Considering Office 2010? Here's what our beta users love about it

Did you know that over 5.5 million users have downloaded our Office 2010 Beta?  This makes Office 2010 Beta the largest beta program we have had in the history of Office.  We asked this broad set of beta users for feedback, and the response has been terrific.   The level of positive feedback we have received makes us feel both proud (of representing this business) and humble (about working on a product that is important to so many people).  We are also very excited about the many great stories our customers are telling about using this new product.  Here are some interesting facts that I want to share from my read of the feedback we received.

For more than 20 years, we've worked on Office with a clear aspiration: to give our users the best productivity experience.    Nine out of 10 of our beta users found Office 2010 to be an improvement over their current productivity suite, and this fact becomes even more exciting considering the fact that 70% of beta users are actually users of Office 2007, our current release.    Here are some additional data points from our 2010 beta users:

  • First, 80% of beta users have encouraged others to download.
  • 75% of users think that the new Backstage view in each of the applications makes Office a better overall experience. Backstage is a new way to organize all the features and capabilities that you can do to the overall document/file (vs. the features and capabilities you would use within the document, which are organized in the Ribbon) - so this means you have an easy access to things like Sharing, Printing, and Managing permissions, etc.
  • There are quite a number of enhancements in Outlook for 2010, and Conversation View is one of them. In fact, 3 out of 4 of those who have used it say that it makes their inbox less cluttered!
  • For those of you who are heavy users of Excel, you might be interested to know that 4 out of 5 say that Sparklines makes their data in Excel easier to interpret. Sparklines is a new, graphical representation of data that fits in a cell.
  • 80% of beta users that have used the Office Web Apps say it is easier to access and edits docs from anywhere they have an internet connection.

As you read some of this, you might be wondering what Office 2010 looks like.  You might be curious to see what Backstage would allow you to do.  Or you might be asking what Sparklines would look like for that data set you are working on.  So, go ahead and try the Office 2010 Beta!!  Then tell us what you think.  I am looking forward to hearing from you.

 -- Takeshi Numoto

Corporate Vice President, Office Product Management Group

 

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Comments: (43) Collapse

  • There Are to manny faults in the system, The first fault I found was that it takes quite a while for the diferent programs to start, I am a middle class citizen trying to go to school, I don't have enough money to buy Microsoft Office, OpenOffice is anoying, If you are going to put together software then the least you can do is make the software afordable, and simple

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  • I thoroughly enjoy using the Office 2010 Beta.  I have 2003 but the 2010 is so much better.  I'm still learning about the various features and the newsletter  updates are so very helpful.  This has definetely made my job a lot easier and my documents more professional looking.  Thank you.

  • Still has the same issues as 2007 no colors for calendar just catagories that when in series you can not change single meeting. Not only is it not even compatible with 2007, but was told to unistall 2007 I did and still had same issues with there beta key for 2010 this is steping backwards as you lost more than you gained.

  • Kan Office 2010 Word rätta stavfel på svenska?Tacksam för svar.

  • I think the Navigator view in Access 2007 is a step backwards, and was hoping for an improvement in Access 2010.  The navigator view is cumbersome compared to Access 2003, and especially when having to develop in Access 2007 for sites using Access 2003.

  • very good

  • Great evolution of 2007, it reminds me of the second generation of a brand new car model.  The first release has some big changes everyone needs to adjust to, and then you've refined it to the next level.  I've been impressed with the level of feedback some were offered in the early alpha stages, great work!

  • I have tried and tried to find out a way to move things into One Note.  I simply can not figure it out.

  • I've been using Office 2010 Beta for several weeks now and it has become a better way for me to access my folders and files.  I tried Sparklines yesterday and although the idea sounded good, I either entered information incorrectly or I don't really know what I am supposed to be doing as I ddn't get anything out of it; just a blank cell with a couple of lines or just one line that really didn't signify anything to me.  I work with Word and Excel a great deal but when working with Outlook, there are some aspects that really don't work as well as I might have expected and some things don't work at all.  Example is that I had a Macro that copied all JPG and GIF graphics that came with a message, whereas now I have to copy each graphick one by one.  I do like the fact though that I can copy and paste from Outlook into Word and all of the graphics are present.  I still like to copy some of the graphics to keep within my archives but now I have to do that one picture at a time whereas before with the macro, I could copy all of the graphics instantlky.  There are good points and bad points with every new program but this version definitely as more good points.  RHartsook

  • I have Office 2007 on my home PC and downloaded the beta onto my notebook.  I have been unable to figure how to import my email addresses from Outlook 2007 to the Outlook 2010 on my notebook.  I tried copying the .pst file from my PC, but have been unable to import it.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  

  • I have downloaded the 2010 Beta and have two questions: When using word, where do I find spell check and I can seem to find the header/footer under view.  Please help.  thanks.

  • MY WIFE AND I HAVE BEEN USING 2010 OFFICE BETA  FOR FEW WEEKS NOW AND THE PROGRAMS ARE OUTSTANDING.

  • I've been using Office 2010 now for about 2 months and like it a lot for the most part.  A few things to note:

    First, I used to get quite a few crashes at the beginning but it seems a lot more stable now.  But I still get a MAPI error in Outlook  several times a day but it doesn't cause Outlook to crash and there seems to be no loss of functionality.  

    Second, in PowerPoint notes section it would be nice to be able to change the font colour of the text. The font colour command is there but no matter which colour you choose, the result is still black.

    Third, while I love the index based search feature for finding archival e-mails, it currently takes about 4 hours to do the initial indexing when you first open a .pst file.  The indexing hogs both disk and CPU resources and absolutely hijacks the entire system, making it unuseable for other tasks while the index is running.

    Fourth, PowerPoint is currently incompatible to create WebEx .ucf files.  Even if you save the file in compatibility mode for 2003 and 2007, it still won't convert properly, with text and graphics missing on about 50% of the slides.

    Lastly, Outlook 2010 no does not synchronize with my Blackberry for calendaring, tasks and contacts.  This is a show-stopper for me and will prevent me from upgrading unless it can be fixed.

    Other than those items though, I really lke the functionality improvements.

  • I've been using the Beta version of Office Pro 2010 since it was first made available, yet no one has contacted me or surveyed me for feedback, unlike my experience with 2002(3) and 2006.

    Outlook, for me, has always been the weak spot in the Office suite, and there are some things I like in the new version.  But, I have been afraid to migrate to it because no plans that I have seen tell me when 2010 will be generally available and how it will be priced.  File management in previous versions of Outlook has been cluncky and inaccurate, and it takes some knowledge of what is going on under the hood (behind the GUI) to make it perform the way it should out of the box.

    I have kept lots of notes as I've used Office 2010, but no one has asked for them.  Why is that?

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