What’s New in Office 2010

Microsoft Office 2010 is officially released, with some new features and small changes that make this productivity suite easier to use.  The list of changes is pretty long, so we will cover them in a series of posts over the next couple of months, as I get a chance to play with the new Office myself.

The first thing to talk about is what has not changed, and that is the new ribbon user interface.  Those clients who made the upgrade to Office 2007 has a very negative initial response to the replacement of the familiar drop down menu system with the new tabbed ribbon menu system.  I got a lot of calls on the theme of “where’s my stuff?’” for a while, but most users adjusted to this change in a couple of days to maybe a week or two.  The ribbon is back in 2010, and likely to stay, as Microsoft rolling out out the ribbon to other products as well.

As a concession to users who were frustrated the the contents of the old File menu hiding under the Office Button in the upper left hand corner of the window, Redmond has added a File tab and ribbon to Office 2010.  This is a change I like, because I think it will help Office 2003 users who are upgrade to 2010 have an easier time getting used to the new layout.

Another feature that I really like is a carry over from the Windows 7 operating system – the Jump Lists.  Now when you want to open a file a jump list of your most recently opened documents will appear to the right of the menu item.  This also works in some of the commands such as Save As and Print, with the Jump List providing many new options beyond what was available under the old menu system.

I have always found it to be worth the upgrade to the newest version of Office, and I have to say the Office 2010 is no exception.  So my early recommendation is if you are still on Office 2003 or XP, you should definitely budget for 2010.  If you are using Office 2007, you might be ok waiting a bit, especially if you just upgraded in he last year.  But most users will find many useful feature in the new productivity suite that will make the change worthwhile.  We will be addressing other benefits in future blog articles.

0

About the Author:

I am a cybersecurity and IT instructor, cybersecurity analyst, pen-tester, trainer, and speaker. I am an owner of the WyzCo Group Inc. In addition to consulting on security products and services, I also conduct security audits, compliance audits, vulnerability assessments and penetration tests. I also teach Cybersecurity Awareness Training classes. I work as an information technology and cybersecurity instructor for several training and certification organizations. I have worked in corporate, military, government, and workforce development training environments I am a frequent speaker at professional conferences such as the Minnesota Bloggers Conference, Secure360 Security Conference in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, the (ISC)2 World Congress 2016, and the ISSA International Conference 2017, and many local community organizations, including Chambers of Commerce, SCORE, and several school districts. I have been blogging on cybersecurity since 2006 at http://wyzguyscybersecurity.com

Add a Comment


This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.