Microsoft Office 2010 - Set Out Of Office In Outlook 2010

Microsoft Office 2010 (codenamed Office 14) is a version of the Microsoft Office productivity suite for Microsoft Windows. It is the successor to Microsoft Office 2007 and the predecessor to Microsoft Office 2013. Office 2010 includes extended file format support, user interface improvements, and a changed user experience. A 64-bit version of Office 2010 is available, but not for Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. It is the first version of the productivity suite to ship in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

On April 15, 2010, Office 2010 was released to manufacturing; the suite was subsequently made available for retail and online purchase on June 15, 2010. Office 2010 is the first version to require product activation for volume licensing editions. Unlike previous versions of the productivity suite, every application in Office 2010 features the ribbon as its user primary user interface. Mainstream support ended on October 13, 2015; extended support ends on October 13, 2020.

Office 2010 marks the debut of Office Web Apps, online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote that work in web browsers. Office Starter 2010, a new edition of Office, replaced the low-end home productivity software, Microsoft Works. Office Mobile 2010, an update to Microsoft's mobile productivity suite, was released on May 12, 2010 as a free upgrade from the Windows Phone Store for devices running Windows Mobile 6.5 and a previous version of Office Mobile.

As of December 31, 2011, approximately 200 million licenses of Office 2010 have been sold. Microsoft reportedly discontinued sales of Office 2010 on January 31, 2013.

Office 2010 is the last version of Microsoft Office to run on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, as its successor, Office 2013, does not support these operating systems.

Development

Development started in 2007 while Microsoft was finishing work on Office 12, released as Microsoft Office 2007. The version number 13 was skipped because of the fear of the number 13. It was previously thought that Office 2010 (then called Office 14) would ship in the first half of 2009.

On April 15, 2009, Microsoft confirmed that Office 2010 would be released in the first half of 2010. They announced on May 12, 2009, at a Tech Ed event, a trial version of the 64-bit edition. The Technical Preview 1 (Version: 14.0.4006.1010) was leaked on May 15, 2009.

An internal post-beta build was leaked on July 12, 2009. This was newer than the official preview build and included a "Limestone" internal test application (note: the EULA indicates Beta 2). On July 13, 2009, Microsoft announced Office 2010 at its Worldwide Partner Conference 2009.

On July 14, 2009, Microsoft started to send out invitations on Microsoft Connect to test an official preview build of Office 2010. On August 30, 2009, the beta build 4417 was leaked on the internet via torrents.

The public beta was available to subscribers of TechNet, MSDN and Microsoft Connect users on November 16, 2009. On November 18, 2009, the beta was officially released to the general public at the Microsoft Office Beta website, which was originally launched by Microsoft on November 11, 2009 to provide screenshots of the new office suite. Office 2010 Beta was a free, fully functional version and expired on October 31, 2010.

In an effort to help customers and partners with deployment of Office 2010, Microsoft launched an Office 2010 application compatibility program with tools and guidance available for download. On February 5, 2010, the official release candidate build 4734.1000 was available to Connect and MSDN testers. It was leaked to torrent sites. A few days after, the RTM Escrow build was leaked.

Microsoft announced the RTM on April 15, 2010, and that the final version was to have speech technologies for use with text to speech in Microsoft OneNote, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Outlook, and Microsoft Word. Office 2010 was to be originally released to business customers on May 12, 2010, however it was made available to Business customers with Software Assurance on April 27, 2010, and to other Volume Licensing Customers on May 1. MSDN and TechNet subscribers have been able to download the RTM version since April 22, 2010. The RTM version number is 14.0.4763.1000.

On June 15, 2010, Office 2010 reached general availability.

Service packs

Microsoft released a total of two service packs for Office 2010 that were primarily intended to address software bugs; both updates were released concurrently with service packs for Microsoft's SharePoint 2010 product.

