LiveSide - News blog : Office Live Workspace

Office Live Workspace updated for Mac users

damaster — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 13:15:16 GMT

The Office Live Workspace team blog just announced two exciting news for Mac users using Microsoft Office and Office Live Workspace. Firstly, Microsoft Document Connection for Mac was just released as part of Office 2008 for Mac SP2 to access Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents directly from Office Live Workspace. Here’s an official list of features for Document Collaboration Companion:

Integrated (offline/local) access to Office Live Workspace and SharePoint Websites
Document upload
Document check-out/in
SharePoint Workspace and Doc Library access & browsing
An independent application with File Menu integration

Secondly, Office Live Workspace now supports both Safari 3 and the newly released Safari 4, adding support for users with Mac OS X 10.2.x and later. Could this be some sort of preparation for the upcoming release of Office Web Apps, which will support Internet Explorer 7/8, Firefox 3, and also Safari? Nevertheless, it is good news to hear that Microsoft is taking its online offerings cross-browser and cross-platform. Well done!

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.

Survey: a new name for Office Web Apps, coming soon?

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:12:40 GMT

When we last came across a Microsoft Site Survey, it correctly gave us the new name for Morro - “Microsoft Security Essentials”, and we’re really beginning to like this new pipeline of information. In a new survey, Microsoft asks about possible new names for a “suite of paid, web-based services… that will complement Microsoft Office”. Microsoft “Office Web Applications”, lightweight versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote, were first demoed last October at PDC. While the professional version will be a paid service, a consumer version is expected to be ad funded and free.

After listing a set of possible names and asking for reactions, the survey (conducted by a 3rd party marketing research firm for Microsoft) gets down to brass tacks:

Which of these names do you think does the best job describing a product that you would be more interested in trying than Google Apps, assuming both products have similar features and functionality?

Microsoft Ensemble

Microsoft Optro

Microsoft ArcLight

Microsoft Offsite

Microsoft Equipt

I am not aware of Google Apps

While the survey does not specify any availability dates, we came across the Microsoft Security Essentials survey about 6 weeks before it was announced, so we may not have to wait too long to see what we hope will be called Microsoft Ensemble out in the open.

Maybe this is why Microsoft is turning on those new data centers!

Office Live Workspace Provides Resumé Help (For College Students) On Facebook

Sunshine — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:19:57 GMT

So you’ve graduated, or are close to graduating, and on your way of landing that first job. But to do so you need to write something lots of people dread: a resumé! To help you with that the Office Live Workspace team created an Office Live Workspace page on Facebook just for college students. I believe anybody who needs to write a resumé can profit from this though, and it’s not like you’ll be chucked off the page if you aren’t a student :P

On this Facebook page you will find tips, advice, videos and more brought to you by resources like Monster.com and the Microsoft Office Online Career Center. Kevin Connolly, Eric on Entourage, tells you the top 5 most important things to include if you want a killer resumé in the somewhat humorous video right here (bah, no embed code).

Still doubting or just like your resumé to be reviewed by a professional? Enter the My Resume Talks Sweepstakes:

Official Rules / Privacy Policy / FAQ

This is only open to legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are at least 18 years old at the time of entry. 500 winners will each receive a private resume consultation from a Professional and Certified Resume Specialist. Drawings will be held on or around April 14, April 21, April 28, and May 5 and the winners will be notified via the contact information provided upon registration. You can enter once per day until May 4th and can only win once.

Good Luck!

New Office Live Workspace Template For Travel

Sunshine — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 10:04:59 GMT

Always worried if you packed everything for your trip? Are the ones left behind fully informed? Office Live Workspace has a new template to help you with all this.

To create, just sign in to your account and in the left panel, click New Workspace, and then click Travel Workspace. After you’ve done that you will see the following 4 documents are in there already:

· Business Trip Itinerary – A form for all your trip details such as departure times, flight numbers etc. You will also find a handy schedule for the events and meetings you planned during your trip, including fields to add contact information for people you’re meeting with.

· Packing List – List the items you want to bring, plus any notes to yourself, and when you’ve packed it, check it off. You can easily export the list into an Excel spreadsheet and print it out too.

· Personal Data Form – Listing for all the things you may need to know while traveling, but don’t have memorized. Phone numbers to call if your credit cards or traveler’s checks are stolen; your blood type and insurance information in case you’re hospitalized; passport number; the quoted rate for your rental car – and lots more. Print a copy to take with you, and leave one behind with a friend or family member.

