Microsoft Office 2010 an Overview of the Core Applications

8/2/2019 Microsoft Office 2010 an Overview of the Core Applications

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Microsoft Ofce 2010:An overview of the core applications


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Microsoft Excel 210 intoduces some

solid enhancements 3

Word 2010:Better design, more stability 6

Outlook 2010 includes some

notable renements 8

Microsoft Ofce OneNote 2010 includes

numerous improvements 12

Microsoft Access 2010 new feature overview 14

Ofce 2010 has generated a lot of positive feedback from those who have been

working with the Technical Preview. Now, with the release of the public beta

just around the corner, its time for some serious evaluation: Do the enhanced

features in Ofce 2010 warrant adoption?

This series looks at each of the core Ofce 2010 applications and highlights

the most notable changes -- like the improved stability and performance of the

new 64-bit version, a more customizable Ribbon, the Backstage interface for

handling le-specic tasks, and new tools such as Excels sparkline charts and

Outlooks Conversation View.


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Microsoft Excel 2010 introduces some

solid enhancements

Users wont see too much change from Excel 2007 to

Excel 2010. But even though the majority of features are

carried over, a few new twists have been added here and

there. To give number crunchers an idea of whats coming,

this post will look at some of the features I have found

while using Microsoft Ofce Excel 2010.

64-bit support

All the Ofce 2010 apps offer 64-bit support. I am including

it here because it will particularly benet Excel users,

enabling them to create worksheets up to 4GB in size. In

previous releases, such large workbooks were not the most

reliable and tended to crash a lot. Excel 2010s

64-bit support gets past this limit.

In my own use of Excel, I have yet to nd a need for a

spreadsheet that gets anywhere near the 4GB range. But

for those who do most of their accounting or planning in

Excel, this might be a top end feature.

Protected View fordownloaded items

In business today, spreadsheets live on the network and

very rarely on anyones desktop, which is good for disaster

recovery planning and backups and things like that.

However, depending on how clean and malware-free your

environment is, some Excel macros could have viruses or

other bad things in them. This is also true of items pulled in

from the Internet. Microsoft added a feature to Ofce 2010

that prevents editing of downloaded content without your

acknowledgement. To enable editing, you will have to click

the button shown in Figure A. Once you click the Enable

Editing button, the Excel sheet is fully active (external data

sources notwithstanding).

Ribbon customization

The Ribbon in all the Ofce 2010 applications is more

customizable than in Ofce 2007, allowing you to move

and add controls to suit your needs. The customization

tools are accessible by right-clicking a tab on the Ribbon

and choosing Customize The Ribbon. Figure B shows the

Excel Options dialog with a group added to the Home tab.

Slicers and sparklines

Working with pivot tables, in my experience, seems to run

the average Excel user off because they do not see the

immediate benet and frontline customization options a

pivot table can provide. Excel 2010 has made things a

bit easier by introducing a feature called the slicer, which

brings a snapshot view of a pivot table to the current

worksheet.

Slicers let you review the data without having to manipulate

the table. This can be useful when creating high-level

documents where only a section of the pivot table needs

to be shown. The slicer retrieves pivot table information, if

found within the workbook, and displays it in a chart-style

box for placement elsewhere. Figure C shows an example

of a slicer.

In this example, the pivot table was created on the same

worksheet as the slicers. The selected information in

Figure A


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the month slicer highlights corresponding information in

the other slicer and changed the pivot table to show the

values selected.

Excel 2010 also introduces a feature called sparklines

-- tiny charts that t into a cell. This allows you to create

a graphical representation right next to the data itself. For

example, suppose that in September I sold 50 widgets, but

in October I sold 500 widgets. To bring this to the attention

of a group reviewing the sales numbers, I could use a

sparkline chart to highlight the data within a single cell.

Figure D shows the number of widgets sold each month.Figure B

Figure C


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The sparkline chart depicting September vs. October sales

is highlighted in red.

