LiveSide - News blog : Office

PDC 2009: Day 2 announcements

Sunshine — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:31:09 GMT

Now the liveblogging is over, let’s take a look at what was announced today.

Silverlight

A whole lot was said about Microsoft Silverlight, going through some features of Silverlight 3 but most of all of Silverlight 4! Yes, today at the PDC in Los Angeles, Scott Guthrie announced the availability of Silverlight 4 beta, just four months after bringing Silverlight 3 to market.

More information about Silverlight 4 is available at http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-4-beta/

Office 2010

Also announced today is the Office 2010 Beta (Professional Plus) availability. You can learn more about all the 2010 productivity apps at www.microsoft.com/2010 or go directly to the site for Office 2010 and download from there after filling in a little questionnaire (it’s meant for business customers, but hey ;) ). Included apps are Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Excel, OneNote, Access, Publisher, InfoPath, SharePoint Workspace and Communicator.

Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 beta is available now too, you can download it through the Windows Mobile Marketplace for Windows Mobile 6.5 phones.

IE 9

Besides these announcements, Steve Sinofsky gave some details on the development of the next version of Microsoft's Web browser, Internet Explorer 9. IE9 will support DirectX and other standards, including CSS3 and HTML5. For some videos head on over to Channel 9.

Some more read of interest:
Microsoft Showcases Developer Opportunities for Windows and the Web
Microsoft Office 2010 Reaches Beta, Bringing Productivity Gains to the PC, Phone and Browser
Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP Extends Collaboration and Productivity
Digital Inspiration - What’s New Inside Microsoft Office 2010
Announcing the Outlook Social Connector

Microsoft Misses Target Date For Office Web Apps Preview

Sunshine — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:49:38 GMT

The Industry Standard reports that Microsoft will miss the target date for the Office Web Apps Tech Preview. The original plan was to release test versions of the applications in August. In an email the Industry Standard received, Microsoft stated the following:

"While they will not be available by the end of August, we are still planning to release them soon."

Microsoft did not provide more specific information about when the test applications will be available. Guess we’ll have to wait and see, eh? The final versions of the Web apps will be released at the same time Microsoft releases Office 2010, currently in Tech Preview, which is planned for the first half of next year.

Office Web Apps is the online companion to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote applications, and will be available in three ways:

through Windows Live, where more than 400 million consumers will have access to Office Web applications at no cost
on-premises for all Office volume licensing customers including more than 90 million Office annuity customers
via Microsoft Online Services, where customers will be able to purchase a subscription as part of a hosted offering

Previous articles about Office

Office 2010 begins Technical Preview: Office Web Applications available through Windows Live at no cost

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:02:42 GMT

At the Worldwide Partners Conference in New Orleans today, Microsoft announced a “major milestone and Technical Preview” for Office 2010, with “tens of thousands” of beta invitations to the technical preview going out beginning today (just received ours this evening :) ). In addition, Microsoft announced three ways for users to access the new Office Web Applications, lightweight web based versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote:

Office Web applications will be available in three ways: through Windows Live, where more than 400 million consumers will have access to Office Web applications at no cost; on-premises for all Office volume licensing customers including more than 90 million Office annuity customers; and via Microsoft Online Services, where customers will be able to purchase a subscription as part of a hosted offering.

No real word as of yet as to how Office Live Workspaces fits in to the equation, here’s what we got when we asked:

Office Live services will continue to be offered and evolve over time. As we announced last November, we will deliver the current Office Live services through Windows Live as our single consumer destination. We are excited that we will have the opportunity to expose great Office Live features such as online document sharing and collaboration to the more than 500 million Windows Live users.

While the news that Office Web applications will be available for on-premises hosting will likely be good news to corporations that are leery of giving up their data to Microsoft (or Google), we’re more interested in how Office Live will “evolve”, how well connected the rest of Windows Live will be into the new services (SkyDrive access?). The Technical Preview only contains the desktop versions of Office 2010, testing of the Office Web applications won’t happen until later this year.

Microsoft SQL Services Is Now Microsoft SQL Azure, More Software + Services News Next Week At WPC09

Sunshine — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:23:56 GMT

Microsoft is updating the branding for SQL Services and SQL Data Services. From now on SQL Services will be called Microsoft SQL Azure and SQL Data Services will be called Microsoft Azure Database:

This name change doesn’t reflect a change in the products themselves; we will still be providing a powerful relational database foundation to the Azure Services Platform. By standardizing our naming conventions, we’re demonstrating the tight integration between the components of the services platform. More intuitive names also help to reinforce the relationships between our on-premises and cloud solutions. Ultimately, the goal is to drive simplicity and clarity for customers as they consider on-premises and cloud computing approaches for solving their IT needs.

More news and updates related to Microsoft’s Software + Services strategy will be announced next week at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans.

Long Zheng has been digging in deeper as to what might be announced next monday: Potential announcements already on people’s minds include the announcement and subsequent availability of Windows 7 RTM code and pricing and licensing plans for Windows Azure. What also might be announced is the public release of the Microsoft Office Web application that was announced back at PDC08, Long received some information that confirms this one. Can’t wait!

We’ll keep our eyes open, that’s for sure!

