Office 2010 Technical Preview: A SuperSite Special Report
Part 4: Microsoft Word 2010

As a writer, I spend a lot of time in Microsoft Word, and it's one of those applications that has matured to the point where there really isn't a lot you can do to improve the experience. In Office 2007, of course, Microsoft added the ribbon UI to Word, dramatically improving the exposure of pre-existing features. In fact, the Word ribbon was so successful that I'm sure many people believed that Microsoft had added significant new functionality to the product when, in fact, it had not.

"Word is the workhorse of Microsoft Office," Microsoft Office group product manager Chris Bryant told me in a recent briefing. "It's installed on 85 percent of PC desktops worldwide."

For Office 2010, then, the improvements to Word, my favorite Office application, are small. In fact, only one of these features will directly impact my use of the product at all. So I'll cover that one first, as it's a welcome and desirable addition.

Improved document searching

One of the big questions I had about previous versions of Office concerned the Find functionality: Why, in an era of inline searching in the Windows file system and in web browsers, did Word and the other Office apps still utilize a previous-generation Find dialog that covered up the document you were trying to search? In Office 2010, most importantly in Word, this is no longer the case: Now, when you trigger the Find functionality (via CTRL + F, typically), a new Navigation pane opens on the left side of the Word window, providing a handy Search Document text box. (The Navigation pane is used for other Word features as well.) When you enter text in this box, the search results appear in the pane, and each instance of the term you're searching for appears in the document itself.

Document searching is dramatically improved thanks to the new Navigation Pane.

This is document searching as it should be. As you hover over the search results in the Navigation pane, a pop-up window tells you which page the reference is from. And of course clicking a search results navigates immediately to the correct place in the text. You can also click the small magnifying glass next to the Search Document text box to limit the search to non-textual objects like graphics, tables, and equations.

Paste Preview

One of the weird issues with Word, currently, is that if you're culling information from the web and paste it into a Word document, you often get a bunch of gobblygook that needs to be cleaned up. Using its application feedback tools, Microsoft found that the first thing most people do after pasting web content into a Word doc is to trigger the Undo feature. In Word 2007, you can of course change how pasted content appears after the fact, or you could try and find the application's default paste feature to manually configure how it works. With Word 2010, things are a lot simpler. You can set the default paste behavior directly from the Paste Options smart tag that appears when you do paste information into a document, but you can also use this tag to get a live preview of how each type of paste will work. So as you mouse over the various paste types, you can see how choosing each will change the content that's pasted before committing. Nice!

The Paste Options pop-up now provides Paste Preview.

Co-authoring

In tandem with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Word 2010 now provides the ability to co-author documents in real-time. That's right: Different members of a team can work on different sections of the same Word document, online, and simultaneously. Along the way, any edits are tracked and flagged so anyone working in the document can see what's changed. And thanks to a handy status bar-based notification system, you can easily IM (or phone) other team members if you need to discuss ongoing edits.

While working offline, you can also block sections of documents you're working on so that other authors don't trample over your work. When you're back online, the document can be synced up so that all the changes everyone made are finalized.

Other changes in Word 2010

Most of the other changes in Word 2010 hold little interest for me, but your mileage may vary depending on your needs. The application sports new text effects; better typography capabilities around ligatures, true small caps, stylistic alternates and alternate numeral forms; an improved Document Map; and dramatically improved picture editing capabilities, for example. Word is being ported to the web as part of the Office Web Applications, and there will be a new version of the Windows Mobile-based Word app called Word 2010 Mobile.

Continue with Part 5, Microsoft Excel 2010...

--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