Macro bug x

Although many of the Excel 2010 enhancements involve

new or improved features, a few problems have been

ironed out as well. For instance, Microsoft has corrected

a macro recording issue involving shapes. In Excel 2007,

if you resize a shape while recording a macro, the macro

wont do anything when you run it. If you look at the

code, youll see why: The entire macro is blank. This now

works in 2010, so you can record macros to automatically

manipulate shapes.

Additional resources

10 cool features to look forward to in Ofce 2010

Figure D
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Word 2010:Better design, more stability

Word 2010, the upcoming release of the worlds most

popular word processor, includes some new features and

carries over some existing ones from Word 2007. Heres a

look at what you can expect.

Interface changes

The Ribbon in Word 2010 (Figure A) is much the same as

the Ribbon in the Word 2007. The Ofce button is smaller

and more related to the application rather than the suite,

which is a great aesthetic touch. But the biggest change

in the Ofce button is the menu itself, called Backstage.

Although the Backstage menu is available in all Ofce 2010

applications, its most useful within Word.

When you click the Ofce button, a full screen menu

appears over the entire Word screen (Figure B). As you can

see, the Backstage menu provides information about the

current document and other application options, including:

Permissions -- security and editing rights

options for the document

Prepare For Distribution -- Check for issues

within the document concerning compatibility

and accessibility

Versions -- manage different versions of the

document

The right side of the Backstage menu shows a preview

of the current document and its properties. The menu

also contains the options previously found on the Ofce

menu or File menu, such as Open, Save, Save As, Recent

Documents, and Word Options.

Another new Ofce feature thats particularly handy in

Word is the Screenshot option on the Insert tab. It allows

you to insert a screen capture of an open window into the

document you are working on.

Working in Word 2010 is similar to working in Word 2007;

Figure A


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Figure B

however, I have found this version, even in Technical

Preview, to be more stable than its predecessor. My

opinion could change as the product gets closer to

release, but for now, I think one of the strongest features is

pure performance. The application will still crash if you do

something that isnt exactly intelligent (which I do on my

computer from time to time), but most of these issues for

me come from impatience in trying to accomplish a task.

The 2010 Ribbon also feels less cluttered and

overwhelming, possibly due to the features that were

moved to Backstage.

After writing several articles and other documents using

Word 2010, I love the application. The stability and 64-bit

code are great improvements (although they are Ofce-

wide and not limited to Word). Working in Word and using

the Ribbon has also gotten easier, because it seems less

busy and is not a new experience this time, as it was when

Ofce 2007 arrived. I encourage all of you to give the

application a test drive when it is available to you. I think it

will be worth considering for your organization.


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Outlook 2010 includes some notable renements

Outlook has been a fairly stable mail client since 2000

-- and its only getting better. The upcoming new release,

Outlook 2010, includes a few signicant differences from

previous versions. In this article, I will touch on some of

these new features.

Inbox Ribbon

One feature that stands out right away is the expanded

use of the Ribbon. No longer conned to just the message

windows, it now appears across the top of the Inbox as

well (Figure A).

Outlook 2010 also handles conversations in a new way.

The original ways we are all used to are still there, but con-

versation threading has been added. The implementation

isnt quite as perfect as I would like, as in it is currently

done using Subject lines, but it is a decent feature

nonetheless, and it makes email somewhat easier to

manage. Id like to see the feature use subject and sender

or message ID for grouping conversations, but that is

something for another discussion. Figure B shows the

threading (or conversation) with messages expanded

(email addresses have been removed).

Figure A

Figure B


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If a thread contains unread mail, it will appear in the folder

as unread with the new message displayed. Following the

subject of the message, the number of unread messages

in the thread will be displayed (Figure C). Notice that

some messages within the thread are in my Inbox and

others are in sent items. This grouping helps keep track

of all messages in a thread regardless of where they live

within your mailbox.

I was sure this feature was the next big thing until the par-

ticular thread shown above arrived. Yes, it was intended

as a test message. But when I expanded the thread to see

what it might look like, I saw the reason behind the need

for a different implementation of threading (Figure D).

