What are some of the major updates to the Microsoft® Office 2010 suites from previous versions?

Microsoft Office 2010 offers you rich and powerful new ways to deliver your best work ¾ at work, home or school ¾ on your computer, from a Windows Mobile-based Smartphone or via a Web browser.¹ Quickly and creatively grab your audience’s attention and inspire them with your ideas by using enhanced and easy-to-use tools, customizable templates, color schemes, and photo-editing capabilities. With a new co-authoring experience, you can work with people from different locations at the same time. And by offering more ways to access your files from almost anywhere, Office 2010 puts you in control of getting things done according to your schedule. Simplify your tasks and create amazing results with Office 2010 — wherever life takes you.

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What products are included in the Office 2010 suites?

Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 — only available via volume licensing

Includes:

• Microsoft® Excel®2010
• Microsoft® Outlook®2010 with Business Contact Manager
• Microsoft® PowerPoint®2010
• Microsoft® Word2010
• Microsoft® Access®2010
• Microsoft® InfoPath®2010
• Microsoft Communicator
• Microsoft® Publisher 2010
• Microsoft® OneNote® 2010 New addition to suite
• Microsoft® SharePoint® Workspace2010 New addition to suite
• Microsoft Office Web Apps
• Integrated solution capabilities such as enterprise content management (ECM), electronic forms, and information rights and policy capabilities

Microsoft Office Professional 2010

Includes:

• Microsoft Excel 2010
• Microsoft Outlook 2010
• Microsoft PowerPoint 2010
• Microsoft Word 2010
• Microsoft Access 2010
• Microsoft Publisher 2010

• Microsoft OneNote 2010 New addition to suite

Microsoft Office Home and Business 2010 New!

Includes:

• Microsoft Excel 2010
• Microsoft Outlook 2010
• MicrosoftPowerPoint 2010
• Microsoft Word 2010
• Microsoft OneNote 2010

Microsoft Office Standard 2010 — only available via volume licensing

Includes:

• Microsoft Excel 2010
• Microsoft Outlook 2010
• Microsoft PowerPoint 2010
• Microsoft Word 2010
• Microsoft OneNote 2010 New addition to suite
• Microsoft Publisher 2010 New addition to suite
• Microsoft Office Web Apps

Microsoft Office Home and Student 2010 — licensed for noncommercial use

Includes:

• Microsoft Excel 2010
• Microsoft PowerPoint 2010
• Microsoft Word 2010
• Microsoft OneNote 2010

Microsoft Visio 2010 and Microsoft Project 2010 are also available but are not part of the suites.

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What are the Office Web Apps?

The Office Web Apps allow you to work with your Microsoft Office files from more places and on more devices by providing browser-based viewing and lightweight editing of Word 2010, Excel 2010, PowerPoint 2010 and OneNote 2010 files. Access your work at any time from a Smartphone or computer with an Internet connection.² The Office Web Apps are designed to work with Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox and requires SharePoint 2010 or a Windows Live account.

Note: Office Web Apps will be available through Windows Live at a later date during Technical Preview and will have limited functionality at this milestone.

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Why should I use Office 2010?

Office 2010 can help you express your ideas more visually.

With Office 2010, you can easily create powerful visuals and apply professional-looking designs to photos and text, and to videos in PowerPoint. From new and improved picture-editing effects such as saturation and watercolor to video editing and formatting capabilities such as trimming, fades and reflections, Office 2010 opens up a world of design options to give life to your ideas.

Enjoy the familiar Microsoft Office experience on the web.

With Office Web Apps, you can take advantage of greater flexibility when working in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. That’s because you can access your work at any time from a Smartphone or computer with an Internet connection.² Create amazing documents using Office 2010 and then easily post them online so you can share your work with others from across town or around the world. It’s convenient and easy.

Connect, share and accomplish more when working together.

Now you can get more done when working in groups. The new co-authoring experience with Word 2010, PowerPoint 2010 and OneNote 2010 lets you work on a file with multiple people simultaneously from different locations. Brainstorm ideas, control versions better and meet deadlines faster — it’s a snap with Office 2010.

Store and track all your ideas and notes in one place.

With Microsoft OneNote 2010, you get the ultimate digital notebook for tracking, organizing and sharing your text, photos, and video and audio files. New features such as version tracking, highlighting and Linked Notes give you more control over your notes so you’re always on top of the latest changes and sources of your information.

Create powerful data insights and visualization.

With new data analysis and visualization features in Excel 2010, you can easily track and highlight important data trends. For example, the new Sparklines feature delivers a clear and compact visual representation of your data with small charts in a cell. The new Slicers feature lets you filter and segment your PivotTable data in multiple layers so you can spend more time analyzing and less time formatting.

