New Office suggestions site launches

The site aims to use feedback to improve future versions of Office

Two Microsoft employees have created a new unofficial web site designed to encourage users to leave feedback on how the firm can improve its Office suite of productivity tools.

Makeofficebetetter.com was devised by Steve Zaske, a product planner on the Office development team, who was keen to find a way to emulate Dell's IdeaStorm web site and tap the wisdom of the crowds.

"My hope is that the site can become a trusted repository of good Office ideas and a place where there can be an honest discussion about the pros and cons of various ideas," he wrote on an accompanying blog.

"You can help me by giving me constructive feedback and helping me make the MakeOfficeBetter.com web site better."

Visitors to the site are encouraged to post any new feature ideas or ideas on how to improve Office, and vote on other ideas they agree with.

"Through the magic of crowd-sourcing the best ideas should rise to the top," reads a welcome message on the site.

Zaske and his partner on the project, Luke Foust, warned that because it is not an official Microsoft initiative, those who post ideas should not expect an official response from the firm

"But we'll do our best to get the ideas posted here in front of the right people within the Office development team," they said.

At the time of writing, the top three suggestions on the site were to improve HTML support in Outlook, to detach the Outlook UI from the network threads, and to be able to read PDFs within Office Word.