Every single Microsoft Office application has its own set of utilities to serve a particular set of audiences. This time around, we will explain another critical Office application that serves as a great utility for a large number of professionals in all sorts of businesses, helping them build a spectrum of things, from a network design to a flow chart, from a dynamic business process to a data driven diagram and the list goes on and on.

Without much ado, let’s get down to the deliverables of Visio 2010, the latest Visio from Microsoft.

1. Simplified diagramming tools and Intuitive UI: With Visio 2010, you are sure to save a lot of time as the UI has been simplified to get the new users get along with the tools lot faster than before. With Ribbon UI in place, the features are easily accessible from the front panel itself and the bundling of features is done in such a manner that you will hardly need to explore some feature with Visio 2010.

2. Align shapes quickly and easily: Add and align shapes accurately with features such as the Quick Shapes Mini Toolbar, automatic layout adjustment, enhanced dynamic grid and page Auto Size. Break large and complex diagrams using Subprocesses and containers to group related shapes visually and logically. A subprocess is nothing but a mini-diagram on a different page that links to a Subprocess shape in a larger, bigger diagram. This is to break complex processes in several diagrams of lesser complexity and more manageable sections. Containers are meant to organize several sets of shapes and identify the relationship between the shapes.

3. Rich gallery of shapes and visuals: With Visio 2010, you can add a glitter to your diagrams and make it more appealing and professional-looking with no added efforts on your shoulder. Visio 2010 comes with a rich gallery of themes, modern shapes and visuals and that’s not all. You can preview everything live to see things in effect.

4. Cross-verify against established business rules and logics: With Visio 2010, you can verify your diagrams against standard business rules followed within your company and logics defined. This will add a lot of accuracy and save time which otherwise gets wasted in trouble-shooting at some later stage.

5. Ability to connect your diagram with data sources: With Visio 2010, you can connect your diagrams with any OLEDB (Object Linking and Embedding Database) or ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) data source such as Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, SharePoint Foundation etc. using Data Selector and similar options within Visio 2010.

6. Share interactive, refreshable, data-linked diagrams with others via their Web browsers: With Visio 2010, sharing your dynamic, data-linked diagrams with your workgroup or your clients is far easier than before. You can share your diagrams and data visuals over a web browser and any changes you make to your hosted file will be immediately reflected for anyone viewing the file.

7. With Visio 2010, you can display real-time data embedded within the shapes of your visual diagram, using all possible graphics such as color, icons, symbols, and data bars.

8. Visio 2010 helps you keep the linked data in your diagrams always updated without any additional effort using a feature called Automatic Refresh. You can refresh data automatically at by defining a specific time interval, or refresh it manually at any time with a click of a button.

Editions of Visio 2010

There are three available editions of Visio 2010 and the better edition comes with more professional features added to it. Choose the one you think would suit the best to your professional needs.

• Microsoft Visio Standard 2010
• Microsoft Visio Professional 2010
• Microsoft Visio Premium 2010

Microsoft Publisher is another critical Office application that’s widely used by web developers and designers for creating websites and web templates through a quick and intuitive User Interface. And now with the arrival of Office 2010, Microsoft has added flurry of features to the existing capabilities of Publisher and packaged it well in Microsoft Publisher 2010.
Here’s everything new that has been added in Microsoft Publisher 2010. Take a look !

Ribbon UI

The ribbon, part of the Microsoft Office Fluent user interface (UI) has now been integrated in Publisher 2010 as well. With Ribbon interface, the accessibility to mostly used features will become far easier, saving time for the developers. This would provide quicker access to all the commands and enables users to do their own customizations. For instance, you can create your self-defined tabs to contain frequently used commands according to your preference.

Backstage view

Just like Ribbon UI, Office Backstage is also now an integral part of the Fluent UI throughout the Office application suite. The main function of Backstage view remains somewhat similar to Ribbon UI, that is, providing direct access to frequently used features from the File tab itself and helping users manage their Publisher 2010 files more effectively.

Clutter-free Workspace

In the Publisher 2010′s workspace, users will only see object boundaries when they would require them and would see alignment guides when they would need them (for instance, when a user tries to drag an object). Publisher users can also move swiftly from one page to another by using the new page navigation pane, which displays single-page or double-page thumbnails.

Integrated print and preview experience

In Publisher 2010, Print and Print Preview are integrated into single display, making it far easier for viewing the preview of any page and giving the Print command there and then. Earlier, one had to see Preview first and if everything looked fine then give a separate command for printing the page but with Publisher 2010, both the features are integrated as a single operation.