On November 17, 2010, Microsoft sent out invitations to a select number of testers at the Microsoft Connect website portal to test the beta release of Microsoft Office 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1). An announcement was made by Microsoft on May 16, 2011 that it would be made available by the end of June. SP1 was officially released by Microsoft on June 27, 2011 and included numerous fixes for issues related to performance, security, and stability, as well as backward compatibility improvements for features related to previous versions of the productivity suite. SP1 is a cumulative update that includes all previous updates, as well as exclusive fixes; a list of exclusive fixes was released by Microsoft. SP1 also introduced additional features for the main Access, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word apps. OneNote 2010 SP1, for example, introduced the ability to open notebooks stored in OneDrive directly from within the app itself. With its release, the use of Office Web Apps in the Google Chrome web browser was officially supported by Microsoft for the first time.

On April 8, 2013, a beta build of Office 2010 Service Pack 2 (SP2) was released. SP2 was a cumulative update that was officially released on July 16, 2013 and included all of the previous fixes for compatibility, performance, stability, and security issues, as well as numerous exclusive fixes. As was the case wth SP1, a list of fixes exclusive to SP2 was released by Microsoft. Microsoft claimed that, with the release of SP2, the Office 2010 suite would feature improved compatibility with its Internet Explorer 10, Office 2013, SharePoint 2013, and Windows 8 products. Because SP2 is cumulative, SP1 is not a prerequisite for its installation.

New features

User interface

Office 2010 is more "role-based" than previous versions; there are features tailored to employees in "roles such as research and development professionals, sales people, and human resources." In its Internet implementation, Office 2010 incorporates features of SharePoint Server and borrows from "Web 2.0" ideas.

Backstage view

A new interface, referred to as the Backstage view, is included in all Office 2010 apps and replaces the Office menu that was introduced in Office 2007. The Backstage view is designed to facilitate access to file management tasks, including compatibility, metadata, permission, printing, and sharing tasks, and to consolidate them within a single location. The term "backstage" refers to the area behind the stage in a theatre where behind the scenes activities and preparations commenceâ€"accordingly, the backstage view in Office is an interface dedicated to document activities and preparations prior to saving or sharing. The Backstage view consists of both a left-hand navigation pane and an adjacent main pane. The navigation pane includes a series of vertically arranged common commands, such as commands to open or save files, and tabs that, when opened, expose file management tasks and contextual information within the main pane. A customizable number of recently opened docume nts can also be displayed within the navigation pane.

Tasks that are accessed via tabs in the main Backstage view pane are categorized into separate groups that are able to display contextual information pertinent to app configurations, files, and tasks; each tab displays contextual information relevant to that tab. On the Info tab in Word, for example, document metadata details are displayed within the Prepare for Sharing group to inform users of potentially personal information before the file is shared with other users, whereas the Help tab displays Office version information and product licensing status. In Office 2007, this information was included within separate user interface locations.

The Backstage view, like the ribbon, is extensible; developers can add their own commands, tabs, tasks, and related information.

File tab

The new File tab replaces the Office button introduced in Office 2007 and offers similar functionality. The previous Office buttonâ€"a round button adorned with the Microsoft Office logoâ€"had a different appearance from the ribbon tabs in the Office 2007 interface and was positioned away from them, with a target that extended toward the upper left corner of the screen in accordance with Fitts's law. Microsoft has stated that this button enhanced the usability of Office, but many users saw it as "branding decoration, rather than a functional button." As a result, in Office 2010 it was replaced with a File tab that appears next to the other tabs in the ribbon instead of the upper left-hand corner of the screen. The File tab is colored on a per-app basis (e.g., it is colored orange in Outlook). Opening the File tab displays the new Backstage view.

Ribbon customization

The ribbon interface, introduced in Office 2007, is fully customizable and included in all apps in Office 2010. Users can add or rename custom ribbon tabs and groups, add additional commands to the default tabs, and hide tabs that are not used. Users can also export or import any customization changes made to the ribbon (to facilitate backups, deployment, or sharing) or reset all ribbon customizations.

Other UI changes

• The default color scheme in Office 2010 is silver instead of blue as in Office 2007. To improve accessibility and readability, the silver color scheme has been updated to feature a 5:1 contrast ratio.
• All app icons have been redesigned in Office 2010. The new icons are based on colors that correspond to their respective apps, as per previous releases, but with an increased emphasis on app letters.
• The Office 2010 splash screen has been redesigned from the one seen in Office 2007 and animates when an app is launched.

