Microsoft Office 2010
First Impressions
This page is a continuing 'work in progress'.
Over the coming weeks, as I delve deeper into Office 2010 and unmercifully explore its inner secrets, I will be adding lots of my findings to this page.
Apart from this - what I would call our snippet - page, we are already working hard on writing our 'First Impressions' booklets to help ease the transition for people who will be skipping 2007 and upgrading directly to 2010 from XP or earlier versions.
Apart from this - what I would call our snippet - page, we are already working hard on writing our 'First Impressions' booklets to help ease the transition for people who will be skipping 2007 and upgrading directly to 2010 from XP or earlier versions.
Microsoft 2010: General
Not yet on sale in the shops, ( just in Beta version at the moment) Microsoft Officre 2010 should be available around Spring of next year.
Very similar to its predecessor, Microsoft Office 2007, with its new look Ribbon, the main focus seems to be on easing the ability to share files online and make it easier to maintain styles for files created in the different progarms. This latter facility though was first introduced in the 2007 version through its Building Blocks.
At first glance, having worked in 2007 for some years now, I would say, Office 2010 has gone two steps forward and, possibly, one back.
But...... the enhanced graphics is something to marvel at. There is not much now that you CANNOT do to edit and improve digital images in an Office Program that programs like Photoshop, PaintShop Pro and similar imaging applications can do. And, being Microsoft, working with graphics is simplicity itself and you can always see the effect before you 'click' to complete the transformation.
27/11/2009: Taking Screenprints: Those of us who use screenprints can appreciate how useful this feature always has been, and how relatively simple it was to use either Prt Sc (or Alt Prt Sc if we did not want to capture everything that was displayed in the window).
With Microsoft 2010 a new method of screen capture has been introduced. From the Insert menu there is a Screenshot icon and clicking on this reveals thumbnail views of every window you may have open at the time. Thus, if you have several file, folder or program icons displayed on the task bar, clicking on the Screenshot icon will open a window displaying all of them. You simply select the one you want and it appears in your document without the need for pasting. Iif you don't want the whole window of the chosen capture , just as with Office 2007, you have what was called the Snipping Tool but now renamed as Screen Clipping where you draw your frame round what you want to keep, thus avoiding having to crop in the old, conventional manner.
Absolutely brilliant. Though for some reason Screenshot is missing in Publisher which, though updated with Ribbon interface still trails a little behind its companion programs.
The old way - using the keyboard - can of course still be used.
Very similar to its predecessor, Microsoft Office 2007, with its new look Ribbon, the main focus seems to be on easing the ability to share files online and make it easier to maintain styles for files created in the different progarms. This latter facility though was first introduced in the 2007 version through its Building Blocks.
At first glance, having worked in 2007 for some years now, I would say, Office 2010 has gone two steps forward and, possibly, one back.
But...... the enhanced graphics is something to marvel at. There is not much now that you CANNOT do to edit and improve digital images in an Office Program that programs like Photoshop, PaintShop Pro and similar imaging applications can do. And, being Microsoft, working with graphics is simplicity itself and you can always see the effect before you 'click' to complete the transformation.
27/11/2009: Taking Screenprints: Those of us who use screenprints can appreciate how useful this feature always has been, and how relatively simple it was to use either Prt Sc (or Alt Prt Sc if we did not want to capture everything that was displayed in the window).
With Microsoft 2010 a new method of screen capture has been introduced. From the Insert menu there is a Screenshot icon and clicking on this reveals thumbnail views of every window you may have open at the time. Thus, if you have several file, folder or program icons displayed on the task bar, clicking on the Screenshot icon will open a window displaying all of them. You simply select the one you want and it appears in your document without the need for pasting. Iif you don't want the whole window of the chosen capture , just as with Office 2007, you have what was called the Snipping Tool but now renamed as Screen Clipping where you draw your frame round what you want to keep, thus avoiding having to crop in the old, conventional manner.
Absolutely brilliant. Though for some reason Screenshot is missing in Publisher which, though updated with Ribbon interface still trails a little behind its companion programs.
The old way - using the keyboard - can of course still be used.
Excel 2010
29/11/2009: Haven't spent too much time investigating this program yet, though I have been updating some of my spreadsheets. Up till now, had not made any exciting discoveries until I switched to the Insert menu to ceate a new chart.
However, I just switched to the Insert menu to create a chart and found something definitely new here. A Sparklines group of icons, followed by the Filter Group with just one icon - the Slicer!
Sparklines looks as if it is definitely going to be a winner. It is actually a mini chart that you can insert directly into a cell as a background. Therefore, it is printed right next to the data on which it is based. With previous versions you were always able to insert a chart as a background to a spreadsheet, but I think this goes one or two steps further and I can definitely foresee its usefulness and what an impact this addition can have when a spreadsheet with sparkline is embedded into to a Report for instance.
I will report further on both the Sparklines and the Slicer as soon as I have 'played' around with them both and get a greater understanding of their potential.
Sparklines looks as if it is definitely going to be a winner. It is actually a mini chart that you can insert directly into a cell as a background. Therefore, it is printed right next to the data on which it is based. With previous versions you were always able to insert a chart as a background to a spreadsheet, but I think this goes one or two steps further and I can definitely foresee its usefulness and what an impact this addition can have when a spreadsheet with sparkline is embedded into to a Report for instance.
I will report further on both the Sparklines and the Slicer as soon as I have 'played' around with them both and get a greater understanding of their potential.
Publisher 2010
Microsoft Publisher, which had not changed with the 2007 version, is now uptodate, complete with Ribbon and enhanced features. However, the most useful Arrange menu for setting page margins and, more importantly, setting grid guides etc. is no more. Having said that, the option for setting grid guides is still there - in another location, but not as flexible as previously, as far as I can see at the moment.
Another 'moan' is that when working in multipage publications, it used to be so easy to move between pages using the page tabs that appeared on the status bar. These too have disappeared and in their place, from the View menu, you have to select the Navigation icon so that thumbnails of the pages appear in the left pane. I can see the idea behind this: more in keeping with PowerPoint's thumbnail views but I personally like things on the status bar out of the way of the main window and tend to close up any left or right panes unless really needed.
On the plus side, the Measurement Box is now more easily accessible through an icon on the status bar.
Another 'moan' is that when working in multipage publications, it used to be so easy to move between pages using the page tabs that appeared on the status bar. These too have disappeared and in their place, from the View menu, you have to select the Navigation icon so that thumbnails of the pages appear in the left pane. I can see the idea behind this: more in keeping with PowerPoint's thumbnail views but I personally like things on the status bar out of the way of the main window and tend to close up any left or right panes unless really needed.
On the plus side, the Measurement Box is now more easily accessible through an icon on the status bar.
Access 2010
26/11/2009: Now looking at Access which has always been one of my favourite programs. Don't like the way you can get started designing a new database without having to click on the Create button first. Admittedly this was also the case with 2007 but I always thought what a good idea it was to have to Create and name before you could get stuck in and thought how nice it would be if Microsoft introduced that for ALL programs. Would save lots of 'lost' unsaved files!
OneNote and Outlook 2010
Though I have not used either of these applications too much as yet, at first glance (and second for that matter) both OneNote and Outllok are looking very appealing!
Word 2010
6/11/2009: Working in Word this afternoon, I notice one other thing they have removed which they introduced with 2007. It may not be particularly relevant to the average user, but under References, and Insert Citation, one of the options now noticeable by its absence, is the Research Libraries feature. It seems that what they give with one hand, they take with the other!