Saving file as .pdf or .xps

This feature has been introduced in Access 2010 as well. Users can now save files in the .pdf or .xps file format and can easily distribute their files through web or other mediums.Also .pdf files can be password-protected for providing limited access to the documents.

64-bit edition of Publisher 2010

Publisher 2010 64-bit edition is also available for Office users. It is backward-compatible with other versions of Publisher but can only be installed on Windows 64-bit operating systems.

This certainly includes the ability to make print adjustments as required while at the same time, viewing the effect of the changes in a larger preview of their publication. Users can view multiple pages at the same time, view page boundaries, page numbers, and sheet rulers while in print preview.

Get Microsoft Publisher 2010

Now, there are two ways by which you can get latest version of Microsoft Publisher:

1. Buy Microsoft Office 2010 Professional (Disc Version). Only Professional version of Office 2010 includes Microsoft Publisher 2010. You can buy Microsoft Office 2010 Professional at a discounted price from Amazon so go buy Microsoft Office 2010 Professional (Disc Version) right away !

2. Buy Microsoft Publisher 2010 separately. Again the price from Amazon is discounted so go buy Microsoft Publisher 2010 from Amazon.

Microsoft Access 2010 is one of the most extensively used office applications, primarily by IT professionals and enterprises. Microsoft Access is an RDBMS from Microsoft that basically provides a combined pool of Database management, software development tools, presented in a user-friendly GUI so that any programmer, developer or IT administrator can create, manage databases and build software applications by making use of the databases.

Now, with the latest release of Access 2010, Microsoft has made some critical additions to the feature set and capabilities of Access 2007, making it more productive for IT professionals and business users.

New features in Microsoft Access 2010

1. Ability to create Web databases: With the use of MS Access within Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, one can create a Web database using Access 2010. Front end users can use the database through a browser window. The design changes can be done by the Database administrator through MS Access 2010.

One must note that all of the features of desktop version of Microsoft Access 2010 are not replicated in the web version as well. Alternatively, the left out features can still be utilized in the web version by making use of other newly added features, namely calculated fields, data macros and similar others.

2. Export data to PDF and XPS format: This feature was a much requested feature and has finally been added in the latest version, that is, within Microsoft Access 2010. You can now export your data from Access 2010 application into .xps file format (XML Paper Specification) or .pdf file format (Portable Document Format) for easier distribution of your data via email or other sharing methods.

3. Ability to connect to a particular Web service as an “External data source”: With Microsoft Access 2010, you can now connect with a web service as an external data source. This could prove very useful for web developers and programmers who wanted to use their Access databases to be effectively used for their web services.

4. Backstage view: Backstage view and Ribbon UI have both been provided to all the office applications and therefore provided in Access 2010 as well. The Backstage view is accessible from the File tab and it contains immediate access to commands which user applies to an entire database, such as ‘compact and repair’.

5. Enhanced security features and strong integration with Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010: These additions would help users manage data more effectively and allow making information tracking applications more secure than before.

Get Microsoft Access 2010

Now, there are two ways by which you can get latest version of Microsoft Access:

1. Buy Microsoft Office 2010 Professional (Disc Version). Only Professional version of Office 2010 includes Microsoft Access 2010. You can buy Microsoft Office 2010 Professional at a discounted price from Amazon so go buy it !

2. Buy Microsoft Access 2010 separately. Again the price from Amazon is discounted so go buy Microsoft Access 2010 from Amazon.

Although Microsoft released Office 2010 last week for purchase through Online stores as well as retails outlets, another alternative way by which Microsoft has been providing trial version of Office 2010 to end consumers is by pre-installing Office 2010 on new computing devices(laptops, netbooks) sold by leading device manufacturers such as Dell, HP, Lenovo etc.

The motive behind providing pre-installed Office 2010 trial version is to let people explore the latest features of Office 2010 and unlock the full features and capabilities by upgrading their Office suite  with a Product Key Card.

Upgrading Office 2010 through a Product key card is something new for the ‘Office’ users as this method has been introduced for the first time by Microsoft so here’s everything you need to know about Product key card, how to use it, where to find it and method to upgrade your Office 2010 trial version.

Office 2010 Product Key Card

Product Key Card is a simple way to upgrade your pre-loaded trial version of Office 2010 on a new PC to full version of Office 2010. It must be noted that Product Key Card is particularly meant for “new PCs with pre-loaded Office 2010 trial version”. Existing PCs with beta version of Office 2010 or older version of Office cannot upgrade through Product Key Card.