· Travel Checklist – Put everything you need to do before your travel begins here. Like get vaccinations, pick up medicine, inform your relatives (leave a copy of the Personal Data Form with them), call the kennel and so on. Check them off as you complete them.

Of course you can also share this workspace with those it concerns, like family and travel partners, and add your own documents to it. Organizing your trip couldn’t be easier!

Happy Travels!

Office Live Workspace: New Features

Sunshine — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 11:16:46 GMT

Our friend PicturePan2, just pointed out some changes on Office Live workspace. First off he sees a new header that says Tech Preview:
I’ve checked, but on mine it has the beta header (second image above). I wonder what’s up with that…doesn’t a technical preview go before a beta? Why would they go back to a technical preview?

The new features, which the team announced, I do see:

· Folders –To simplify organization, now you can use folders to manage files within workspaces. We know many of you were creating new workspaces whenever you needed to group related documents, so we’re really happy about this feature.

· Cut/Copy/Paste–Want to copy a document or file to another workspace? We’ve replaced the File/Move feature with Cut/Copy/Paste to make it even easier to manage your files.

Besides these new features they also announced they will increase the storage capacity to 5GB over the next several days. Some good news for non English users of Workspace too, 8 new languages were added: Hungarian, Romanian, Lithuanian, Serbian Latin, Ukrainian, Slovak, Latvian, and Slovenian. Office Live Workspace is available now in 28 languages and 52 countries.

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 Live Workspace Utilizes Silverlight For Multiple Document Uploading

Sunshine — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:29:00 GMT

Office Live Workspace got updated. More languages were added: Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Czech, Turkish, Portuguese, and Greek. You can change your language with the language switcher at the bottom right of the page if you wish to do so. But that’s not all, they also introduce new features. One gets a particular mention on the Workspace Team Blog and that’s the use of Microsoft Silverlight to add multiple documents/files to your workspace:

The most notable one is a new way to add multiple documents to your workspace using Silverlight, which my good colleague Avrum designed. You may have heard some buzz around Silverlight technology. It allows for a richer Web experience more akin to what is usually seen in client (desktop) software.

Get this functionality easily by downloading Silverlight, signing in to your workspace, and clicking Add Document. Select a bunch of files to upload, and you’ll see them appear beneath the workspace that you want and then gradually pop into the workspace as they are successfully added. This is a much better experience than previously, where we used a separate window for uploading.

Looking very good! The Office Live Update also got tweaked:

We also tweaked our Office Live Update to provide a seamless experience for users installing it from outside Office Live Workspace. If you haven’t used the update yet, check it out. It makes saving files directly from Office to workspaces really easy.

It truly does, you can open and save your documents directly from/to your Office Live Workspace from your Office Applications (video).

And not only did Office Live Update get tweaked, it also notified me that there was a new version of it available:

You can install/download by clicking on that link or by clicking on Download in Using Your Workspace.

Feedback or comments can be left in the Office Live Forums.

Did you know? Recovering deleted documents is easy on Office Live Workspace

Previous LiveSide articles on 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

Office Live Workspace Update 1.2 available: includes Firefox support

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:03:10 GMT

A new update for Office Live Workspace appeared on the Microsoft Download Center today (thanks Alex for the tip!). The update, version 1.2, published 8/12/2008, includes:

(1) performance updates to make using Office Live Workspace with Microsoft Office programs faster, (2) the latest Office Live Add-in for Microsoft Office that enables you to access your workspaces directly from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and (3) the Multiple Document Upload Tool and (4) the Firefox add-in to allow users of the Firefox browser to use Office Live Workspace with Microsoft Office.

The last update (version 1.1) included the Multiple Document Upload Tool, but apparently the Firefox support is new to this update. The Office Live Workspace beta offers 500mb of online storage available through the Office Live Add-in to Office XP or Office 2003 (via a toolbar), or Office 2007 (via new menu options). The Workspace can be shared, and/or accessed through a web interface. You can learn more about Office Live Workspace on the homepage.

Office Live Workspace: Allow Previewing A Shared Workspace Or Document Without Sign-In/Sign-Up

Sunshine — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:31:45 GMT

Are you, just like me, hesitant to sign up for something just to preview/look at something a friend send you (or just plain hate it)? You no longer have to to preview an Office Live Workspace/Document. If your friend has set that option when inviting you in that is.

