Office 2010 revealed in great detail via Microsoft videos

Microsoft Office 2010I don’t know what timezone Microsoft’s web servers are running on, but it’s revealed the much anticipated Office 2010 release in great detail way ahead of the expected official announcement at the Microsoft Worldwide Partners Conference 2009.

Thanks to an earlier tip from Rafael Rivera on Twitter who noted hours ago the Office 2010 mini-site has gone live (update: now removed but Google Cache caught it), it appears just now the placeholder videos too have gone live with real Office 2010 preview videos, including the much anticipated Office Web applications plus some interesting new features never seen before.

Without a further ado, I’ll let the videos do the talking. Here’s a couple of videos discussing the most interesting applications (and online services) in the suite.

[flv:Office14_Apps_Intro_Video_500k.f4v 600 337]

See What’s New in Microsoft Office 2010

[flv:Office_2010_Word_500k.f4v 600 337]

See What’s New in Microsoft Word 2010

[flv:Office_2010_Excel_500k.f4v 600 337]

See What’s New in Microsoft Excel 2010

[flv:Office_2010_PowerPoint_500k.f4v 600 337]

See What’s New in Microsoft PowerPoint 2010

[flv:Office_2010_Outlook_500k.f4v 600 337]

See What’s New in Microsoft Outlook 2010

[flv:Office_2010_OneNote_500k.f4v 600 337]

See What’s New in Microsoft OneNote 2010

[flv:Office_2010_WebApps.f4v 600 337]

See What’s New in Microsoft Web Applications 2010

[flv:Office_2010_Mobile_500k.f4v 600 337]

See What’s New in Microsoft Mobile 2010

You can find videos on the rest of the Office suite at the Office 2010 website.

Update: The videos appear to be up and down for some reason, if it says “an error has occured”, in which case just refresh the page and they should reappear. Microsoft seems to have noticed and removed the videos.

Update 2: Uploading alternative cached copies of the videos right now.

170 insightful thoughts

  1. Can I assume these are Silverlight 3-supplied/based videos? because they start instantly! Very impressive.

  2. @Glen: I don’t have Silverlight 3 on this machine yet, and the videos still work and start instantly.

  3. all nice… now I just want MS to get of their high horse and finally offer a good version of Office 2010 for Mac as well as Mobile Office for iPhone.

    did anyone else notice this… wow… Monica is really excited about the new web application features… not.

  4. All I’m getting now is “Sorry, System is temporarily unavailable”. Not a great sign of things to come. I wonder whether they’ve fixed “Not Responding” in the office products….

  5. nice, there are some great features here, nice to see elements of google apps & google wave showing up in outlook 2010. Great to see they are running some of their web applications in Firefox, but how would they work in Safari or Chrome?

    The videos do seem to be doing strange things, such as playback doesnt seem to work, the page has to be refreshed, but maybe thats just silverlight..?

  6. They’re down for me.. did anyone catch anything about OneNote? I wonder what’s new there.

  7. @Fred: Just keep refreshing until it’s back. Something is horribly wrong with their servers.

  8. It seems to be coming and going. Didn’t catch the OneNote one but the voice on the web apps one almost lulled me to sleep….

  9. @Fred

    The points that i got about onenote was
    Share all your web clippings and notes from the road with co-workers
    Share all your documents and colloborate
    Can easily view who has made changes to shared documents

  10. Can’t watch videos at 256 kbps. 🙁 Any way to download Silverlight streamed videos? The crappy player they use on all sites (Channel9, Technet Edge etc) doesn’t even seem to cache the bufferred part of the video so if you’ve got a slower connection, you can’t let it buffer completely then watch it without interruptions. Typical Microsoft. 🙁

  11. @anon,

    YouTube buffers now in the same way. I assume they do it so they don’t buffer the entire clip (and waste bandwidth) if someone skips ahead in the video.

    From what I can tell this is how HTTP streaming (as proposed by Apple) will work once it finds it’s way into products.

  12. Ugh, that sounds like the only additions to OneNote are collaborative stuff. That’s pretty useless for home users.

  13. @Tom – LOL! I was about to comment saying the same thing. Monica Mendoza lives up to her last name, because her presentation was a real… doza?

    Yikes… well, at least I’m not lacking in the cheesy department! =P

    -Stephen

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  15. Thanks for the news! Very exciting watching this all unfold as MS puts up and takes down the site. It’s funny how Google cache caught the page.

  16. @tom, YouTube (or most Flash-based players) allow buffering till the end and then play it from the beginning without interruption as it is already buffered (cached in memory and in case of YouTube cached to disk as well recently). Moreover Flash-streamed videos can be saved by dozens of “video dowloaders”. Silverlight-steamed videos are streamed but not buffered so they can be played again, they’re only bufferred a few seconds earlier enough to play the frame that is playing, so view them again, AFAIK the whole thing has to be streamed by the server again.

  17. Long, in the Excel video, he talks about a “SharePoint-*compatible* server.” Any insight on what besides SharePoint itself is “SharePoint compatible?”

  18. Ayca is the most professional of them all, but can’t blame them sounding goofy, they are Software Program Managers, don’t expect them to be slick TV Presenters you all know, I bet they didn’t plan a TV carreer when they choose to become geeks.

    And I think I like the improvements in Outlook the most, but I am still not convinced all these will make me wait in line to buy Office 2010 when it comes out.

  19. Wow! I think this Monica charecter is a way cool robot, if indeed that is what she is. Do you think microsoft has a lot of these robots just running around? Can they really be classified as “geeks” or are they turly victims of vile Microsoft techies trying to throw robots willy nilly in random videos around the net I’m appalled if this is the case. I will stick to my notepad and pen thank you very much. And if I need to collaborate, communicate or coagulate (i forgot the third “C”) then I will just crumple up a peice of paper and throw it as far as I can with the hope it gets to the right person.

  20. Wow, SOOO not impressed. The improvements here are minor and IMHO still behind their time.

  21. @Al,

    A lot of the real improvements will only be seen by those folks that have the entire MS infrastructure in place to support the collaborative features on the back end…

    … only problem is that probably 80% of users (even in corporates) only ever use:

    – Word for well… as a glorified type writer.
    – Powerpoint… to create presentations based on a template they have been given
    – Excel… to do basic Spreadsheet stuff they could have done in MS Works

    I think that’s the exact reason why Google docs has gained popularity in some corporate environments. I think Web Office is a step in the right direction for them, assuming I don’t have to invest another big lump of money to support it on the back-end. After all Windows and Office are the two parts that make up Microsoft’s cash cow.

  22. I am operating windows xp and all the videos work instantly and fine, my processor is ancient and i have no memory lol, less is more!!!!!

  23. ummm … what’s the point again? I went down the videos one by one and was left with a feeling like a movie you have to imagine the ending of … irritated. I am not sure what the point is with the new office, is it that only those who actually need all this collaboration are going to get anything out of it … or is this just something new that we are being told to purchase because we need it? I am not sure how much more can really be much more. So I am confused since most businesses do not need all the collaboration, they need efficiency, organization and a good email program. Just my opinion. I am still using Office 2003 as I haven’t seen anything that improves my need of the program in fact Open Office seems to be just as compatible and it’s free???

  24. very convenient for our users to get a quick overview of all the 2010 Microsoft Office Products

  25. Good article. The only question: does anybody really still uses Microsoft office?! With new online office tools like Google Docs and Microsoft’s Office365 there is no point to use half-working desktop office solutions.
    Thanks.

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