After introducing it officially back in July, Microsoft have now launched the final version of the long-awaited icrosoft Office 2010.
I tested both the Technical Preview and the Beta version released months ago, and happily I've found a bunch of new features and improvements in the final version. For starters, the Microsoft Office 2010 Home and Business pack includes five apps, namely Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote.
Another addition that spans every application in Office 2010 is Backstage View. This is essentially the ‘File’ tab as seen in Office 2003 et al and, unlike Office 2007 and the Office 2010 Technical Preview, it’s actually labelled as such, rather than as the ‘Office Button’ seen in both of those. This piece of semantics should help people migrating from Office 2003, but Backstage View itself is a massive improvement on the ‘File’ tab of old as it presents a consistent, unified appearance for many of the functions that are universal to all the applications. Particularly beneficial are the printing options, where you can change the page properties, preview the outcomes and execute print jobs all from one screen. This is also where you can manage permissions for collaborative documents, an area that’s much enhanced in 2010.
