls: DEP (data execution prevention) support to protect Office applications from malicious code exploits, administrative settings for more control over file types an application can access, improved encryption features and more.
New features in the individual Office applications are covered in more depth in the following articles across the About.com Computing Channel and Microsoft:
- What's New in Word 2010 - About Word Processing
- Excel 2010 New Features - About Spreadsheets
- Beginner's Guide to PowerPoint 2010 - About Presentation Software
- What's New in Microsoft Publisher 2010 - About Desktop Publishing
- Microsoft Access 2010 - About Databases
- Top 10 Benefits of OneNote - Microsoft Office
- Top 10 Benefits of Outlook 2010 - Microsoft Office
- Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac - 32-bit only (OK, not an Office 2010 article, but some info on the Office version for Mac users) - About Macs>
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