Word 2010 Beta is Available

***This software will expire in October 2010***

I'm loving this beta right now. A few suggestions though. In the final build it would be great if tabs were added to switch between multiple documents in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel with Ctrl+Tab? Also, would it be possible to add more colors schemes like say the 16 basic colors of Windows 7 or just make the whole thing use Aero? It would make the Office System more streamlined with Windows 7/Vista. One last thing though is I think the Ribbon is great especially now but I know there are others that swear by the old menu system and it would be great to make it an option to revert to the old system so that everyone could be happy. Thanks for having this blog to allow us to follow your developments. JJ

I know this isn't the place to submit this, but I can't find a way to submit Office 2007 SP2 bugs. Below details a problem experienced with textbox, PNG images, and postscript printing. I thank you in advance for any assistance that can be provided. We use a fair number of older Word documents that contain PNG images and text boxes i.e. hierarchical charts. The document appears fine in print preview, but when it is printed to a Postscript printer, text in the text boxes is cut off almost like the image or its margins overlap. For example, if there is a PNG image on the left and a text box on the right and they do NOT visually overlap in any way, then the 50%+ of the text in the text box will be cut off from the left. The kicker?? The same documents print fine when printed to the same printer from even the same computer WHEN OFFICE 2007 SP2 IS UNINSTALLED. Any ideas? Given the number of documents, replacing the images is not feasible. It is unlikely the users will be willing to re-create these charts with SmartArt as well. There is a good chance that the users will eventually have to have SP2 or later if not a newer version of Office, so I hope to find a solution to the problem. Many thanks and if there are any questions, feel free to ask! Thanks. Alex

Is there any portuguese prooging tool I can install with Oficce 2010?

Vmorato@hotmail.com

having downloaded the beta and installed it, I find that I can no-longer open documents from Ofice Live Workspace. i tried to re-install the add-in but errors stating that it cannot find a office 2003 /2007. I have noticed there is now an office upload centre, but cannot det it to work either. It seems to me that i have to download the file, edit it and then upload it. Surely this defeats the object of seamless integration of office and office live workspace (which I believe is sharepoint based?). I am not willing to move to office web apps as my docuemnts are for my website which is hosted on office live small business. Hopefully for RTM this issue will be resolved?

A couple of questions/concerns about Word 2010: 1) Is there any rhyme or reason to the circumstances under which the "Backstage view" (File drop-down) opens by default to the Info section versus the Recent section? I have been experimenting with the beta for a couple of days and I can't figure out the logic here. At first I thought the program might default to Recent before I opened or saved a doc and then would default to Info, but that doesn't seem to be happening consistently. 2) Why does this drop-down fill the entire screen? I think users are going to be very confused about how to close it. In Word 2007, they could click in the current document to close the File drop-down; that option is no longer available because the drop-down obscures the document completely. Although I realize the drop-down can be closed either by pressing the Esc key or by clicking the label for any other tab, that's not particularly intuitive and I'm not sure most users will figure it out. 3) In addition, I'm not sure the emphasis on "Info" (Properties?) makes sense. As a trainer and someone who has worked in law firms (as a word processor) for 23 years, I am at a loss as to why Microsoft decided to clutter up the screen with a bunch of stuff that people who simply want to open, close, or save their files aren't interested in seeing. It would be far less confusing -- and would give users far more choice -- if "Info" (and the other commands) were an optional fly-out from a narrow drop-down menu. I read that Microsoft eliminated the Office Button and replaced it with the File drop-down at least in part because some users didn't realize the Office Button existed or didn't understand how to use it. However, it seems to me that the new drop-down is significantly less user-friendly than the one in Word 2007. At the same time, it imposes a Microsoftian way of doing things that just doesn't jibe with what I see out in the real world. Just my two cents. Thanks for listening. Jan Berinstein

CompuSavvy

Computer Training & Consulting

When right clicking on text in Word, the right-click menu opens, then closes.

I have Microsoft Word Starter on my Laptop with Vista operating system. It seems to be incapabable of working with out a continous connection to the internet!!! Is this normal? I am already beginning to regret installing an experimental program on my computer and wondering if it will give me problems when I try to remove it. John

I use office 2007,

But Is there any portuguese prooging tool I can install with Oficce 2010?

I can't find any answer to this: Are true small caps supported in the current beta? Even when I use fonts that have true small cap glyps, I still seem to be getting the "synthetic" small caps from past versions of Word.

Media and Blogs have highlighting the new effects for text and pictures and collaborative write but what I'm really interested is in the academic production capabilities of next Office Word.

Office 2007 done a great job on text structure (much better manage of numbered sections and sub-sections) and the nicest XML Bibliography Database. But I feel a lack of correct management of legends and cross-references still. Word continues to get lost when you add a picture or a table in middle of a sequence, the index update correct (when manually forced to it) but cross references normally not. No easy way to use legends bind to section numeration. Re-positioning pictures along text is a real pain, much less than old releases but a pain.

So my question is: What Office Word will do for better academic text production? (Sorry posting it here, but I can't find any forum for Word 2010, don't take me wrong, I love Office and still use it, even if each academic article or tesis become a war with the machine...)

Marc-- No, Word doesn't support OpenType small caps in 2010. Publisher, however, does offer this support. -Stuart

WORD: Can't use right mouse click with WORD - the menu closes immediately after I right click.

If your job is writing letters with MS-Word, the whole day long... after a week you would like to verify something you wrote to X, but MS-WORD (all versions) keep only up to 9 files you saved! THIS HAS BEEN MY BIGGEST PROBLEM during all these years. WHY NOT LET THE USER DECIDE HOW MANY FILES HE WANTS TO SEE IN THE LIST! This is the Biggest MINUS for Word as far as my experience goes.

Will Word 2010 support more than nine levels in lists? I work for a large government agency, and it's very often that I create software documentation (e.g. SRS, SDS, etc) that must go to many levels of indentation. Support for more than nine levels would allow our organization to use the Outline View (or new Document Map?) to quickly and easily navigate/manipule documents that could easily span many hundreds of pages. This single feature is causing us to evaluate other authoring tool alternatives, which is a shame, because I have grown to love the rich set of features that Word offers, including change tracking, the ability to leave comments, and now the ability to collaboratively edit. Please let me know if there are plans to include this feature in the release. I am confident that the availability of this feature would help us avoid evaluating other alternatives, and greatly speed the acquisition process once the non-beta version of Word 2010 becomes avaiable.