Introducing Word 2010!

We've been patiently waiting to talk with you about what we've been working on for the last two years, and the wait is over. Today we'll introduce Word 2010 at a very high-level, and then dig deeper and deeper into specific topics and features in the coming months.

Of course, please let us know what you want to hear about.

Word 2010 from 30,000 Feet

The way we work with documents has changed dramatically. In the past, individuals worked on relatively simple, local documents, from their office. Today, it is common for groups to work on rich, shared documents, from anywhere.

Given this shift, we've focused Word 2010 on dramatically improving document collaboration, graphics, and navigation…and then taking the richness and familiarity of Word, and putting it into the browser and onto the mobile phone.

Dramatically Improved Collaboration, Graphics, and Navigation

    • Simultaneous editing of Word documents -- all the richness of Word with multiple people at the same time. Say goodbye to this dialog:

      With Word 2010, you can co-author right within Word. You don't need to hassle with email attachments, or documents with names like TSP_final_2_reallyFinal_FINAL.docx. Instead, just open your document, and start co-authoring. You can see who else is working with you, and where they are editing.

       

      • Automatic offline editing and sync'ing of shared documents  -- when you open a shared document, Word automatically caches it so that you can edit it offline, and then Word will automatically sync your changes when you come back online. So if you need to work away from the office, you will no longer need to worry about saving local copies or manually merging your changes into the server document when you get back to your office. Word 2010 takes care of all of that for you.
      • All sorts of new graphical goodness  -- artistic picture effects and easy picture editing, more SmartArt diagrams, and rich graphical and typographic effects on text.

        Note how "pear" and "shooze" are squiggled. That's because they are just really rich text in the document, not a picture, WordArt, or any other object.

        • A new navigation pane and search experience -- easily reorganize your document via drag and drop, and find stuff quickly with incremental search. You can stop copying and pasting huge sections of your document, quickly find your way around long documents, and you don't need to know exactly what you are searching for to find it.

           

          Word in Your Browser and on Your Phone

          The other big piece of Word 2010 is giving you the power and familiarity of Word everywhere you need it. In short, you will be able to view, navigate, and edit your Word documents from the browser and from your mobile phone without compromising your document's richness.

          I know that was really high-level, but hopefully you have a sense for how Word 2010 will dramatically improve how and where you work on documents.

          We'd love to hear your initial thoughts, and what you'd like to hear more about.

           - Jonathan Bailor

            PS Here's some fun Word 2010 videos of note:

             

            Office Blogs Comments

            Comments: (38) Collapse

            • Why are the screeshots hosted at another site (stunna42.members.winisp.net)? Please host them on technet or msdn. I just see a bunch of red x's. The blog is not nearly as interesting without the screenshots. Thanks.

            • Wes - Are you still seeing this? I think we just had a bit of a server issue over the weekend. - Jonathan Bailor (MS)

            • Editing a word or PowerPoint file on a smartphone seems like a great idea but so much has changed given the ribbon. Possibly, we would then require an entirely new way to navigate its functions again. I'm all for it yet this may make us want bigger smart phones. I think the iPhone is as big as it should get. I think we work too much. How about we save it for proper size screens...

            • Master Documents and Numbering need to be fixed in Word 2010. There is so much information out there that highlights the failures of these 2 "features".

            • question 1: in word 2003 and 2007, when you save as a web page, it degrades photos pretty significantly. the only way to avoid this is to use web options with vml. when you do that--the pictures won't show in firefox. is word 2010 doing something to deal with this? (for example, giving us the option to save the graphics in web pages as is, with no compression)? question 2: mail merge. can word 2010 sql mail merge handle long amounts of text? currently it cuts off text frequently at 256 characters (or something like that). very frustrating. question 3: mail merge of avery 5160 labels. can't get them to work in word 2007. some weird error. comment: i LOVE the customization of the ribbons, i LOVE that you can drag and drop large sections of the document (i've been waiting for that for 12 years now), and i LOVE the new editing at same time as others feature. very nice.

            • I think they need to make it easier to manage document versions in word. Am I the only one who ALWAYS creates a new file each time I save my document, by using Save As - i.e. filename v1.docx, filename v2.docx and so on up to filename v48.docx. The reason I do this is because it's way too easy to over-write stuff if you use the 'Save' function in word, and then later regret it. Also I still have memories of document corruption - editing one bit and saving the file, only to find out it totally messed up something elsewhere like the page formatting and I can't roll back. And here's one MEGA REQUEST PLEASE........ BIG BIG REQUEST...... PLEASE put something in Word so that when people like me, who have grown immune to the constant 'are you sure?' type prompts, accidentally do "Alt... F... C... Y" to close a document (this usually happens when I have numerous documents open, some of which I have edited but don't want to save the changes on because I have just been using them as a sort of editing workspace) and then think "Oh $'£&*!!!" because I just shut down my main file I have been working on and didn't save the changes, despite the "do you want to save changes" prompt, don't lose all our work. This is REALLY annoying. It is way too easy to close a file and automatically press "Y" without thinking, then to realise you have lost your work. Isn't there a way Word can just keep an temporary archive of the 10 last files or so you have closed down, in the state they were in when word closed, just in case you made a mistake and exited without saving the doc? Autosave doesn't do this.

            • Hi Jim – Re: Versioning: Have you tried saving your documents to Office Live Workspaces? That way you’ll get server side versioning. Check-out a demo at: ask.officelive.com/.../180.aspx Re: big big request: Please keep an eye on the Office 2010 Engineering blog at blogs.technet.com/office2010 … in the near future they’ll announce something that I think you’ll like. - Jonathan Bailor (MS)

            • hello everyone,

              I'm using Word2010 and use tables. My problem is  when a page break occurs, word splits the table on both sites. But I like it on one page, how can I do this? Is there an option which I can activate, so the tables stick together? Thanks!

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