File formats

Microsoft Office 2010 includes updated support for ISO/IEC 29500:2008, the International Standard version of Office Open XML (OOXML) file format. Office 2010 provides read support for ECMA-376, read/write support for ISO/IEC 29500 Transitional, and read support for ISO/IEC 29500 Strict. In its pre-release form, however, Office 2010 only supported the Transitional variant, and not the Strict.

Microsoft Office 2010 also continued support for OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.1, which is a joint OASIS/ISO/IEC standard (ISO/IEC 26300:2006/Amd 1:2012 â€" Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.1.

Removed features

The following features are removed from Microsoft Office 2010.

Removed from the entire suite

• Document workspaces
• InterConnect support
• Microsoft Office Document Imaging
• Microsoft Office Document Scanning
• Office Startup Assistant
• Office Diagnostics
• Research and Reference pane for Internet Explorer
• Special symbol input add-in for East Asia versions
• Support for MSXML version 5
• Insert Clip Art task pane and various Clip Organizer features

Features removed from Microsoft Access

• Calendar control
• Replication Conflict Viewer
• Reports can no longer be exported as individual SNP files; Microsoft recommends that users export to PDF or XPS files
• Data access pages
• ISAM for Lotus 1-2-3. Paradox versions 3-7, Access 1.0, and Access 2.0 (Red 2 or Jet 2.0)

Features removed from Microsoft Excel

• The Conditional Sum and Lookup wizards have been deprecated; a new Function wizard offers similar functionality
• Smart tags have been deprecated in favor of an "additional actions" option when text within cells is selected

Features removed from Microsoft OneNote

• Live Session functionality, including the ability to start and join a live session; Microsoft touts the new Shared Notebook functionality as a replacement
• List and Document task panes are no longer available
• Options to create Outlook appointments or contacts
• Outlining toolbar
• SimpleImporter API

Features removed from Microsoft Outlook

• ANSI offline Outlook data files (.ost) for Exchange synchronization
• Business Contact Manager; Microsoft later released the add-in as an optional download for consumers who purchased either a retail edition of Office 2003 or 2007 that included the Business Contact Manager or a standalone version of Outlook 2003 or 2007, and also a retail version of Office 2010 Home and Business, Office 2010 Professional, or Outlook 2010
• Calendar rebasing tool
• DAV connectivity for HTTP account types
• Exchange 2000 connectivity
• Exchange Message Security feature support
• Postmarks
• Photo resize options for 640 x 480 and 800 x 600 display resolutions
• Search toolbar add-in

Features removed from Microsoft PowerPoint

• The maximum sound file size option has been replaced by the ability to embed files of any size, which provides similar options
• The ability to save a presentation as a web page

Features removed from Microsoft Project

• Custom forms support
• Office Web Components resource availability graphs
• Save as Excel Pivot Table has been deprecated; the ability to save directly into a Pivot Table is no longer available
• Various add-ins have been removed

Features removed from Microsoft Publisher

• The ability to create new web publications or websites; users can still edit publications or websites created in earlier versions of Publisher
• Various outdated publication settings

Features removed from Microsoft Visio

• Find Shape feature; users can instead search for new content from Office Online
• ShapeStudio, available in previous versions of the Visio software development kit (SDK), has been removed from the Visio 2010 SDK
• Stencil docking no longer allows users to dock to the top or bottom of the interface
• Various status bar items

Features removed from Microsoft Word

• AutoSummary feature
• Person Name smart tag
• Smart tag auto-recognition
• Support for Word Add-in Libraries (WLL)

Editions

Starter Edition

Office Starter 2010 was an ad-supported product that was discontinued in June 2012, prior to the release of Office 2013 and Windows 8. It included Word Starter and Excel Starter, reduced-functionality versions for viewing, editing, and creating documents. Office Starter 2010 was only available to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to preload on Windows PCs and was intended as a replacement for Microsoft Works; it is only compatible with Windows Vista and Windows 7. The advertisements are displayed in the lower right area of the task pane. It also includes PowerPoint Viewer 2010, to view and print PowerPoint slides and shows. Users who have Office Starter installed are allowed to load it on a USB drive and run it temporarily on any computer to which the USB drive is connected.