More details about Product Key Card:

• It includes a 25-character Product Key. You do not get any disc with it.
• Every Product Key Card is licensed for one installation on one PC only
• License cannot be transferred to another PC
• Backup disc available

Advantages of buying Product Key Card

• If you’ve bought a new PC (desktop, laptop, netbook), you can get Office 2010 at a discounted price with Product key Card
• It offers great value for single license users
• It’s quick to install. Just like unlocking any software application to unleash full features and capabilities

Steps to install and activate Office 2010 using Product Key Card

• Confirm your PC meets the .
• Locate your Product Key in your Office 2010 Product Key Card.
• Check to see if your PC is preloaded with Office 2010. To do so, click the Windows Start menu, and then click All Programs. If you see “Office 2010,” Office is preloaded.
• If your machine is preloaded with a trial version of Office 2010 then click the Windows Start Menu, and then click Office 2010.
• On the startup screen, look for “Right tick mark” symbol, and simply click Activate to start activation.
• When prompted to enter your 25-character Product Key, just enter your product key.
• Your trial version of Office 2010 is upgraded to full version now.

Where to buy Office 2010 Product Key Card

• You can buy Office 2010 Product Key Card through any Retail outlet or websites of hardware manufacturers
• Alternately, you can buy a Product key card through Amazon.com

With close to 10 million beta testers of Office 2010, the latest productivity suite from Microsoft became a rage, much before becoming available for public release recently. Since Office beta got released, millions of people have got their hands on the latest features of Office 2010 and have been using Office 2010 during last 8 months or so.

It wasn’t surprising though that many beta testers found it a little tough to getting used to Office 2010 immediately. Also, people wanted to learn more about the features of office 2010, which they had never seen before. To address these concerns and create more excitement among the public for Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft came up with some awesome introductory videos and training tutorials of Office 2010 applications.

Hundreds of beta testers did their bit as well by uploading Office 2010 training videos on Youtube, helping other users understand and utilize the full capabilities of Office 2010.

We went through all those videos out there and picked the best 10 “Must-Watch” videos about Office 2010 applications, which are enough to explain everything about Office 2010 features and capabilities.

So, if you’re geared up to dig more into Office 2010 applications and use your applications more efficiently, don’t miss the videos featured below….

Don’t tell us you haven’t yet downloaded your copy of Office 2010. It’s a Must-have. Don’t you dare miss it !

#1 : Office 2010: The Movie video

Brief-up: This movie isn’t actually meant to educate you but rather turn you excited about the all new Office 2010.

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#2: Microsoft Office 2010 Introduction video

Brief-up: This introduces Office 2010 with all its feature brief-up and giving a overview of the capabilities of the suite.

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#3: Microsoft Word 2010 video

Brief-up: This video takes you through Word 2010, the most popular office application and latest added features.

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#4 Microsoft Excel 2010 video

Brief-up: Catch how you can work on heavy datasheets with ease using Office 2010.

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#5: Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 video

Brief-up: This video shows a hands-on review of PowerPoint 2010 and what’s new in it.

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#6: Microsoft Outlook 2010 video

Brief-up: This video shows off the features and capabilities of Outlook 2010.

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#7: Microsoft Office 2010 Mobile video

Brief-up: This video explain about Microsoft Office 2010 Mobile, the mobile version of Office 2010.

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#8: Microsoft OneNote 2010 video

Brief-up: Catch the video tutorial of OneNote 2010, its features and newly introduced capabilities.

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#9: Microsoft Office 2010 Web Apps video

Brief-up: This video brings Office web apps into action. Check out the video, it’s worth a complete watch!

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#10: Office 2010 Professional: Technical Preview video

Brief-up: This video is all about the professional version of Office 2010. Take a look !

Since Office 2010 has gone out there for sale, a lot of folks have been repeatedly asking why they should buy the new Office version. In our last post, we answered this query by describing Office 2010 features in details.

Still, a large chunk of people are asking: “What’s so special about Office 2010 that’s missing from Office 2007 ?”

In other words, many folks are just looking for a head-to-head comparison chart between Office 2010 and office 2007, detailing what’s new Office 2010 has to offer to existing Office 2007 users.

So, there you have a quick and clear comparison chart between Office 2007 and Office 2010, giving bit-by-bit comparison of Office 2010′s latest added features over Office 2007.

Office 2010 vs Office 2007 Comparison Chart

As Office 2010 has finally been made available to the users worldwide, everyone is asking just one question….

Is Office 2010 worth a buy ?

As we’ve been busy covering every bit of information, news and updates surrounding Office 2010 since it got announced back in 2009, we’ve certainly got the answer to the question quoted above.

Without much ado, let’s get down to real stuff…

Below are the Top 10 reasons why Office 2010 is a ‘Must-have’ productivity suite and why you shouldn’t give it a miss !

Here we go !

