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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  • A Question, I Made a PowerPoint presentation in 2010 that runs 1 hr. and 7 min.  It has music with it.  PowerPoint says it is converting it to video and may take time.  It has been running for 22 hours and shows no progress in the task bar.  Program offers no errors or problems.  Claims to be doing its job.  How long do I have to wait?  I could write the code in long hand almost as fast.

  • @Warren Simmons - Sorry to hear you're running into problems with converting the presentation to video. This shouldn't be happening, and in particular, some progress should be happening on the progress bar.

    Our task bar is based on which slide we're currently exporting, so it sounds like we're not even making it past the first slide. If you could share the file with me (allhuan AT microsoft DOT com) or just the details of what's on that first slide, I'd love to take a look and try to see what we're running into.

    Thanks for your feedback, Warren.

    -Allen Huang

    PowerPoint Program Manager

  • For Allen Huang.  I would love to send you this program if I could find a way.  The file is about 965,456 KB and will not go via E-mail any way I try.  Can I save it to a different file type?  Or is there a better way.  I even tried to save the first ten slides as a print file and send them, but that didn't work.  Any suggestions?  I have several major presentations coming up in the near future and really need to be able to convert them for DVD.  I will send you an E-mail via my personal account with my contact information if you can use it.  

    Warren

  • Latest softwares download.

  • Here is all the information I think you may want.  First slide is built on blank from choices of new slide.  Theme is office, Used text box to add: "Beaumont Presbyterian Church", second text box to add: "Our First 125 Years".  Font was Old English Script.Show starts automaticly with first slide.  Sound starts then also and runs through out.  Transition is 1.07 seconds and slide advances after 18 seconds.  This applies to all. Audio playback is loop until stopped and across slides.Fade in 1,50 and no fade out. No Picture effects. View is color and normal.  Show is from beginning with no animation and nothing used on the design tab.  I hope this helps.  Still won't save as WMV or convert either.  Thanks, Warren

  • David,

    To your point about Outlook sync, the problem is with the Blackberry redirector rather than with Outlook 2010. RIM will have to rewrite its sync software since CDO 1.21 is no longer supported on Outlook 2010. Hope that helps.

  • @Warren Did you end up sending me an email with your contact info? Thank you so much for following up with some info. I haven't been able to figure out what you're running into, but I can give you some details on sending me your file via email.

  • Yes, I did send you an E-mail with my contact info included.  Anything you can help me with I would appreciate greatly.  Warren

  • @Warren - I apologize about this, but I don't seem to have gotten your email. Would you mind re-sending your email address?

    Thanks,

    Allen

  • Sent it to you via my yahoo mail address.

    oldwacisa@yahoo.com

    Thanks, Warren

  • My XP -64 is a faithful and stable system. I am puzzled that Office 10 beta cannot be installed and woder if the full version will be the same. I wont downgrade to XP -32 and still a long way from seeing Windows 7 as a major advantage to me. Has anyone else managed to load Office 10 beta on a system running XP -64.......and yes my system has service pack 2 and all available upgrades!

  • How do I reset the frequency of the auto recovery feature of power point 2010 beta?  The program spends more time recovering than I get to spend working on a project.  

  • Dear Takeshi,

    When I installed Office 2010 beta, the release notes promised me a discount on the final version of the Office when beta expires. Where is it?

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