Office Starter 2010 is available to OEMs for pre-loading on new computers as part of the Office 2010 OEM Pre-installation Kit (OPK). It installs as a virtual application using Microsoft App-V application virtualization technology, and can therefore co-exist with full editions of Office. Office Starter 2010 omits several features available only in the full paid version of Microsoft Office. Word Starter cannot insert footnotes, endnotes, citations, indexes, captions, equations and SmartArt and does not support customizations, macros, change tracking, full screen reading and digital rights management. Excel Starter does not support PivotTables, PivotCharts, custom views, external data connections, error checking, calculation steps and circular references.

Comparison

Office Web Apps

Microsoft now offers a free web-based version of its Office productivity suite, known as Office Web Apps, that started shortly before Office 2010 was released to retail stores. Office Web Apps include online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. The web apps allow sharing and collaboration of documents and files and also feature user interfaces similar to their desktop counterparts. Office Web Apps were released to Windows Live Skydrive and SharePoint Workspace on June 2010. You may use the free web-based version of Office to create documents, and can download Office Viewers to view the documents on your system.

Office Mobile 2010

The office suite for Windows Mobile by Microsoft is updated together with Office 2010. Windows Mobile 6.5 or higher is required to run Microsoft Office Mobile 2010.
Some of the new features included are:

• Presentation Companion: The add-on to PowerPoint Mobile allows users to control a presentation through their Windows Phone and display speaker notes.
• Conversation View: Outlook Mobile threads related emails into a group for easier reading and management
• SharePoint Workspace Mobile: The new application allows users to sync documents from SharePoint servers directly to their Windows Phone for offline viewing and editing.
• Support for New Content in Office 2010 such as SmartArt graphics and charts

An upgrade for the existing Windows Mobile 6.5 Phones is provided via Windows Mobile Marketplace; a beta version is already available.

System requirements

According to Microsoft, before the development of Office 2010, "minimum hardware requirements have essentially doubled with each successive version of Office," which often prohibited customers from deploying the latest edition of the productivity suite unless they upgraded their existing systems or purchased new ones. As a result, the company specifically designed Office 2010 to be similar to Office 2007 in terms of its processor and memory system requirements. In addition, to accommodate use on smaller PCs, Office 2010 requires a minimum screen resolution of 1024 × 576, which is lower than that of Office 2007. However, hard disk space requirements have slightly increased when compared to its predecessor.

Reception

Critical reception

Office 2010 received mostly positive reviews upon its release, with particular praise for the modified Ribbon and the new Backstage view. Laptop Mag rated the suite 4 out of 5 stars, referring to it as “the best Office suite yet” because of the new customization options provided by the Ribbon, the new multimedia editing capabilities, a new option to share presentations online via PowerPoint, and application response times. The inclusion of OneNote in all retail versions of Office 2010 also received high praise. In a similar vein, PC Magazine also rated the suite 4 out of 5 stars because of its new multimedia editing capabilities. The inclusion of the Ribbon in all Office applications was received positively because it enhanced consistency and usability. The new Backstage view was also praised because of the way it exposes file management and printing options. However, PC Magazine expressed dissatisfaction with Microsoft Outlook, because it “hides or omit s options that are front and center in all other Office apps.” Outlook was also criticized for its apparent inability to only print a single page of an e-mail message. The stability of Office applications was also a concern, as crashes were experienced during tests. Nevertheless, Office 2010 was regarded as a "dazzlingly attractive upgrade” that received the magazine's Editors' Choice and Best of the Year 2010 accolades. Office 2010 also received positive reviews from Alphr, PC Advisor, PC World, and TechRadar.

Not all assessments and reviews were positive. Randall C. Kennedy, writing for InfoWorld considered the modified Ribbon in Office 2010 to be a "disorganized mess;” criticism was also leveled against the new Backstage view for being presented in a full-window pane, instead of a drop-down menu similar to Windows 7 applications that use the Ribbon and previous versions of the productivity suite. Sluggish performance was also a subject of criticism, though the review was written before development of the product had completed.

