Microsoft Office 2010 review

Office 2010 is the latest release of Microsoft's widely used application suite, and the first to ship following the debut of Windows 7. This version adds a number of enhancements in areas such as collaboration and features that boost productivity for specific tasks in applications such as Excel and Outlook.

This release also includes the first real browser-based versions of the chief Office applications, which Microsoft expects to be used in a complementary role for ad-hoc viewing or editing, but which must also be seen as a move to stem adoption of rival tools such as Google Docs.

Overall, however, Office 2010 seems like an evolutionary upgrade from the last release, Office 2007. The latter introduced major changes in the user interface and document file formats that were used in earlier versions.

In this version, there are slight changes to the file formats, with Word, Excel and PowerPoint saving new documents in the Transitional form of ISO 29500 (the ISO standard of the Office OpenXML specifications). However, the vast majority of users should experience no compatibility issues, according to Microsoft.

Office 2010 still supports PCs with Windows XP SP3, as well as Windows Vista and Windows 7. Any PC capable of running Office 2007 will meet the system requirements for Office 2010, Microsoft said.

An Office 2010 rollout is therefore likely to cause fewer difficulties compared with Office 2007, and we expect many large organisations, particularly those with Software Assurance licensing, to upgrade sooner or later.

For smaller companies, however, the £239.99 price tag for the Office Home and Business 2010 edition may prove too steep, especially when rival suites are available at below the £100 mark, or even for free in the case of the open-source OpenOffice.org.

For those who have been running the beta version of Office 2010, the final applications show few changes. We also found that in many cases, applications such as Word open significantly faster than in previous Office releases.

The core Office applications - Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote - all now feature the ribbon user interface and Backstage View. The latter is where users go to save, print or share a document, and which also shows information related to the file.

Word
Word seems little different than the version in Office 2007, but it does feature some enhancements such as OpenType typography support and visual text effects such as gradient fills.

Image editing tools now allow users to apply effects such as paint strokes to embedded pictures, and cut out the background behind an object.

Cutting and pasting text is also improved in Word, with options on the right-click menu to preserve formatting or insert as unformatted text, with an in-place preview of each option.

Excel
Excel 2010 is also very similar in appearance to its predecessor, but adds new analysis and visualisation tools.

These include Slicer, which lets users pull out key information from pivot tables and pivot charts, and Sparklines, which basically fits a graph inside a single worksheet cell to illustrate trends right next to the data they represent.

For those with demanding analysis requirements, Microsoft has also made available a PowerPivot for Excel plug-in that links with SQL Server 2008 R2 and enables it to manipulate and visualise huge datasets.

PowerPoint
Like Word, PowerPoint also has tools to edit images in place, but this also extends to embedded video clips. Users can apply image styles, rotate and clip video, as well as compress it. Controls for embedded videos let the user pause, rewind or fast forward in slide show mode, and adjust the volume level.

The entire presentation can also be recorded, with a voiceover, and distributed to others as a WMV file.

One notable new feature is the ability to broadcast a presentation to remote viewers. The presenter creates a URL in PowerPoint to send to the audience, which lets them view it using the PowerPoint Web App, more of which later.

Outlook
Outlook missed a complete ribbon makeover in Office 2007, but Outlook 2010 has the new look throughout. Other changes are designed to help users get on top of their ever-growing inboxes, such as the Conversation view that pulls together all the messages on the same subject into a threaded view, making it easier to keep track of the conversation.

Conversations irrelevant to the user can be marked to be ignored, which removes them and any future updates from the inbox.

Other features include Quick Steps, which lets users automate repetitive actions in a similar way to macros. Some ready-defined Quick Steps include an automatic delete of messages that have been replied to.

OneNote
OneNote, the black sheep of Microsoft’s Office suite, is now included in all editions in Office 2010. The digital notebook tool now includes better support for multiple authors, with version control for individual pages.

Another new feature is the ability to link with other Office applications, allowing users to take notes while working on a document. A clickable link takes the reader back to the same place in the document when reviewing notes at a later date.

Collaborative features
Collaborative working is another area addressed by Microsoft in this version of Office, with support for multiple authors to work on the same document simultaneously in Word, PowerPoint and OneNote, but not Excel.

These co-authoring capabilities require documents to be stored in SharePoint in a business environment, while consumers will get the same support for documents shared via Windows Live SkyDrive later this year.

When opening a shared document, users get a notification if anyone else is working on the same file, and any changes made by other users appear highlighted once they hit save.

The Office Web Apps are also styled by Microsoft as a collaboration tool, and allow users to view and edit Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote documents using a web browser. Users can also co-author an Excel chart or OneNote notebook with other Web App users.

While the Web Apps do not have the full functionality of their rich client versions, they provide a way to access documents from computers that do not have Office installed. An executive could use the PowerPoint Web App to deliver a presentation at a customer site from any internet connected PC, for example.

The Web Apps are also cross-platform, running in Firefox and Safari as well as Internet Explorer.

For the most part, documents opened in the Web Apps appear just as they would in the desktop version, but embedded objects such as tables just show as a placeholder in Word Web App, for example.

The Web Apps have less functionality than their counterparts in Google Apps, but look and feel more like the desktop Office tools. They also support Microsoft's XML file formats, an important feature for businesses that need to exchange documents with partners.

However, as with the other collaboration features of Office, the Web Apps are designed to be accessed via SharePoint on a corporate network. They will only be available with the volume licensed editions of Office 2010, Office Standard and Office Professional Plus.

However, consumers will have access via Windows Live SkyDrive later this year, and smaller firms can gain access if they subscribe to a hosted version of SharePoint provided by Microsoft or its partners.

Editions and pricing
Office 2010 is available in just three retail editions in the UK, plus a further two for enterprise customers with volume licences.

The basic edition, Office Home and Student, consists of just four applications - Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote - and is licensed for non-commercial use only at £109.99.

Office Home and Business is the baseline business edition, adding Outlook to the line-up for £239.99, followed by Office Professional, which further adds the Access database and Publisher design tool at £429.99.

Of the volume licence editions, Office Standard is similar to Home and Business, but includes Publisher and the Office Web Apps.

Office Professional Plus is the most complete edition, including all of the above applications plus the InfoPath forms tool, Communicator and the SharePoint Workspace client. The latter is the successor to Grove 2007, and allows users to sync with SharePoint content or create ad-hoc Groove collaboration workspaces.

There is also a Starter edition, consisting of restricted functionality versions of Word and Excel, which is set to be pre-installed on new PCs in place of the ageing Works or the 60-day trial version of Office 2007.

Office 2010 is available to download now for customers with a Software Assurance licence agreement, while those requiring five or more licences can also now obtain the suite from Microsoft partners. Boxed copies are due to be available via retail sometime in June.

Requirements: Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista or Windows 7, 500MHz processor or better, 256MB RAM or better, 1.5GB hard disk space.