If you’re looking forward to the release of Office 2010 next summer (and let’s face it, who isn’t?!), then you probably already know about the availability of the public beta. If you’ve tried it, then it would be great if you could share your favourite features in the comments for others to share in your experience.
My personal favourite feature (so far – there are some things that I’m looking forward to trying in Outlook in conjunction with Exchange 2010, when we have that running) is the Backstage view in all the applications. This is the bit that you access via the “Office Button” in Office 2007, which is now accessed through a coloured “File” tab next to the ribbon’s default “Home” tab.
What I particularly like about Backstage is that they’ve brought the live-preview that was such a good addition in Office 2007 to the Print dialogue. You no longer have to look at print settings and print preview separately as they sit side by side. When you make a change to the setting, you see it reflected in the preview immediately. It makes formatting your printouts much more straight forward and will benefit pretty much everyone who uses Office.
I’ve been using Office 2010 since early on in the Technical Preview stage, before the Beta, but even so I haven’t come across all the tweaks in these new versions on the applications, so I was pleased to see that Microsoft Press have released a free ebook “First Look: Microsoft Office 2010”. At that price it’s a no-brainer to download it!
Just started using it myself – initial comment is the usual ‘not much changed’, well except for Outlook.
GOOD:
Outlook messages now grouped together so you see all the replies etc attached to the original message.
Excel help seems much better especially at giving you the options -try inserting a ‘convert’ function and it gives you all the from and to possibilities so you can just click on the one you want instead of trying to remember if “m” means metres or miles..
BAD:
you don’t seem to be able to change the folder layout in Outlook mail – so now you get folders you create AFTER the standard inbox/deleted etc
INDIFFERENT:
Having just got used to the Office ‘button’ I now see they’ve reverted to a ‘file’ menu.
You can customize the ribbon – maybe that’s good but it does mean that everyone will now end up with a different layout.