Access your work across devices and platforms.

Office 2010 gives you a familiar and intuitive experience across PCs, Smartphones¹ and various Web browsers so that you have the freedom to use the system from more locations and on multiple devices.

Deliver more compelling presentations.

With PowerPoint 2010, you can effectively engage your audience by embedding and personalizing videos within your presentation. The embedded video file can be customized by adding video triggers and styles directly within PowerPoint 2010, saving you time and money.

Create sophisticated business process forms with little or no code.

InfoPath 2010 is designed for both advanced business users and developers, depending on the type of forms-based solution and organization needs. Without writing code, advanced business users can use InfoPath 2010 to design sophisticated electronic forms to quickly and cost-effectively gather information. Developers can create advanced forms for departmental and enterprise business processes, including composite applications and workflow sequences, with InfoPath 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Designer 2010 — using little or no code.

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What is the Microsoft Office Backstage™ view?

Microsoft Office Backstage view replaces the file menu across the core Microsoft Office 2010 applications. Backstage view helps you find commonly accessed commands when opening or finishing a document, including opening new or existing files, defining document properties, and sharing your information.

Designed using data on product feature usage generated by the Customer Experience Improvement Program, the Backstage view also brings together related tasks, making it easier to work with your documents. For instance, printing tools — previously spread across several commands (page layout, preview, print) — are all together in one Print tab within the Backstage view. You can assign metadata to a file, check it for accessibility, or make sure it’s finalized and ready to share with others. Backstage lets you share, print, and publish your documents with just a few clicks.

Backstage view is extensible. For businesses, IT can incorporate work and information flows from other systems and highlight them right within the most useful Microsoft Office application. For example, Backstage view lets you bring those back-end accounting or HR workflows right into Office 2010.

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What is the Ribbon?

The Ribbon replaces traditional menus and toolbars with a fresh, highly visual layout of commands, organized into a set of tabs, to help you find the features you need fast. The Ribbon was introduced in Office 2007, when it enhanced a few of the Microsoft Office applications. It made the available commands and tools more visible and easier to access so you could focus more easily on your content.

In Office 2010, every application has the Ribbon, including favorites such as OneNote 2010, Publisher 2010, InfoPath 2010, SharePoint Workspace 2010 (the new name for Microsoft Office Groove 2007) and the new Office Web Apps. The Ribbon brings new features such as Outlook 2010 Quick Steps to your attention and is customizable so you can personalize it to your work style.

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Can I customize Office 2010 based on how I use the product?

With an improved Ribbon across all the Office 2010 applications, you can access your favorite commands quickly and create custom tabs to personalize the experience.

Ribbon tabs can be customized or replaced with your own custom tabs. Through the Options menu in the Backstage view, you can easily create new tabs that bring together your favorite commands and groups. Existing tabs can also be customized to fit your needs.

If you’re a business IT professional, take advantage of the new Microsoft Office Backstage view to incorporate work and information flows from other systems and highlight them right within the most useful Microsoft Office application. For example, Backstage view lets you bring those back-end accounting or HR workflows right into Office 2010.

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What does co-authoring mean in Office 2010?

Co-authoring refers to the ability for multiple authors to edit a document, presentation, spreadsheet or notebook at the same time, allowing you to connect, share and accomplish more when working together. With the new co-authoring experience available for Word 2010, PowerPoint 2010, OneNote 2010 and Excel 2010 (through Excel Web App), you and your co-workers can work on a file from different locations, brainstorm ideas, control versions better and meet deadlines faster.

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Will Office 2010 products be available in 64-bit versions?

Office 2010 products will be available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

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What other related products does Office 2010 work with?

Here are some examples of products that Office 2010 will work with:

· Microsoft SharePoint 2010

o Use Backstage view to easily share your work to SharePoint Server from Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, OneNote, Access, InfoPath and SharePoint Workspace.

o Co-author your documents using SharePoint 2010 together with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.

o Use SharePoint 2010 to access your Office Web Apps with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, and access business forms with InfoPath 2010.

· Windows Live

o Use Windows Live to access, store and share your documents via Office Web Apps for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote so you can access your files from virtually anywhere.

· Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. Together with Microsoft Exchange Server, Outlook provides an enterprise-grade messaging platform.

o With Microsoft Exchange Server, you can receive voice mail and faxes directly to your inbox, and they can be accessed virtually anywhere using your PC, Outlook Mobile¹ or Outlook Web Access.

o Compliant, security-enhanced messaging is simple and effective across the organization using Outlook 2010 and Exchange Server 2010. Innovative tools such as MailTips notify users when they are about to send an e-mail to a group or an individual who is outside the organization. Tools such as Retention Policy and Automated Policy Application use Windows Rights Management Services to allow corporate messaging to be transmitted with advanced security and retained for records management.

o Improved connectivity with Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 will support the use of multiple Exchange accounts in Outlook 2010, making it simple for a user to manage several accounts in one place.

