Office Software

A new Windows Live Essentials public beta will have deep hooks to multiple social networking, media-sharing, and Web mail services, as well as the new Office Web Apps, Microsoft announced Wednesday. The public beta will be available starting Thursday at the Windows Live site, although Microsoft has yet to say at what time.

The Live Essentials update focuses on making Windows more Web-friendly, without leaving users on the hook for uninstalling programs they don't want their computer to come with. The new betas of Windows Live Messenger, Writer, Mail, Movie Maker, and Photo Gallery will all connect to multiple … Read more

The Office 2011 for Mac preview was on display at an entertainment-related event put on by Microsoft this week.

Microsoft says the goal of this latest installment of Office for Mac is to bring the software more in line with the Windows user experience of the suite. What we see as the most notable addition to the Mac version is Outlook, the e-mail and productivity software Mac users have clamored for for years. We also noticed that like Office 2010 for Windows, the Mac version looks like it will share the same unified Ribbon interface features of its Windows counterpart … Read more

It's funny to think of the Xobni in-box tool in a box, but that's exactly what is about to happen; as soon as Wednesday, in fact.

A packaged version of Xobni is a new move for the product, traditionally a downloadable Windows add-on for Microsoft Outlook that can quickly index and search the contents of your in-box.

Having an Internet start-up gunning for retail store sales is interesting from a business perspective for two reasons. The first is clearly outreach; Xobni is striving to make its brand known to the same customer base who will buy Microsoft Office 2010 … Read more

Microsoft Office 2010 is now available for purchase. We wrote our review for the Office 2010 Professional RTM version, which is identical to the final public release, when Microsoft released it to businesses on May 18. If you didn't get a chance to check out the beta version or an  earlier release of Office 2010, you can now download a 30-day trial version to see which version best fits your needs.

Microsoft Office 2010 Home and Student ($149.99) includes Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft OneNote.

Microsoft Office 2010 Home and Business ($279.99) includes … Read more

As Office 2010 hits retail shelves on Tuesday, it finds itself competing with a host of free rivals, not the least of which are two new options from Microsoft itself.

Redmond has long had to deal with free alternatives, including everything from OpenOffice to Google Docs. And Microsoft has also battled both piracy and the "good enough" factor that prompts many consumers to stick with older software--sometimes several versions old.

With Office 2010, though, Microsoft has created a couple of its own new products that could create an opening for those who want Office, but don't want to pay. Most prominent are the free, browser-based products known as the Office Web Apps seen as a response to Google Docs. The software, which includes slimmed down versions of PowerPoint, Word, OneNote and Excel, are all free to consumers, along with 25 gigabytes of online storage via Windows Live. However, the applications only work when the browser is connected to the Internet.

The second free version of Office is Office Starter, a product that is replacing Microsoft Works as the software most consumers will get for free when they buy a new PC. Although it will give users a genuine, if limited version of both Excel and Word, Microsoft Senior Vice President Chris Capossela said that the goal is to make it easier, not harder to sell the full version of Office.

"Consumers have an Office experience right out of the box," Capossela said. Plus, since the bits for the full Office are on the PC, retailers can sell just a simple card with a product code--cards that can be placed not just in the software aisle, but also in other key selling locations, such as near new PCs and by the cash register.

As for the notion that customers will just stick with the starter edition, Capossela said he isn't too worried. He notes that Windows itself has a basic word processor--WordPad, included by default. And while Starter does include a bona fide version of Word and Excel, he said it lacks PowerPoint, OneNote, as well as many key spreadsheet and word-processing features. To drive that point home, Starter also has a small advertisement that rotates different messages reminding users what they are missing. … Read more

With Microsoft's Office Web Apps out in the wild, I thought it was time to try to test their limits.

For a while now, Microsoft has said that the experience on the iPhone would be similar to that in other mobile browsers--allowing document viewing, but not the editing and other features found in the full Web Apps.

Through some work, though, I managed to get the iPad to try to open up the full Office Web Apps. By clicking around various pages within Windows Live, I found some that had an option to click to switch to the &… Read more

Officially joining the browser-based productivity game, Microsoft late Monday released the browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

The Office Web Apps, as the programs are dubbed, are slimmed down versions of the desktop counterparts, allowing for document viewing, sharing, and lightweight editing. Consumers get free access to the tools, along with 25GB of storage as part of Windows Live, while businesses can also host their own version of the Web Apps using the latest version of Sharepoint. The main catch is that using the browser-based versions require an active Internet connection.

"We'll have more to share … Read more

Microsoft will on Tuesday issue 10 bulletins fixing 34 vulnerabilities affecting Windows, Office, and Internet Explorer.

Six of the bulletins affect Windows, with two of those rated critical by Microsoft. Two bulletins target Office, one targets both Windows and Office, and one critical bulletin affects Internet Explorer, according to a Microsoft Security Response Center blog post on Thursday.

Microsoft also said that with the June bulletins it will be closing Security Advisory 983438, which involves a vulnerability in SharePoint Services 3.0 and SharePoint Server 2007 that was disclosed in late April and which could lead to a cross-site scripting … Read more

The Flash Player may be banned from the iPad, but that's not keeping Adobe Systems from other efforts to leave its mark on the Apple devices. The latest development: new viewer software announced Monday that lets publishers create splashy digital versions of their magazines.

With the software, publishers can use Adobe's new InDesign CS5 layout software to create the digital version, then distribute the content packaged with the viewer. The showcase example: Conde Nast's iPad version of Wired, available through Apple's App Store.

The software hasn't been launched yet. "We aim to make our … Read more