Microsoft has unveiled Office 2010, the next release of its
office productivity suite.
Microsoft demonstrated several enhancements which will be
included in the 2010 release of Office in a
downloadable
"technical preview" during the company's annual worldwide
partner conference.
Microsoft has made collaboration a key part of the new product,
with the inclusion of the technology it acquired through Groove
Networks. Microsoft said Office 2010 will enable multiple users to
edit the same document. Each user will be able to "lock" a
paragraph, similar to the way cells are locked in a multi-user
Excel spreadsheet.
Outlook has also been updated to improve collaboration, by
providing a threaded conversation view of e-mail messages in the
user's inbox.
Along with collaboration features, Microsoft has added a paste
preview option to the cut and paste command. It allows users to
select objects from the clipboard and have them appear in the right
format in the Office document.
Microsoft will sell three main versions of the Office 2010 suite
for professional users, small businesses and a student/home user
edition. All three will include the comapny's One Note note taking
application.
Due to be released in the first half of 2010, Office 2010 will
be able as a downloadable, browser-based product. as well as
desktop installation. Users will be able to run the browser version
in-house, over the company's intranet, or use a free version,
hosted on Microsoft's Windows Live cloud service.