microsoft office

Azure, Yammer help shape next-gen Microsoft Office

In a break from the past, Microsoft's Office team has begun working much more closely with other groups, especially the Windows Azure, SQL Server, and Windows Intune teams -- all of which are part of another business unit, Microsoft's Server and Tools Business.

"Before, we had to land in very complementary dates," explained Jeff Teper, corporate vice president of Office Servers and Services. "But now, if Azure has a new feature, we can say we'd like to do work around it." With services, "there's no magic date when a computer has … Read more

How Microsoft is shifting the Office trains into high gear

Microsoft's Office team has run like clockwork for at least the past decade. The 5,000 or so Office engineers delivered a new version of Office every two and a half to three years without fail.

But these days, two or three years between new product releases is considered an eternity. While it's all well and good for the trains to run on time, the trains need to run a lot faster. In addition, the various Office client, server, and services trains don't all need to be on the same schedule these days.

Microsoft's Office team … Read more

Microsoft's Q3 profits up despite PC market slump

In spite of declining PC sales and cautious chipmakers, Microsoft fared well in the third quarter.

The software giant reported third quarter revenue of $20.49 billion or 72 cents a share, missing analyst expectations on revenue by a fraction. Operating income was $7.61 billion while net income stood at $6.06 billion.

Wall Street expected Microsoft to report third quarter earnings of 68 cents a share on revenue of $20.5 billion.

It's a bottom-line win, and a top-line loss.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said … Read more

Who needs MS Office for iOS and Android? CloudOn's here now

Those of you waiting for Microsoft to unveil a version of Office for iOS or Android should stop waiting and take CloudOn's Office app for a spin.

Reports of Microsoft bringing Office to the iPhone, iPad, and Android devices have been in the wind for the past year.

Initial rumors pointed to a launch date of last November. The timeframe then slipped to last month. And now an alleged Microsoft road map suggests that a mobile version of Office won't appear until later next year.

The head of the Microsoft Office division recently suggested that iOS and Android users try Microsoft's SkyDrive app. … Read more

No Microsoft Office for iOS, Android until fall 2014?

An alleged road map for Microsoft's coming Gemini wave of Office updates, if accurate, indicates Microsoft's Office for iOS and Android -- as well as Outlook for Windows RT -- might not happen as soon as many had hoped for and expected.

A source of mine shared what appears to me to be a real road map for Gemini.

It kicks off with Gemini wave 1.0, which includes the Blue metro-style/Windows Store complements to the core set of Office products -- namely, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. From what I've heard previously, these four apps will be more touch-centric and will work on Windows 8 and Windows RT. … Read more

Microsoft ending support for Office for Mac 2008

Microsoft announced today that it will end support for Office 2008 for Mac on April 9.

Office for OS X has been a staple in integrating OS X systems with many work environments that rely on Microsoft's popular office productivity suite. With its Mac Business Unit, Microsoft has maintained a dedicated development team for its Mac software which has spearheaded development of Office 2004, 2008, and the latest 2011 and 365 offerings.

With this development, those who use Office 2008 will still be able to do so, but will not be able to get any official support for the … Read more

Google's Quickoffice comes to Android, iPhone

Some competitors would figure if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. But when it comes to Google's strategy for competing with Microsoft's productivity suite, the company is trying to do both in a way.

Last night, Google released Android and iPhone versions of its Quickoffice software for handling Office files. The software, which lets people view and edit Excel, Word, and PowerPoint files, runs natively on various devices the way Office does, not in the cloud the way Google Apps does.

The software, available to customers of the company's Google Apps for Business service, is on … Read more

My Google spreadsheet fail

I'm a cloud-computing, Chrome OS fanboy for the most part. But today was one of of those days I was glad to have old-school Mac and Windows PCs lying around my home office.

I'm no power user, but Google Docs suits me for word processing, while Google Sheets works fine for creating spreadsheets. However, when it comes to importing and editing files from the incumbent power, Microsoft Office, Google just isn't meeting even my low-end needs.

Google handles such documents -- in either the older .doc and .xls formats, and the newer .docx and .xlsx formats -- … Read more

Office 365 and Yammer integration: What's coming

On March 19, day one of Microsoft's annual Convergence conference, company officials shed more light on how Yammer's enterprise social-networking technology will be integrated into Office 365 and SharePoint in the coming year-plus.

Microsoft officials originally shared a road map regarding this integration in November. But today, officials provided more dates and more details around the integration of Yammer feeds into SharePoint.

Last fall, Microsoft officials said in the "immediate future" Yammer and SharePoint would be unified via a single ID/sign-on, shared document-management capabilities and feed aggregation. In the longer term, the Softies said, the … Read more

Microsoft offers students three months free of Office 365

Microsoft is dangling a new offer to get students to try its Office 365 University software.

As of today, students with a qualifying .edu e-mail address can register to receive three months free of Office 365 University and an extra 20GB of space for their SkyDrive online storage. Share the offer on Facebook and you'll get an additional three free months of Office 365.

Geared for college students and teachers, a license for Office 365 University costs $79.99 for four years and is good for up to two PCs or Macs. The educational suite includes the same applications … Read more