Quick steps

Outlook 2010 introduces quick steps, an expedited way

to complete an action using predened or custom rules.

Several are included by default, such as To Manager.

When congured with your managers info, it will create a

copy of the selected message to send to your manager.

Another default quick step is FYI, which inserts FYI into

the subject of the forward rather than the ever-present FW.

The Ribbon in the Inbox is the rst place you will see

quick steps items. Figure E shows this view (expanded

for better visibility).

As you can see, quite a few options are already available.

But if you need to use a repetitive action that isnt listed

as a quick step, you can create your own by clicking

Create New or New Quick Step.

When creating a new quick step, you can select from a

subset of actions:

Move To Folder moves the selected

message(s) to a specied folder.

Categorize And Move sets a message cat-

egory and moves to a specied folder.

Flag And Move sets a message ag and move

to a specied folder.

New Email To sends a new message to the

specied recipient.

Forward To forwards the selected message(s)

to a specied recipient.

New Meeting creates a new meeting request.

Custom Action allows custom items to be

chosen for use as a quick step.

Note: Choosing Custom Action from the list will display a

large number of quick step actions.

Quick steps are much like rules in Outlook (which still ex-

ist), but they get toolbar buttons and shortcut keys

assigned to them for easier on-the-y use.

Figure C

Figure D


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Outlook 2010 has also revamped the contacts feature.

The Contacts folder looks much the same as before, but

contact details within a message have changed. The sum-

mary popup you see when you click on the name of the

sender in an email message is much improved, and the

Details dialog, which appears when you double-click on a

contact, is much easier to read and manage.

Figure F shows my contact card. Here, I can schedule a

meeting, IM, or call the user if I am signed into an instant

messaging application and see their presence and if my

environment supports these features. A tab at the bottom

of the dialog displays information about the contacts

organization.

Note: The contact information displayed in the contact

card is pulled from the Global Catalog Entry for your

Exchange environment, not from your personal contacts list.

Calendaring in Outlook 2010

The calendar remains largely unchanged in functionality

in the upcoming release. It does appear more streamlined

and in my opinion looks better than previous calendars.

The Ribbon is heavily incorporated for common tasks,

such as changing the view from Month to Week.

Calendar sharing, possible in previous releases, is more

prominent as in Outlook 2010. And schedules have

changed a bit. In previous releases, looking at a group

schedule opened a dialog box displaying the show time

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Figure E Figure F

Figure G


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as a portion of the selected users calendar. Outlook 2010

takes this a step further by showing your groups from

the scheduler in the left calendar pane and adding the

calendars of those on the list below each group.

Selecting a group displays a grid-like view of free/busy

data in the main Calendar window, similar to group

scheduling in previous versions. This occurs if the group is

too large for the side-by-side calendar display to t on the

screen. Selecting a single user from the list displays their

free/busy information as a calendar view next to your (or

any other) open calendars. If you have permissions to view

their calendar, the information is populated to replace the

free/busy info. Figure G shows a standard Calendar view

in Outlook 2010 and a Group Schedule view.

Additional resourcesOneNote 2010 includes numerous improvements


Ofce 2010 (technical preview) screenshots

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Microsoft Ofce OneNote 2010 includes

numerous improvements

Microsoft introduced OneNote in Ofce 2003 as a way to

provide a seamless note-taking environment that worked

as much like a spiral notebook as a computer would allow.

At rst glance, the application was pretty basic. It seemed

to me to be something to think about using, but not some-

thing I couldnt live without. But OneNote carried through to

Ofce 2007 and added some features, and it became more

useful. Now I do use it every day, and am not sure I could

manage without it.

OneNote 2010 includes some UI enhancements youll no-

tice right away (Figure A). The Ribbon has been added to

the application. In my opinion, this is a good thing because

it keeps the UI consistent across all Ofce applications.

And for note-taking, the Ribbon is actually a great tool.

