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By admin, July 28, 2009

Microsoft Office Application suite has unfortunately been one of the most likely targets for hackers and malware creaters. Their goal is try and find a loophole or an exploitable bug within Microsoft Office, which can be compromised to get the malicious code running on end user computers.

Generally, the malware attack associated with Office applications comprises of a malicious file pretending to be a authentic Microsoft Office document (Word, Excel, Powerpoint..), not only to the end user but also to the office application. Hackers usually dig into file-format parsing and methods that Office applications employ to read any office document.

This time, with the release of Microsoft Office 2010, hacks and malware threats have been addressed on priority by Microsoft and a resilient security workflow has been architectured, to keep the end users more secure against any plausible threats.

The MS Office security team has worked out different security layers which are as follows:

• Enhanced File Blocking
• Binary file-validation system
• Introducing ‘Protected View’ in Sandbox

Enhanced File Blocking: This feature basically looks at the document file type and checks if it has been blocked by Office application or not. Earlier, we couldn’t configure this security check within the application but with Microsoft Office 2010, it is possible. Other technical aspects related to File blocking have also been improvised.

Binary file-validation system: This new validation system is there to validate the older Office file formats and check if it conforms to the documented Office formats or not.

‘Protected View’ : If you realise that some office document of yours has either been blocked or declared invalid by the Office application, but you still want to see what’s there in the file, or you’re well assured that the file is not malicious then you can view that file in a protected mode, a read-only view of the document within a sandbox. This way, you need not be bothered about your viewing of malicious file, causing any damage to your local system or data. As malicious file is opened in a sandbox, it has no chance of getting out of it and effect your system.

As Brad Albrecht, Senior Security PM at Microsoft quotes…

Any file that reaches your machine will get inspected for the file format being blocked, tested for validity, and maybe shown in a read-only protected state. All this happens in real time, with an indistinguishable performance impact on your load time

Another goal of the Office security team was to keep all security measures remain unnoticable to the end users and not effect the performance and speed of the Office 2010 applications. This goal seems to be accomplished as well.

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By admin, July 26, 2009

Microsoft Excel, one of the high utility office applications has got its upgraded successor, Microsoft Excel 2010.

There has been some major upgradation and feature additions in Microsoft Excel 2010 compared to its older version. We have described the office 2010 features in-brief here and about Microsoft Word 2010 here. We have listed Microsoft Excel 2010 features below.

1.Microsoft Excel 2010 spreadsheets can now run in the browser

In this release, Microsoft Excel 2010 has got its online counterpart, which enables its users to open and edit excel spreadsheets in web browser as well. This goes straight against Google spreadsheets, and it is proven now that Microsoft Excel Browser version is more feature-rich than Google spreadsheets. You can publish your excel spreadsheet on web through the desktop version itself.

2. Sparklines feature

Microsoft Excel 2010 brings along a new feature called Sparklines, which gives a visual snapshot image of the data trends within a single cell. This feature makes charting different data ranges in one spreadsheet much easier. It also makes it easier to get a rough idea of data trends. This feature has been added, mainly as a commercial utility but it can be useful for students for research purposes.

3. Online collaboration

With Microsoft Excel 2010, we can also share our spreadsheets via the browser with other users and set special permissions for access rights of various collaborating users. Such a collaborative feature can really help Mobile businesses to work together on a single spreadsheet at any given time

In future, we would give information about Powerpoint 2010, Outlook 2010 and other office applications.

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By admin, July 24, 2009

Microsoft has finally unveiled the next version of Microsoft Office suite, Microsoft Office 2010 for limited technical preview. All the Office applications within the suite have been upgraded and the most popular application, Microsoft Word 2010 has got some major upgrades in terms of features and enhancements.

Below is the in-depth description about various features, which have been introduced in Microsoft Word 2010.

1. Browser version of Microsoft Word 2010

The most significant addition to Microsoft Word 2010 is the introduction of its browser version, apart of the exisitng desktop version. With this latest addition, the word document can be published on web from the desktop version itself and can be edited via browser version as well. This eliminates the need of having desktop version of Microsoft Word 2010 on every computer you work with.

2. Document Fidelity

Fidelity is the ability to recreate the original source. With both the browser and desktop versions of Microsoft Word 2010, the user may like to switch between the two versions, while working on the same word document. Now, Microsoft has given special attention in preserving the fidelity of the Word document. This means that the appearance of the Word document in browser version will be almost similar to appearance of the same document in desktop version. Formatting, margins, fonts etc will not be distorted at all.

