Microsoft Office 2010, codenamed Office 14, is a productivity suite for Microsoft Windows, and the successor to Microsoft Office 2007. Office 2010 includes extended file format support,[4] user interface updates, and a refined user experience. With the introduction of Office 2010, a 64-bit version of Office is available, although not for Windows XP or Windows Server 2003.Office 2010 does not support Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.
On April 15, 2010, Office 2010 was released to manufacturing, with those Volume Licensing customers who have Software Assurance being able to download the software from April 27, 2010. The suite became available for retail as well as online purchase on June 15, 2010.
Office 2010 marks the debut of free online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, which work in popular web browsers (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Apple Safari). A new edition of Office, Office Starter 2010, replaced the low-end home productivity software, Microsoft Works.
Microsoft's update to its mobile productivity suite, Office Mobile 2010, will also be released for Windows Phones running Windows Mobile 6.5 and Windows Phone 7. In Office 2010, every application features the Ribbon, including OneNote, Publisher, InfoPath, SharePoint Workspace (previously known as Groove), and the new Office Web Apps.
New features and Improvements
Office 2010 is more "role-based" than previous versions.There are features tailored to employees in "roles such as research and development professionals, sales persons, and human resources." Borrowing from ideas termed "Web 2.0" when implemented on the Internet, Microsoft incorporated features of SharePoint Server in Office 2010.Microsoft Office 2010 includes updated support for ISO/IEC 29500:2008, the International Standard version of Office Open XML (OOXML) file format. Office 2010 provides read support for ECMA-376, read/write support for ISO/IEC 29500 Transitional, and read support for ISO/IEC 29500 Strict. In its pre-release (beta) form, however, Office 2010 only supported the Transitional variant, and not the Strict.The intent of the ISO/IEC is to allow the removal of the Transitional variant from the ISO/IEC compliant version of the OOXML standard.[29] Microsoft Office 2010 supports OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.1, which is an OASIS standard.
New features also include a built-in screen capture tool, a background removal tool, a protected document mode, new SmartArt templates and author permissions. The 2007 "Office Button" was replaced with a menu button that leads to a full-window file menu, known as Backstage View, giving easy access to task-centered functions such as printing and sharing. A notable accessibility regression from 2007 is that the menu button no longer follows Fitts's law. A modified Ribbon interface is present in all Office applications, including Office Outlook, Visio, OneNote, Project, and Publisher. Office applications also have functional jumplists in Windows 7, which would allow easy access to recent items and tasks relevant to the application.Features of Office 2010 include:
* Ribbon interface and Backstage View across all applications
* Background Removal Tool
* Letter Styling
* The Word 2007 Equation editor is common to all applications, replacing MS Equation 3.0
* New SmartArt templates
* New text and image editing effects
* Screen Capturing and Clipping tools
* Live collaboration functions
* Jumplists in Windows 7
* New animations in Powerpoint 2010
A new feature in Microsoft Office 2010 is the Social Connector. This allows users to write emails while keeping track of their family, friends, and colleagues by viewing status updates and past communication history with the individual. When users view their emails a name, picture, and title is available for the person they are contacting. Upcoming appointments can also be viewed with this new feature and users can request friends. The Social Connector does not work with Office x64 bit versions and Microsoft suggests to use the 32 bit products on their official forums and support. Sync features for Windows Mobile phones like email, contacts and other integration will also not work with x64 versions of Office 2010. There is no information if the final releases coming up in a few days will patch this feature. To date, many features and integrations are missing from the x64 version of Office 2010.
