Microsoft Office 2010

Microsoft offers their latest upgrade to the world's premier office productivity suite with the 2010 version of Office Professional. You’ll find a host of new and upgraded features, some of which are useful to general users, although many — like its new 64-bit codebase — will likely appeal only to serious power users and enterprise software buyers.

If you’re not already familiar, MS Office combines the applications for spreadsheet (Excel), word processing (Word), email and scheduling (Outlook), database (Access), presentations (PowerPoint) and lesser-known apps for note-keeping (OneNote) and web design (Publisher). Each of the major applications has become the standard within its own category. Taken together, there’s enough utility in this suite to handle 95% of the demands of most desk jobs anywhere. That’s what’s made MSOffice an essential in the modern world.

The biggest news is the 64-bit compatibility. This will encourage power users of Excel. Row limit is now 1,048,576, up from a mere 64,000 or so in the 32-bit version.

Office 2007 introduced the ribbon-interface which tended to confuse users of previous versions. Unlike its predecessor, the 2010 update doesn’t demand much adjustment on the user-interface front. The ribbons are still there, and still require a surprising number of clicks to perform some basic tasks (changing paragraph styles is one example).

Big news in all apps is the “Backstage” view which gathers all functions to be found on the File menu, combined on a single pane with a print preview. This is a great feature, and justifies whatever code bloat it required to incorporate. However, the graphic nature of Backstage has blocked some file-management keyboard shortcuts popular among traditional power users.

Another great advance: native support for pdf creation. You can print to pdf directly from any of the Office apps: No more plug-in, driver, or secondary app. This change shows MS responds to popular needs — even when it involves a file format is proprietary to a company other than MS.

Office 2010 offers stronger graphics capability in all apps. Word now features graphic-creation and manipulation tools to meet modern expectations. Newer users expect to be able to embed and edit graphics and video in word processing documents as easily as they would on a social media site. Good on Microsoft for responding to evolving expectations.

Outlook in Office 2010 gains some refinement and performance upgrades. It also gains the ability to search MS-owned LinkedIn for email addresses. That’ll be helpful for sending resumes.

Word gains some safety features to prevent the opening of risky VB macros downloaded from the internet. It also adds even more features to its already nearly colossal arsenal. That’s one concern: too many tools. Confusion seems to be a constant risk to Word users. However, Word has gotten more web-centric to match the expectations of users over the years. The find dialog now works much more like a mini-search-engine than a simple find. That might make it a little less daunting for some users.

Conclusion: the Office 2010 is a worthy upgrade from 2007, especially at the discounted academic price.

Pros:

Consistent ribbon interface throughout all apps

Backstage file management menu

64-bit support

Upgraded graphic tools

Cons:

Word is, perhaps, beyond feature-rich

Outlook won’t allow printing of one page of an email

So many features and tools, it’s inevitable some are too hidden to be convenient