A key feature of OneNote since version 1.0 is integrated

saving. This is likely one of the coolest features. When you

enter notes, the application saves automatically and all the

time. It works in this regard much like a paper notebook:

When you write it, there it is. (Figure B)

In OneNote 2010, notebooks can be edited by multiple

people. Previous versions allowed notebooks to be shared

among teams via SharePoint or network shares, but the

editing was not as real time as it is in the new version.

Note: OneNote 2010 still synchronizes changes to the

shared notebook as you enter them, but synchronization

has been improved to speed up visibility of changes in the

shared notebook.

Using OneNote always appealed to me for a few reasons.

When it was new, I wanted to give it a try. Later, it became

the easiest way to manage meeting notes and other

documentation. Now, it helps me stay organized in almost

all areas.

I have a PC at work and at home --

how can I get notes on both PCs?

There are ways to get this to work, and these methods

have been around since OneNotes inception. Using

removable media, you can create a shared notebook that

allows you to connect the notebook to multiple computers,

streamlining the keeping of notes.You can publish your

notes in a SharePoint environment to share them with a

team of colleagues, making the notes available to multiple

users across multiple PCs. And nally, heres a workaround

I came across by chance. Using Microsoft Live Sync, you

can create a shared notebook that synchronizes to the

cloud, allowing the notebook to be shared across multiple

PCs anywhere in the world.

Figure A
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I use Live Sync to share my notebooks with my laptop and

my work desktop even though I have my laptop at work

most days. This way, if I need to get notes from an email or

other document on my work PC, they can be added to One

Note and appear on my laptop without additional work. The

best part about syncing to the cloud is that the OneNote

team is working to include a similar cloud sync scenario

right in OneNote 2010 to eliminate the need to congure

Live Sync to manage notebooks.

Another feature I recently discovered is Side Notes.

OneNote allows you to create an electronic sticky note

for quick access to notes. (This may or may not replace

the stack of Post-Its on your desk.) Using a side note to

take quick notes about a task or project can be handy and

will provide all of the features of the full-blown OneNote

application. To access side notes, use the Windows Key

+ N combination from within OneNote or right-click the

OneNote tray icon and select new side note.

Will my side notes be kept forever

or do I need to transfer them to

OneNote?

Side notes, like all OneNote 2010 notes, are saved au-

tomatically. These notes are stored as new pages within

the location of Unled Notes, making them completely

searchable and accessible from within OneNote.

OneNote works extremely well on a desktop, notebook, or

tablet PC. Using OneNote on a tablet allows you to draw

and use your own handwriting on the screen -- handy

for a quick note in a meeting or to annotate an email you

received.

OneNote 2010 also supports linked notes. Linked notes

are placeholders to other items that are referenced within

OneNote. You have always been able to insert hyperlinks

to other sections of your notebooks. For example, work-

ing from a list of projects you may have is a great way to

see an overview of all the projects waiting for your atten-

tion. Keeping the details for each project in a separate

area for that project might help organize your thoughts a

bit better. Using hyperlinks, you can click on the list entry

and go directly to the page for the project.

With linked notes, you can create a link from OneNote to

other applications like Outlook or Word in a method thats

similar to using hyperlinks within OneNote. Note: Linked

note taking is supported only in notebooks that are saved

in the OneNote 2010 format.

Figure B


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Speaking of Outlook, tasks and meeting notes can be tak-

en and managed between Outlook and OneNote. When

you create a meeting in Outlook, you can create an entry

in OneNote for that meeting with the Meeting Notes but-

ton on the meeting request (assuming that both Outlook

and OneNote are installed). Working with tasks is done in

the opposite direction: While taking notes in OneNote you

can convert them to Outlook tasks, which will appear on

the task list in your mailbox, and manage them from either

OneNote or Outlook.

Have you ever found yourself wishing you could see

OneNote and the Web page or email you are working with

at the same time? I know I have. Working on something

online -- for example, booking a ight -- and having to

change between the browser and OneNote to keep track

of all the deals I found seems a bit of a hassle, but itwas the only way. Not in OneNote 2010. You can dock

OneNote to the desktop, which minimizes the Ribbon and

puts a single-column view of the current page on the right

of the screen, next to your other applications.

