Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 (Technical Preview)  

Software | Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 | 708 MB

Microsoft recently announced the consumer technical preview (CTP) of Microsoft Office 2010, which was shown to attendees of Microsoft’s TechNet conference. We were able to get our hands on the CTP before its scheduled release date (July 2009) and check it out. They have changed around a few things, especially when it comes to the “ribbon” menu and a few other features.
Perhaps the largest change to Office 2010 is the availability of both a 32- and 64-bit version of the suite. The leaked CTP’s SKU is Office 2010 Professional, which comes with the basic apps (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher) and other more advanced apps (Access, SharePoint, Visio, Groove). Microsoft has also expanded the use of the ribbon menu to all of the Office 2010 applications. The ribbon menu was introduced in Office 2007 and was both praised and resented for various reasons. However, with Office 2010, the ribbon is here to stay for sure. They have also altered the look of the ribbon to a more subtle, flat gray look, which blends in nicely with Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 7 operating system. You can now hide the bulk of the ribbon menu by clicking a small arrow button on the right side of it, which is useful for users with a smaller screen space due to the use of a small screen resolution. Each Office application’s menu button, which was formerly round, has been replaced with a colored tab that appears first on the ribbon. The tab’s color depends on the Office program (ie: blue for Office, green for Excel, and yellow for Outlook). When clicked, the whole interface transforms into a new menu-window. Along the left side of the window there is a column of options that are specific to the program that’s open. For example, Word’s options include Save/Open/Close, Print, and Share. The default menu that is open is the "recent" menu, which shows all of the documents that have been opened recently. The more complicated tasks, such as Print and Share, expand further right on the window when clicked or hovered over. For example, the Print feature no longer appears in a new window, but rather a new column where all the various print features can be adjusted. Microsoft has removed one of my favorite features of Office 2007, the Quick Print button, which used the default print settings and sent the document to the printer in only one click. The New menu shows a large variety of document types that you can create in Word and gives you a preview of the type of document in the right part of the screen.

Word 2010's interface with the more subtle gray ribbon that fits in well with Windows 7's interface

A closer view of Word 2010's ribbon and the new Office tab menu, which houses all the functionality of the circular Office button in Office 2007

The default menu that is open in the Office tab is the "Recent" menu, which shows recently opened documents.

There are a few other tweaks to some of the other Office 2010 programs. Excel has gotten some new Web 2.0-looking chart graphics and layouts. They look really slick and are just another way to jazz up a boring office memo. However, mostly each program has stayed the same, especially Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, but Outlook definitely got most of the changes. There has also been some talk from the Office development team that Office 2010 will include Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks integrated right into Word. These features weren't in the leaked CTP build, but we expect them down the line.

There's a nifty send a smile/frown feature that comes with the CTP, which lets you send feedback to the Office development team when you encounter something either positive or negative. It puts two face icons into your notification tray that you can click either the smile face or sad face and a window will appear which takes a screenshot (if you want) and you can type out a description of your experience. If you do get the CTP, you'll definitely want to use this notification feature because with this Office CTP release, we have encountered a few minor bugs, mostly with things not where they say they are (such as help topics) and error dialogs result. But since this is only a technical preview, we can't be too harsh, but we can hope all of these issues will be resolved by the rumored very late 2009 or January 2010 release of Office 2010.
With the retail release of Office 2010, Microsoft will also be debuting its new Office Web, which are online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. At the time of this CTP leak, none of Office Web features are available.

It should also be noted that if you have a previous Microsoft Office suite installed on your PC, such as Office 2007, you can keep them installed alongside Office 2010 (with the exception of Outlook, which it will uninstall for you). If you elect to install Outlook 2010 and you currently use an older version of Outlook, it will move all of your e-mails, contacts, and calendar items to the new version...but export your data to a .PST anyway just to be safe.

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