Microsoft Office Web Applications: Your Burning Questions Answered

Sunshine — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:15:00 GMT

We already told you Microsoft Office will be extended to the browser. There has been a lot of excitement about this new service, but Sarah from on10 found there’s also quite a bit of misinformation around it. Therefore she decided to create a special Q&A, to answer some of those burning questions people have about the new web applications. I’ll list a few of them here:

Q : Is Silverlight required in order to use the Office Web Applications?
A: No! Silverlight is not required. Using Silverlight will enhance the user experience, resulting in sharper images and improved rendering. Also, the Office Live Workspace has integrated Silverlight technology into the multi-file upload function for a better experience there, too.

Q: Will the Microsoft Office Web Applications work on Linux?
A: Yes! It does not matter which operating system is used as long as you're running a supported web browser.

Q: Are the Web Applications replacing Microsoft Office software?
A: No. This does not change the way customers buy Office nor will it slowdown the future innovations coming to the desktop software.

Q: Will the Microsoft Office Web Applications be free?
A: Yes – for consumers. Microsoft will deliver Office Web applications to consumers through Office Live, which is a consumer service with both ad-funded and subscription offerings.

Q: How does the collaboration feature work?
A: Collaboration will be done using Office Live Workspace. There are two scenarios here, one experience is similar to SharePoint, where a user makes a change to a document and then uploads or saves to the SharePoint site. Whoever opens the doc first has control of that document.

The second scenario is using Microsoft SharedView, which is integrated with Office Live Workspace and enables real-time collaboration. With Microsoft SharedView, you can share your desktop and edit documents with others in real time. While sharing your desktop, Microsoft SharedView, enables you to control who edits, makes comments, etc. and then save that document back to your Office Live Workspace.

For the full list please read Sarah's Q&A. Besides Sarah’s Q&A there’s also a FAQ about Office Live Workspace available at the Office Live Workspace website. If you are not familiar with Workspace you can read this to orientate. It doesn’t tell much about the web apps, besides that they are lightweight apps and to sign up for Office Live Workspace if you wish to get more information and updates about any beta product availability. But hey you already knew that ;)

Previous articles about Office Live Workspace

Office In The Cloud

Sunshine — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:45:22 GMT

In all this excitement of PDC, cloud computing (Azure) and Live Mesh updates, there is one piece of cloud related news we haven’t told you about.

Microsoft Office will also be moving towards the cloud! We already know about the web storage of Office documents through Office Live Workspace (save, access, and share) but that is going to be expanded with lightweight versions of Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Powered by AJAX and/or Silverlight, they will be available for use in standard Web browsers such ad Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. Imagine being able to edit your Office document from your PC, Mobile Phone and the Web!

Click on the thumbnails for larger images

All this will be offered through Office Live, a consumer service with both ad-funded and subscription offerings. For business customers, Office Web applications will be offered as a hosted subscription service and through existing volume licensing agreements. Later on this will also be offered as a part of the Office Suites (Office 14). There will be a private technology preview of the Office Web applications later this year. If you are interested in this, sign up for Office Live Workspace. Of course we’ll keep you updated on this too!

For a first look video, head over to Channel 9.

PressPass - Microsoft to Extend Office to the Browser
Workspace Team Blog - Microsoft extends Office to the browser via Office Live

Search Within Office 2007 Documents: Filter Pack For Windows Search

Sunshine — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:18:00 GMT

Windows Search 4 already is an improvement over the standard Windows Search, but did you know you can search inside Office 2007 documents too?

I sure didn’t, Sarah Perez (on 10) does:

With the the Microsoft Filter Pack installed, Windows Search 4.0 is able to search within Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Office 2007 documents based on the text they contain. It also works for Vista too, adding new search capabilities which can be accessed right from Vista’s search bar. Now when you do a search, the Windows indexing service doesn’t just search for file names but also knows what’s in the files themselves, and that makes finding the right file so much easier.

Very handy, thanks Sarah!

The 2007 Office System Converter: Microsoft Filter Pack, will install and register IFilters with the Windows Indexing Service. These IFilters are used by Microsoft Search products to index the contents of specific document formats. This Filter Pack includes IFilters for the following formats: .docx, .docm, .pptx, .pptm, .xlsx, .xlsm, .xlsb, .zip, .one, .vdx, .vsd, .vss, .vst, .vdx, .vsx, and .vtx. It is supported on Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows XP.

Windows Desktop Search (WDS) consumes IFilters from Windows Indexing Service, so the IFilters will be automatically registered and available for use by WDS. If you want to register these filters with another specific Search product ( Office Sharepoint Server 2007, Search Server 2008, Exchange Server 2007, SQL server etc.), have a look at the KB articles provided on the download page.

Download Windows Search 4
Download Microsoft Filter Pack

Windows Live Translator now with Office integration

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:50:55 GMT

Windows Live Translator is coming to Office 2003 or 2007 as a Research pane option. According to the MSR-MT Team Blog, the new feature will be coming out soon as an automatic update to Office:

We have officially handed over our code to the Microsoft Office team for the integration of the translation tool directly in the Research Task Pane. Once they have finished their own testing and "flipped the switch" on their side, the feature will auto-update in existing versions of Office. I'll blog about that here again when that happens - at that point, no additional setup steps will be necessary.

However you can install it yourself now, if you have Office 2007. The blog post promises installation steps for Office 2003 “later in the week”. The steps for installation are a little lengthy, although not hard, so rather than reproduce them here you can just check out the blog post (currently the screenshots link to an internal website, so they don’t show up unless you’re inside Microsoft, but the steps are clearly laid out).