Office 2010 Technical Preview: A SuperSite Special Report
Part 7: But Wait, There's More

With a product as complex as Microsoft Office, there's only so much information one person can process. In this special report, I've tried to highlight the major changes coming in the core Office applications, as seen in the Technical Preview build. But there's so much more going on here. There are, of course, additional Office family products coming in the Office 2010 wave, new and improved servers, brand new Office Web Applications, and, starting next year, a new generation of Office Mobile for Windows Mobile devices. Also, Microsoft is changing somewhat the way it sells Office to customers. In this final section of my look at the Office 2010 Technical Preview, I'd like to highlight some of the other changes that are coming in this important product wave.

All Office, all the time

While Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint make up what I think of as the core of Microsoft's Office suite, there are of course a number of other Office applications, and they're all being updated in Office 2010.

Microsoft believes that its OneNote application will one day be considered a core part of Office. It's not there quite yet. But OneNote 2010 adds simple screenshot functionality, new Side Notes and Linked Notes that can be taken from within other applications, improved inking support, and, of course, the ribbon UI. The application also features dramatically improved collaboration capabilities.

Access 2010 will feature a new, Excel-like Expression Builder for creating code with plain English, as well as an improved Macro Designer with similar plaint text-to-code conversion capabilities. The application will also be more web-savvy, and allow you to create web-specific databases that do not include any incompatible (and thus unnecessary) objects.

InfoPath 2010 picks up the ribbon UI, a new InfoPath Filer for forms-specific functionality, and better data validation.

Microsoft's desktop publishing solution, Publisher 2010, features new picture manipulation and typography tools (like those in Word), huge changes to the print and print preview functionality, and an important new way to fine-tune the placement of objects in a document. It also picks up the ribbon UI.

Newly renamed in Office 2010, Groove becomes SharePoint Workspace 2010 and provides access to SharePoint and Groove workspaces directly from Windows Explorer. It also picks up synchronization functionality so that you can access SharePoint data directly from your PC.

Bringing Office 2010 to market: A simplified product family

People who complain about Microsoft's strategy of creating multiple Windows versions should point an accusing finger at Office first: This strategy debuted with Office, not Windows, and it was the success of Office's multiple-SKU approach that caused Microsoft to try it with Windows as well. Fortunately, the software giant is backing off a bit in Office 2010, and instead of the 8 product editions we saw with Office 2007, we're getting just five in Office 2010. These include:

Office Professional Plus. Aimed at enterprise businesses, this edition now includes OneNote and SharePoint Workspace.

Office Standard, Also aimed at enterprise businesses, this edition includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote, Outlook and Publisher.

Office Professional is the premium product for home and small business use.

Office Home and Student is the best-selling version of Office. It will continue to include Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote.

Office Home and Business. New to Office 2010 and replacing Office Small Business edition, this version includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote and Outlook.

(In Office 2010, the Enterprise, Small Business and Ultimate product editions have been removed.)

Office Servers

Microsoft will briefly talk up its upcoming SharePoint Server 2010 during the Technical Preview release, but a full-featured version of the product won't become available until October. SharePoint 2010 has important changes for developers, IT pros, and users alike, including, yes, the ribbon UI, new collaboration features, an improved administrative experience, and a new developer dashboard. I'll be looking at SharePoint 2010 more closely in the future.

The SharePoint 2010 admin experience.

Office Web Applications

Microsoft announced the Office Web Applications in October 2008 at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) and said that it would ship a beta version of the tools by the end of 2008. That never happened and, contrary to widespread public reports (guesses, as it turns out), the company won't be releasing the beta this week either. Instead, I was told that a beta of the Office Web Applications won't happen until later this year.

Office Web Applications consists of stripped-down, web-based versions of Word, Excel, OneNote, and PowerPoint. Microsoft sees this technology as key to the future of Office, and the company's expectation is that we will lose the distinction between the PC desktop and web-based versions eventually. Seeing the difference won't be all that hard in the first generation version, however, but most of the work being done now is to ensure that the web applications preserve the fidelity of documents moved between the web, the PC apps, and the Windows Mobile-based mobile apps.

The Office Web Applications will be made available in three different ways. Individuals will be able to access them for free via Windows Live. (And not Office Live, which is being discontinued and rolled into Windows Live.) Corporations will be able to host the Office Web Applications on-site. And those who sign up for Microsoft Online Services (MOS) will be able to access a hosted version of Office Web Applications as part of their subscription.

Office Web Applications running in Mozilla Firefox.

I'll have more information about Office Web Applications as soon as I get my hands on the beta. But here's one fun tidbit: They will work equally well in IE, Firefox, and Safari.

Office Mobile 2010

There's not much to say yet about Office Mobile 2010, but it will appear in early 2010 on Windows Mobile-based smart phones and will further Microsoft's promise to make Office functionality available beyond the PC desktop. Office Mobile 2010 will include new versions of Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, PowerPoint Mobile, OneNote Mobile, as well as a SharePoint client that will allow you to access SharePoint-based Office documents.

Outlook Mobile 2010, part of the Office 2010 Mobile offering.

Final thoughts

Obviously, there's a lot going on here. That said, Office 2010 is more about refinement than revolution, and as such it's not as jarring as Office 2007. It's also not nearly as exciting, but then that's to be expected. After the surprising and innovative leap to the ribbon UI in the last release, Microsoft's job now is to continue to improve its traditional Office products while preparing for the move to new usage models. The Office Web Applications and Office Mobile 2010 are good first steps in that direction, but they are just first steps. I'll continue using Office 2010 regularly going forward, and if I find out anything new and interesting, you can be sure I'll be covering it on the SuperSite.

--Paul Thurrott
June 30 - July 13, 2009

Special Report: Office 2010 Technical Preview

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Improving Office
Part 3: Outlook 2010
Part 4: Word 2010
Part 5: Excel 2010
Part 6: PowerPoint 2010
Part 7: But Wait, There's More

Related Reading:
Office 2010

Office 2010 Beta: Introduction
Office 2010 Beta: User Experiences
Office 2010 Beta Preview
Outlook PST: Open for Business
SharePoint 2010 Preview
OWA: Is It Enough?
Office Web Applications TP
Office 2010 Technical Preview
Office 2010 Tech Preview Screens
Office 2010 FAQ
Office 14 Web Apps Preview