Office 2010 Is Alive and Kicking

After months of offering Office 2010 as a free Beta download and after thousands of smileys and frowns (using Microsoft’s feedback system) Office 2010 is finally here. It hasn’t been since Office 2007, that Microsoft has drastically changed a product like they have in Office 2010 (with the exception of Windows 7 of course). The new version of Office 2010 boasts a ton of features that anyone running Office XP, Office 2003, and even Office 2007 would really consider upgrading. Office 2010 was released to corporations on May 12th and made it’s debut for consumers June 15th.

Office 2010 offers the following new and enhanced features:

The Backstage View

The File menu is back and it’s really cool.

When you click on the File menu in any Office 2010 application you will be presented with the Backstage view. This view will provide you with information about your document, print options (including print view), recently accessed documents, and much more.

The goal of the Backstage view is to segregate the editing of a document from what you want to do with the document, the Backstage being what you want to do with a document once you have worked on it.

PowerPoint Video Editing

Now you can trim and add effects to videos in PowerPoint 2010.

In Trim Videos Within PowerPoint 2010 and Keep Your Audiences Focused I detail how you can edit videos within presentation slides in PowerPoint 2010.

Webcasts from PowerPoint

Why use Webex or GoToMeeting when PowerPoint 2010 offers a free webcasting tool?

Webcasts are broadcast using your Microsoft Live account and can be viewed by participants using a browser with Silverlight. Learn How to Create a Webcast with PowerPoint 2010.

Office Web Apps

Alongside the launch of Office 2010, Microsoft took Office Web Apps out of Beta and made it available to anyone with a Hotmail/Live account. Office Web Apps are a scaled down version of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote that run in a browser window.

You can collaborate on documents with others, edit files using the browser, and save files directly from the desktop versions of these apps. To see the difference between these two editions, check out Office 2010 and Office Web Apps Compared.

PowerPivot 2010

What if I told you that you can analyze and query millions of records in seconds? You’d think that I was running a multi-processor workstation with tons of RAM…I’m running these queries on a 5 year old laptop with PowerPivot. PowerPivot is a tool used in conjunction with Excel that allows you to view and manipulate data with speed and flexibility never imagined on a regular computer.

Learn How to Add a Database to PowerPivot for Excel so that you can start analyzing data without the wait.

You will find these and many more useful features in Office 2010. Pricing starts at $149.99 for Office Home and Student 2010 to $499.99 for Office Professional 2010.

What’s in the Box?

Image from Microsoft Office Website

Office 2010 Help and How-to’s On GilsMethod.com

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