Reactions to the various product versions, including the 64-bit version of Office 2010, were mixed. Emil Protalinski, writing for Ars Technica, believed that Microsoft’s transition to a 64-bit version of the productivity suite would facilitate the industry’s adoption of 64-bit software. However, concerns about backward compatibility and performance issues were raised. After the product’s launch, Microsoft stated that "the 64-bit version of Office 2010 is likely to introduce compatibility issues" and recommended the 32-bit version for most users; the Office 2010 setup program installs the 32-bit version by default unless a 64-bit version is already installed on the target machine. In a departure from previous versions of Office, Microsoft did not offer an upgrade version of Office 2010â€"a move that was criticized for effectively increasing the cost of the productivity suite for users already running a previous version. While the new Product Key Card program was consid ered to be an alternative to an upgrade version because of its affordability when compared with a full retail purchase, it presented a limitation not seen with a full retail version in that its license prohibited the software from being transferred to another machine.

The Starter edition of Office 2010 received mostly positive reviews; a feature omitted from other editions of Office 2010 that received praise was To-Go Device Manager, which allowed users to copy Office 2010 Starter installation files to a USB flash drive and use its programs on another PC, even one where a version of Office was not installed. However, criticism was directed at the edition’s lack of functionality and its mandatory advertisements.

Sales

The initial two-week sales of Office 2010 were lower than those previously observed with the suite’s predecessor, Office 2007, a fact considered by Stephen Baker of NPD Group to be “disappointing.” Baker attributed this lack of sales to "a seasonally slow period for PC purchases" and an "increasingly saturated installed base." Free alternatives to the productivity suite, such as Google Docs, were not regarded as a contributing factor; however, this view was not shared by all journalists. In spite of initial sales that were lower than expected, sales of Office 2010â€"particularly consumer salesâ€"contributed to a record first-quarter profit for Microsoft during its 2011 fiscal year. While other products contributed to this record, Microsoft Business Division, the division responsible for Office, earned the highest percentage of total revenue during this time period. As of November 1, 2010, over six million copies of Office 2010 were sold, a figure that represented "more than 30 copies being sold every minute."

Details related to Microsoft's second-quarter earnings during the company's 2011 fiscal year were posted on January 27, 2011, showing that the company had set a record for second-quarter revenue of $19.95 billion. The Microsoft Business Division grew by 24% year-over-year, with Office 2010 becoming the fastest-selling consumer version of Office in history; license sales of Office 2010 were also "over 50% ahead of Office 2007 over an equivalent period following launch." Results during the company’s third-quarter 2011 fiscal year were later strong, with Microsoft's Business division expecting to see "Office sales exceed PC demand in fiscal 2011.”

On June 15, 2011, a year after Office 2010’s general availability, Microsoft Office corporate vice president Takeshi Numoto stated that deployment of the productivity suite among business customers was “five times faster” than that of its predecessor, Office 2007, and that the latest version was “the fastest-selling consumer version of Office ever” with a copy being sold every second since the product launched; the claim was previously made by Microsoft in January during the Consumer Electronics Show. Based on this claim, Network World estimated that an approximate 31.5 million licenses were sold since Office 2010’s launch. Office Web Apps proved to be popular as well, with Nuoto stating that it had seen over 50 million unique visitors since its launch. By July 2011, over 100 million licenses were sold, which contributed to record Q4 earnings and annual revenue. However, year-over-year consumer revenue for Office had declined by 8 percent, though revenue from Mi crosoft’s Business Division had increased by 27 percent during the same period.

During the second quarter of Microsoft’s 2012 fiscal year, the company reported a revenue of $20.9 billionâ€"another record for the companyâ€"with Office 2010 being a contributing factor, having sold nearly 200 million licenses as of December 31, 2011, in spite of declining Windows sales.

Microsoft reportedly discontinued sales of Office 2010 on January 31, 2013, just two days after its successor, Office 2013, reached general availability.