· Office Communications Server 2007 R2

o Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 works with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 to provide a streamlined communications experience from within Office 2010 applications.

o Rich presence is available throughout Office 2010 applications to provide information about a person’s availability and status. Wherever you see a presence icon, hovering over it will reveal a menu of communications options from which you can initiate a real-time conversation without having to switch applications.

o It’s easy to move from one communication modality to another with Office Communications Server 2007 R2. Start a conversation with an instant message from within an Office application such as Outlook, escalate to a call, add video or share a document. A desktop-sharing session can be initiated directly from Backstage view in Word 2010, Excel 2010 and PowerPoint 2010.

· Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2. By using Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 with SharePoint 2010, you can now share and collaborate on powerful analyses that refresh automatically. In addition, SQL Server allows IT to manage user-generated Excel spreadsheets directly from SharePoint, giving you peace of mind that your analysis is continuously available, up-to-date and security-enhanced.

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Are there special system requirements for running Office 2010?

Preliminary system requirements for Office 2010 include the following:

· Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista or Windows 7

· You don't need to replace hardware that is capable of running Office 2007; it will support Office 2010.

· Processor: 500 MHz or higher

· Memory: 256 MB or higher

· Hard Disk: 1.5 GB; a portion of the disk space will be freed after installation if the original download package is removed from the hard drive.

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Which browsers are supported for the new Office Web Apps?

The Office Web Apps are designed to work with Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox.

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When will the Office 2010 Beta be available?

The Office 2010 Beta is scheduled to be available later this year.

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When will Office 2010 be available for purchase?

Office 2010 is entering a limited technical preview starting in July and will release to manufacturing in the first half of 2010.

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How much will Office 2010 cost?

Pricing will be announced at a later date.

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Is there a Macintosh version of Microsoft Office 2010?

Office 2008 for Mac is the current version of Office for Mac users. Office 2008 launched in January 2008 and is the leading productivity suite available on the Mac platform, delivering a full and compatible Office suite for Mac users. While we haven’t shared a launch for the next release of Office for Mac, we typically ship a new version of Office every two to three years.

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Are Office Web Apps free? What are the different ways people can get them?

For business use, Office Professional Plus and Office Standard 2010 licenses will each include access to the Office Web Apps. A customer will then be able to run the Office Web Apps on SharePoint 2010. For personal use, Office Web Apps will be available as a free ad-supported service to consumers via Windows Live.

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Can I access my files when I am away from my primary computer?

Yes. Office 2010 gives you a familiar and intuitive online experience across individual computers (including Macs) and operating systems, Smartphones and browsers so that you have the freedom to use Microsoft Office from more locations and on multiple devices. The Office Web Apps let you work online from anywhere, in multiple browsers, and Office Mobile 2010 helps you stay connected while on the go.¹

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How do I access Office 2010 files from the browser?

For businesses: You can access your Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote files from a SharePoint Server that is running the Office Web Apps by selecting Open in Web from the drop-down menu next to the file. When you are ready to access the document, simply log back on to your company’s network for access from your Internet Explorer, Safari or Firefox browser. You can publish and access InfoPath 2010 Forms in a browser powered by SharePoint Server 2010 as well.

For personal tasks: You can access your Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote files by posting your documents online. When you are ready to edit or view the document online, simply log on to Windows Live from Internet Explorer, Safari or Firefox. A Windows Live ID is required for accessing the Windows Live Document account.

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How do I access Office 2010 from my phone?

You can access your Office 2010 files from your phone in the following ways:

· Office Mobile 2010. Office Mobile 2010 can be launched from your Start menu on any phone running Windows Mobile 6.5.⁴ You can also open Office file attachments within your e-mail or documents stored on your Windows^® phone directly.

· Smartphone Web browser. Publish your documents to SharePoint Server 2010 or Windows Live services, and access and view documents from your Smartphone browser.⁵ You can access InfoPath forms via a full-featured mobile browser powered by SharePoint Server 2010.

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¹ Mobile functionality requires an appropriate device and Internet connection. Some functionality also requires Office Mobile 2010, which is not included in Office 2010 applications or suites.

² For businesses: Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is required for access. For personal use: Office Web Apps can be accessed through the Windows Live services offering. You need a Windows Live ID for Windows Live.

³ Supported browsers include Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer.

4 Runs exclusively on Windows Mobile 6.5

5 Given mobile connectivity to corporate resources, most Smartphones using the microbrowser standard (iPhone, RIM, Symbian and Windows Mobile) can access documents stored on a server via their Smartphone browser.