How to do that:

1. Open up the workspace or document you wish to share and click Share:

2. Click Share, or incase you are already sharing with someone Share with more. Then in the Sharing Pane, add in the email addresses for the people you want to preview your content:

and…..here comes the trick: check the box in front of Let everyone view this without signing in. A little note of warning though:

3. Click Send

Now an Invitation mail will be send to the recipients. All they have to do is click the link to preview the shared Workspace/Document, no need to sign in or sign up! If they wish to do so after previewing they can sign up or sign in by clicking Sign up on the left navigation bar.

Office Live Workspace
Workspace Team Blogs

LiveSide - Previous Office Live Workspace articles

Microsoft Launches Consumer Subscription Offering That Combines Microsoft Office And Windows Live OneCare: Microsoft Equipt, Initially Known As Albany

Sunshine — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:00:00 GMT

Remember Albany Beta? Well, it has been renamed to Equipt and is released today!

REDMOND, Wash. — July 2, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. today unveiled Microsoft Equipt, an all-in-one security and productivity software subscription service for consumers. In one easy installation, the service delivers award-winning anti-malware protection technology and features to simplify PC management and help improve performance, the productivity tools people use to organize their lives, and online services that help make it easy to keep in touch with friends and family.

Initially code-named “Albany,” Microsoft Equipt offers consumers Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, giving them the latest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote for their personal and school projects; Windows Live OneCare, the all-in-one security and PC management service; Windows Live tools, such as Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Photo Gallery so they can connect and share with people they care about most; and Office Live Workspace, a new service from Microsoft that makes it easy to save documents to a dedicated online Workspace and share them with friends and classmates. Anytime a new version of Office or Windows Live OneCare is released, Microsoft Equipt customers will get the version upgrades as part of their subscriptions.

Microsoft Equipt will be sold in nearly 700 Circuit City Stores in the US starting mid-July. Retail price is estimated at $69.99 for a one-year renewable subscription and can be installed on up to three home PCs.

From the factsheet:

Included Products and Services:

Windows Live OneCare
All-in-one security and performance includes antivirus, antispyware, firewall, file and photo backup, performance tune-ups, and home network management to help keep your PC running at its peak.

Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007
· Word 2007. Create great-looking documents with ease.
· Excel 2007. Intuitive spreadsheet tools let you create budgets and more.
· PowerPoint 2007. Design stunning presentations for family, school or volunteer activities.
· OneNote 2007. Organize different kinds of information — text, images, audio and video, Web clippings, and more — in one digital notebook.

Microsoft Office Live Workspace
This new service from Office makes it easy for you to save documents to a dedicated online Workspace and share these with friends and classmates.

Windows Live tools
· Windows Live Mail. Get all your e-mail in one place.
· Windows Live Messenger. Send instant messages to your friends or have a video chat.
· Windows Live Photo Gallery. Organize and share photos.
· And more. Including Windows Live Writer and Windows Live Toolbar.

Automatic updates and upgrades. Office Home and Student version upgrades plus automatic security updates and OneCare upgrades.

More information:
Q&A: PressPass Interview with Bryson Gordon
Factsheet Equipt
http://www.circuitcity.com

Office Live Small Business reaches 1 million subscribers

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:08:38 GMT

Office Live Small Business, the beta for small businesses to establish an online presence with a free website, domain name, and 100 email addresses, has reached 1 million subscribers, according to a Microsoft press release. Currently up and running in 5 languages/locales (US, UK, France, Germany, Japan), Office Live Small Business provides basic services for free, and offers upgraded services (more space/storage, Store Manager to sell products directly from your site or from eBay, email marketing tools, as well as a free adManager tool to manage ads set up through Microsoft’s adCenter) on a subscription basis. Office Live Small Business also sets you up with an Office Live Workspace account, to collaborate on documents and files, using Microsoft Office products or a web interface.

You can sign up for Office Live Small Business (if you’re in one of the 5 locales) for free.

Updated: Office Live Workspace, Hotmail, Windows Live Translator

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:40:23 GMT

While none of the updates are in the “mind-blowing” category, three Live services have announce updates this week. First up, Office Live:

We have good news

We have taken all of the findings and with the help of the Office and Windows teams come up with a solution that closely delivers on our primary goal – to make integration as seamless as possible. We can now present to you a single package available as a single download, the “Office Live Update 1.1” which:

Installs the necessary performance updates so that we don’t make roundtrips, and makes the network stacks “smart” so they do the right thing for OLW

Installs the Windows Live Sign-in Assistant that ensures that logging into the browser essentially logs you in to Office, so you don’t get prompted again and again

Installs the new Office Live Add-in v1.1 which shows who you are logged in as right there in the menu flyout.