What else is added in 2010?

Microsoft has added a notebook recycle bin to help

retrieve or recover sections or pages of notes that may

have been deleted. Page versioning will display multipleversions of a note set. Authors shows (or hides) the

authors initials of a specic set of content. New context

menus for pasting content allow you to see additional

options when using Ctrl+V to paste content into OneNote.

Context-sensitive menus for right-click are similar to

those found in Word and other applications provide easy

access to OneNote shortcuts.

Note: Recycled notes and page revisions need to be

enabled before use.

This is just an overview of OneNote 2010, so we havent

covered all of the bells, whistles, and other features of the

application. Hopefully, you will give OneNote another look

and nd that it is a great all-around tool for school or for

business.


An early look at Ofce 2010


Ofce 2010 (technical preview) screenshots

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Microsoft Access 2010 new feature overview

By Derek Schauland

Microsoft Access is one of those applications you either

love or loathe. Some of the features are quite useful for

smaller databases, like address books and CD/DVD

collections, but the 2GB database le size limitation is

constricting. The Ofce 2010 release of Access offers some

improvements that make the application more usable,

including reliability enhancements.

Here, well look at some of these new and/or improved

items to bring you an overall picture of just what Access

2010 brings to the party this time around.

Web-ready database formatThe Web is the new desktop in some environments. The

Access team took this into consideration and provided a

Web-ready format for databases. While previous versions

of Access allowed publishing to the Web via scripting

technologies to access the data, Access 2010 makes

Web publication even easier by making use of the Web

Database type.

Macros

Another change to Access 2010 is the inclusion of a

better macro environment (Figure A). Macros function

more like SQL triggers. They can be launched condition-

ally based on actions taken within the database, which not

only improves performance, but also can improve the user

experience by allowing tasks to be automated.

Themes

Ofce themes are supported in Access 2010, making

customizations to the appearance of databases much easier

and more uniform than in the past. When using a form in Ac-

cess, you can apply a theme to it, similar to the way themescan be applied in Word and PowerPoint. This will help keep

the appearance of your forms unied across the application.

Themes can also be applied to reports created in Access.

Groups of elds

Access 2010 changes the way that elds are added to the

database by using a better list of elds to insert. The Data

Figure A


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Type gallery replaces the Add Field task pane and contains

all of the common eld types for use in a database. One

handy new feature here allows you to add certain groups of

elds, called Quick Start selections, as a collection rather

than adding one eld at a time. For example, when you

select the Address Quick Start, multiple elds are inserted:

* Address

* City

* Country_Location

* State

* Zip

In addition to the data types already available in the Add

Field y-out, you can add your own to the list. You can

save selected elds as new, user-dened data types.

When saving elds for later use, you cancategorize them under any section within the Add Fields

y-out, with the default being User Dened. Figure B

shows the Add Field option.

Reporting

Access 2010 allows conditional formatting within reports,

showing the information that meets a certain condition

or set of conditions. To use or change the conditional

formatting rules in a report, open the report and choose

the Format tab on the Ribbon. Then, select the Condi-tional Formatting option.

The Conditional Formatting Rules Manager (Figure C)

lists the rules that will be displayed. Just choose the eld

for which you want to add/remove/modify formatting

rules. The rules for the selected eld are displayed in a

box below.

Expression and Query Builder use

Intellisense

Microsoft has included Intellisense in the Expression

and Query Builder portions of Access. Intellisense helps

complete the eld names and other items you might use in

these areas. This reduces the margin of error when working

with queries and expressions, as well as the time spent

looking up the spelling of eld names in large databases.

Figure B

Figure C

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t d k f CNET N t k I C t N t k I 235 S d St t S F i CA 94105 U S A

Conclusion

These are a few of the key features I have discovered

when using Access 2010. The biggest items by far for

me are the macro changes and allowing them to function

similarly to SQL Triggers. Access 2010 also seems a bit

friendlier than previous versions. Now if only we could getMicrosoft to increase the 2GB limit on le sizes.

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