3. Instant Screenshot

With Microsoft Word 2010, there is a ‘screenshot’ button integrated within the ribbon, which enables the user to take an instant screenshot of the background of the word application. It has been assumed that the user wants to take the screenshot, present just below the word 2010 application. In case, the user wants to take a custom screenshot, then an option is provided called ‘Screen Clipping’, which enables the user to adjust the screenshot size and embed it directly into the word document.

4. Images background removal

Another feature that has been introduced in Microsoft Word 2010 is ‘background image removal’. This is a feature which eliminates the need of using Adobe Photoshop for the same purpose of removing background image. In the ribbon, click on ‘Format’ within ‘Picture tools’ and select the option ‘Remove background’. Further, mark the area which you want to keep. Once selected, the feature removes the image background. The accuracy of ‘background scrapping’ largely depends on the type of image. A high contrast image will produce better results than a low contrast image. This feature will produce satisfactory results for basic images.

5. Collaborative Document Editing

This feature is exclusive to desktop version of Microsoft Office 2010. Using this new feature, multiple users can co-edit same word document simultaneously. Both the collaborating users are notified about the current editor of the word document.

6. More Art Effects in WordArt

More designs have been added to existing WordArt collection, such as ‘Neon effects’, Glass effect and more such variations, which were earlier possible exclusively with Photoshop.

7. Artistic Effects

This is another image based feature which was exclusive to Photoshop and has now been included within Word application. You can now add artistic effects such as ‘Pencil effect’, ‘Cartoon effect’, ‘blur effect’, ‘Black & White effect’ among many other effects to any of your image inserted in Word document.

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By admin, July 16, 2009

Microsoft has finally unveiled the ‘technical preview’ of Microsoft Office 2010, the successor to their Desktop application suite MS Office 2007. Microsoft is so excited about its next Office suite that it has created a movie for this technical preview as well.

The highlight in Microsoft Office 2010 is the launch of Web based MS Office Applications suite. With Microsoft Office 2010, the users can choose to work between their typical desktop based office applications or working the same way on web based MS Office applications via web browser. It’s analogous to integrating Google Docs with desktop based MS Office applications(Google Docs is only for mere analogy). Although Web versions of Office applications are limited in features compared to Desktop versions, but the fact that Web based MS Office is FREE to use justifies limited capabilities in it.

Apart from turning to Cloud for web based MS Office , many other features have also been added to current office applications suite. They have been described below.

Microsoft Office 2010 : Features and Updates

Microsoft Word 2010

In the upcoming Office 2010, when the word documents created in desktop based Word 2010 will be accessed or edited in the browser version of Word 2010, the ‘Document Fidelity’ will be preserved. It means that whether you’re using browser version or desktop version, the formatting and overall appearance of the article under edit will remain nearly the same. The documents can be published to the browser via the desktop version itself.

With Desktop version of Word 2010, multiple users will be able to do simultaneous document editing. This ability to collaboratively work on a single document is not available in the web version of Word 2010.

Microsoft Excel 2010

Excel spreadsheets also have the browser version apart from the desktop one. Although, some of the desktop version’s features are absent in browser version, MS Excel spreadsheets is much feature-rich compared to Google Spreadsheets. An innovative feature called Sparklines has been introduced by Microsoft, which visually represents the data trend over a time period.

Collaborative editing feature is also present in Excel 2010.

Microsoft PowerPoint 2010

Two new features have been introduced to the early set of Powerpoint tools. Image editing and Video editing tools. The editing tools offer basic functionality of editing such as image/video cropping. Users can also collaborate on the same powerpoint presentation using live sharing with other users.

Hence, powerpoint presentations can be shared with other people in real-time mode(with the help of Microsoft Sharepoint). The presentations created on desktop version can be published on web as well. Microsoft Powerpoint 2010 Browser version doesn’t allow video editing features.

Microsoft Outlook 2010

The User Interface of this desktop based email client has been enhanced to make the emails look more like a conversation hierarchy. Search functionality has been improvised as well, making it much easier to filter content hidden within email conversations. The users can also choose to ignore selective email conversations if they wish to.

Microsoft SharePoint 2010

Like Microsoft Outlook, Sharepoint has also got a ribbon User Interface, making it look more like a typical Microsoft product, just like MS Word and others. Now, you can tag documents with the name of the author and can share files more seemlessly.

With enhanced and cloud based version of Microsoft Office coming in the year 2010, the new age enterprises which are already relying on Cloud based services will surely get their hands on Microsoft’s cloud apps.