We have made this available in all our new international languages, too. Let us know how this works for you, as we are still working on further improvements. And, as always, we thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback because it really helps us get better.

Hotmail has been updated, too:

You can check out how snappy the classic version is when you try the following things:

Read messages in your inbox

Delete and move messages

Read messages in different folders

Check for new messages by clicking on your inbox or other folder

The classic version works the same, and looks the same, but now it is more like the full version, updating what you see on the screen without reloading the whole page.

In future releases, you’ll see more about how we’re making the classic version faster and also adding features to it.

The classic version works for a huge range of browsers: Internet Explorer 6+, Firefox 2.0+, Safari 2.0+, and other modern browsers.

Pulling in messages from other accounts

If you’re a paid user, we’re making it easier for you to add a non-Hotmail account! Paid users will see a link in their inbox that says “Add an e-mail account.” If you click that link, we make it easy to pull in messages from your other accounts outside of Hotmail. You can add a POP3 account this way. This feature has been in MSN Hotmail and Windows Live Hotmail for years, but now we’re able to automatically set up many POP3 accounts even if you don’t know your POP server settings.

And improvements to Windows Live Translator, as well:

English to Spanish general domain system deployed on live site

Our team is constantly working to improve our translation quality. As you know, some of our general domain systems are powered by third party systems, while we develop our own technology for these languages. This month we rolled out our own English to Spanish general domain system, which significantly beat our quality bar. Spanish is our highest traffic language, so we’re really excited about improving this system for our Spanish users. Check it out!

Link to Encarta dictionary

Have a word that may have multiple translations in another language? Take the example of “boot” – this could mean a shoe, or a verb talking about starting up your computer. The Encarta dictionary allows you to look up a word and short phrase and offer you multiple translations. In addition to the different variations of “boot” in Spanish around the globe, it also offers an alphabetical list of similar words to help you pick out which version you meant.

Star rating

Translation quality varies widely depending on the content being translated, and the training data we have used to train our engine. Help us improve the system by letting us know where we are doing well, and where we need improvement, by rating our translations. This will help us learn where we need to focus on improvements. This feature is located just below the translated text on the left.

Report offensive translations

Machine translation is an imperfect process – and it doesn’t always catch inadvertently offensive translations! Help us improve the system by reporting any offensive translations that you see.

You can read more about the updates by following the links.

Office Live Workspace: Languages And Other Updates

Sunshine — Thu, 29 May 2008 18:25:44 GMT

Besides in English, Office Live Workspace (Beta) has also been made available in French, German, Japanese and Spanish. Support for more languages will be added later this year. So how does this affect sharing and collaborating with users in other languages? Oli Messenger of the Workspace Team explains:

…you don’t have to worry about a thing because OLW makes sharing a file or document with someone that speaks another language just as simple as sharing with anyone else. Users will see their workspaces and user interface in their language of choice, and all content will naturally be in the language it was created or written in. Say you’re from London and you share with someone from Paris. The French user gets notified as you’d expect, and the next time they log in to their account they’ll see that the English user has shared the files with them. It’s as simple as that.

Our selection of pre-made workspace templates has also been localized, so international users get exactly the same benefits from them as English users have had. It’s now possible to collaborate as part of an international team of people, with edits being recorded and activity being tracked and sent out world-wide, keeping everyone in the loop. Users see times translated into their time zones and see dates, times, and numbers formatted to their locales. For users, it’s seamless. Office Live Workspace handles all translation and adaptation under the covers.

Neat huh? But that sure wasn’t the only thing that changed in the past month(s), they also added new Activity features (Activity pane and Activity e-mails). Besides that, the Office Live Add-in has been improved and is now called Office Live Update. Think there should be more changes, have more ideas for improvements? Let the Team know by giving feedback on their forum.

Would you like more visual explanation on Office Live Workspace? The Workspace Team has published 2 videos:
Use it with Microsoft Office
Share easily with others

Previous LiveSide articles:
Office Live Workspace Beta - Now Publicly Available Worldwide
Office Live Workspace - first feature update goes live
Our first look at Office Live Workspaces
Office Live Workspaces: Our interview with Kirk Gregerson
Office Live Renamed: New offering announced: Office Live Workspaces