Software review: New Microsoft Office 2010

This year Microsoft has released the 2010 version of its Office productivity suite, the workhorse of hundreds of millions of offices and homes around the world. Indeed, Office remains one of the most important pieces of software developed by Microsoft, but how does the 2010 version stand against its predecessor and against other similar suites which cost less or are even free?

Users of Office 2007, the previous version, might be misled into thinking that there are only cosmetic changes. Users of 2003 will see a totally different piece of kit. However there are significant changes in 2010 which propel the suite into the world of social networks, the “cloud” and instant communication on internet.

The Microsoft Office orb on the top left-hand corner, introduced in Office 2007, has been removed as the company admitted that some users thought it was there for aesthetic reasons rather than functionality.

One of the most radical changes from 2003 to 2007 was the introduction of the ribbon of icons instead of the drop-down menu. This has not only been retained in 2010 but also enhanced with customisation features that let users choose which tools to stay in a particular ribbon. This feature is available across the Office 2010 suite.

In 2010 Microsoft introduced the “Backstage View”, which gives access to the backstage of the document, such as saving, printing, sharing, managing add-ons by third parties, and the document’s filing properties. This is accessible from the ‘File’ menu and changes from one application to another. For example on Outlook it’s used to change the e-mail settings.

The new Office also saves your work as you go, without the need of telling it explicitly to save.

Another handy feature is version control, where you can revert to a previous version of the document which could not be the latest.

Users with a Windows Live ID can access the Office Web Apps, the online version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote and do basic editing “in the cloud” if they are not working on a computer that has the full Office 2010 installed.

Now let’s get to the individual applications, concentrating on the most popular, namely Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.

Word benefitted greatly from the ribbon in Office 2007, although we must admit that it took us a couple of months to get used to it. In 2010 the ribbon has been enhanced further.

Even menial-looking tasks such as spell-checking and copy/pasting have been refined, for example when copy/pasting Word 2010 gives you options on the formatting. This is very handy but the options needs to be clear and the text explanation has to be better.

A major improvement in Office 2007 was the artistic side of documents, especially the handling of graphics and arts. This has been further improved and you can edit images directly within Word.

One thing we are still waiting impatiently for is the Maltese language spell-checker for Office 2010. Though it is mentioned on the Microsoft website, it is still not yet available for download.

Excel saw little changes from the previous versions, but the re-introduction of the File drop-down menu and better visuals for data sets are a welcome improvement.

PowerPoint saw some important improvements, besides more templates. If you are one of many who receive large PowerPoint presentations attached to e-mail that hog your mailbox, then the Broadcast Slideshow in PowerPoint in 2010 is a welcome innovation. This new feature allows users to hold a webcast and share a presentation without actually sending it to other people.

Sharing has also been made easier by reducing the size of presentations which in previous versions were easily bloated, especially with high-resolution photos.

Audio and video, a weakness in previous versions of Office, were also improved, and there are basic video editing tools too.

Outlook 2010 delivers some important improvements. One of them is conversations, something which users of web-based Gmail service have been using for years on a daily basis. Basically, the new Outlook delivers a handy and functional conversations views, thanks to a small triangle next to e-mails that are part of a conversation.

Ignore and Clean UP are two handy tools to clear up clutter.

Outlook Social Connector propels Outlook into the social networking world by providing a centralised hub for Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

On the downside, there have been reports of problems with Outlook 2010 as add-ins for the 2007 version did not work with 2010. Google Calendar is one the victims.

The very fact that most Maltese users still use the word “PowerPoint” for a presentation or “Word” for a document, rather than simply referring to it as a “presentation” or “word processing” shows how much Office is embedded in the psyche of the Maltese computer users, also thanks to national initiatives in recent years that flooded the Maltese market with original Microsoft product at nominal prices. The latest version of Office, promises to do a rather good job and users still thinking about upgrading should take the plunge.

Microsoft Malta made a copy of Office 2010 Small Business available to i-Tech for review.