Microsoft Outlook 2010 screenshots

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

There’s little doubt that Outlook is the most physically changed of all the applications: in particular, Outlook 2010 now has the Ribbon properly integrated into its interface. Here, we take a quick-fire tour of the new-look.

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Microsoft Outlook 2010 screenshots: Backstage view

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

We’ve already given a more general introduction to Microsoft Office 2010’s Backstage view, but Outlook 2010 deserves a special mention.

Above is the first screen to meet you when you click File, the Info screen. This makes it much, much easier to change settings than the horrible meandering mess that was Outlook 2007 and predecessors.

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Microsoft Office 2010 screenshots: Backstage view

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

If there’s one thing you’re bound to notice when using Office 2010, it’s the Backstage view. This is a unified set of commands and information that relates to the particular file you’re working on.

For example, forget pressing <Ctrl+P> and getting that boring old print dialog (shown right for comparison).

Instead, you’ll get something that looks an awful like the below, complete with an automatic print preview and an overview of all the settings. That not only looks nicer, it also makes it far easier to pick up mistakes (printing in portrait when you meant to print in landscape, for instance, or choosing A4 when you wanted A3).

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Microsoft Office 2010 screenshots: Accessibility Checker

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Part of the Backstage view, Microsoft has built in a handy little checker that will reveal which parts of your Excel, Word and PowerPoint files will cause problems for people with disabilities such as impaired vision. For example, it will tell you if pictures lack Alt text, highlight headings that are too long, and point out if the document doesn’t use heading levels in a logical way.

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Microsoft Word 2010: inserting screenshots

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

This is one of those features I just happen to like: the ability to insert a screenshot quickly and easily into a document. So, you’re writing a report or some technical documentation. All you need to do is head to the Insert tab and click on the Screenshot button sitting in the Illustrations area. If you have a multitude of other applications open, you’ll see a screen rather like this:

You then just select your chosen screenshot and it’s inserted painlessly into the open document.

Microsoft Office 2010 screenshots: Recover unsaved items

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

This is the screen you’ll see in the Microsoft Word 2010’s Backstage view if you click on the Info tab. Think of it as a glorified version of the File Info dialog you currently access if you click Properties, but with a much nicer layout and more power – including the ability to recover unsaved items.

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Microsoft Office 2010 screenshots

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

There were many good reasons why Microsoft Office 2007 earned a place on the PC Pro A List, but if we were to boil it down to one then it would be the Ribbon. While not everyone welcomed the new interface, it made it much easier for the vast majority of users to create professional-looking documents. And quickly. Microsoft Office 2010 would always struggle to have the same impact, but there are a number of nice new features that make this the best version of Office 2010 yet.

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Does Windows BitLocker spell the end of the office loan laptop?

Friday, November 13th, 2009

This has been an interesting week for the USB key.

No really; the ubiquitous key, which has been implicated in incidents of corporate data loss around the world, now occupies a central role in Microsoft’s view of corporate security.

Far from being the main means by which secrets slip out of your organisation, the Microsoft security technique depends on carrying your BitLocker keys around on a USB stick.

This is a great leap forward, and I can foresee lots of corporates finding themselves strongly obliged to take up BitLocker, especially when you consider the surprising hard line being taken by the Information Commissioner, as reported in this BBC article. Let’s put the headline conclusion up here so you bear it in mind: if your company loses data, then it’s half a million quid as a fine.

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Microsoft shows courage at Tech-Ed 09

Monday, November 9th, 2009

The initial signs for this year’s Tech-Ed Europe - Microsoft’s annual get-together for its product gurus, partners and IT professionals – being the sort of show rich with standing ovations are not good.

Microsoft is in Berlin around the celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall, just after U2 has smeared the town with its dubious neo-political imprimatur, and just before Thanksgiving in the US – it’s one of those periods that might well be marked by suggestions in emails as “a good time to bury some bad news”. But: there’s some good stuff here. Calm stuff; stuff which shows MS is getting down to business, and not distracting the world with dancing paperclips.

The basic raw headlines are that Exchange 2010 goes to public availability as from today, worldwide: and Microsoft is very pleased with some rational improvements. (more…)

PowerPoint and Silverlight: a perfect match?

Monday, November 9th, 2009

With its place at the heart of the Microsoft Office suite, PowerPoint is the overwhelmingly dominant presentation software for business. However it has a fundamental flaw – it still doesn’t offer an in-built route for efficient, cross-platform, screen-based web delivery. For a program whose whole purpose is to help users get their message over, this is quite astonishing and unforgivable as we approach 2010.

Microsoft might not provide its own solution but there are plenty of third-party applications which fill the gap such as Adobe’s Captivate and Presenter, the bargain Flair from WildFX and my personal favourite Articulate Presenter. The major embarrassment for Microsoft is that these all rely on the Adobe Flash format.

It’s an embarrassment that is made considerably worse by the fact that Microsoft is currently busily touting its own cross-platform web format, Silverlight, as a direct alternative to Flash. It’s clear that PowerPoint and Silverlight should make a perfect match and native Silverlight export would certainly go a long way to explaining (if not excusing) PowerPoint’s lack of support for Flash.

So where is the ability to convert PowerPoint to Silverlight?

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