1. Take ‘Office’ virtually anywhere, any device. Work from PC, browser and mobile, wherever you want to.

The most emphasized statement you would hear from any Microsoft official about Office 2010 is being able to work on ‘Office’ from PC, browser and mobile. And yes, it is indeed the case with this installment of Office productivity suite.

With Microsoft introducing Office Web Apps, online team collaboration tools, offline-online dual support, high document fidelity, data sync ability, mobile support among countless other features in Office 2010, Office users will certainly get the ability to be productive, no matter which device they are onto.

2. Enhance productivity and time-efficiency (specially for enterprise users) using simplified online collaboration tools

One of the most sought-after features in Office 2010 is the ability for people to collaborate, real time on Office documents. This would enable teams to work together on Word, Excel and Powerpoint presentations in real-time. No matter, whether the people are located in different countries or elsewhere, Real-time collaboration will drastically reduce the latency in teamwork and help the teams work more efficiently.

Any changes made to any particular document will be seen LIVE by all other team members collaborating on the same document through internet. Such an ability would greatly enhance the throughout and help getting work done faster than ever.

3. Stay organized with enhanced Outlook 2010

Latest edition of Outlook 2010 brings conversation management tools, calendar preview, mail tips and several other utility features on the board. Here is an in-depth explanation of all the latest features in Outlook 2010. Outlook 2010 has also been given a UI facelift as Ribbon interface has finally been introduced in Outlook 2010 as well. Ribbon UI got introduced in Word, Excel and PowerPoint when 2007 version came out and now, the same UI has been introduced in Outlook for better User experience.

4. Enhanced data visualization with Excel 2010

MS Excel application is already one of the most extensively used productivity tools ever created and with Excel 2010, business users will get to have Sparklines, a new feature addition that will provide enhanced data visualizations, showing data trends with ease.

Online collaboration on Excel datasheets will be a huge advantage, especially for accounting professionals who have to get their data collection always up to date. Here is an in-depth explanation on all the features of Excel 2010.

5. Utilize cutting-edge audio/video & animation enhancements with PowerPoint 2010

Capabilities of PowerPoint have been greatly enhanced in PowerPoint 2010 with features such as Photo editing, video editing, advanced transition effects etc. Office 2010 users can now feel assured that they won’t have to open Photoshop for all those small photo editing needs. Web based collaboration on presentations is an excellent asset too. Here’s more on PowerPoint 2010 features.

6. Office Web Apps, the biggest leap towards the future of computing.

Newly introduced Office Web Apps adds a whole new dimension to Office 2010 productivity suite, taking Office suite from desktop to cloud. With Office Web Apps, users are able to work on their documents online, with or without any native Office suite support. Office 2010 users are able to work on Word, Excel, PowerPoint documents online through their web browsers and the fidelity of Office 2010 documents is near 100%. Here’s more detailed explanation about Office web apps.

7. Feature add-ins in MS Word 2010

Office 2010 comes with a flurry of new features such as Image background removal, Instant screenshots, collaborative document editing, Art effects in Word Art, Artistic Effects among several other features. Here’s a detailed explanation of all the Word 2010 features.

8. Protection from malicious emails with capability of ‘Protected Viewing’ of documents

No matter how good your email service is, there will always remain a possibility that the document you just downloaded from your email might be carrying a malicious script. To avoid any damage to your computer and precious documents/data, Office 2010 comes with a ‘Protected Viewing’ option. This option opens the suspected document in a sandbox mode where the malicious script, if it is, isn’t allowed to execute at all.

9. Tight integration with other Microsoft services such as SkyDrive, Hotmail, giving a comprehensive productivity

With recent integration of Office Web Apps and Skydrive(Cloud storage service), you can forget to keep an eye over the data storage limits on your cloud based skydrive account. And very soon, Office web apps will get tightly integrated with Hotmail as well. Hence, with Office 2010 and Office web apps, you are sure to have an integrated solution to all your needs, whether on desktop or on cloud.

10. Productivity, Productivity, Productivity !!

A majority of Office users are quite happy with previous versions of Office suite, mainly Office 2003. Even Office 2007 has not been adopted to the deepest. And the reason that users of older Office versions quote while denying an Office version upgrade is…

“When we can still get our work done with older Office suite, why “upgrade” ?”

The answer is : Productivity, Productivity, Productivity !!

The whole difference lies in productivity. A particular task that could surely be done with Office 2003 applications can be done far more efficiently with Office 2010, saving precious time & efforts, which eventually makes the “version upgrade” worth it !

There are more reasons than the above 10 cited reasons which makes, Office 2010 upgrade, a must-do but the top 10 have been explained here. If you haven’t secured your copy of Office 2010 till now, go buy it right now !!

This week, we witnessed yet another launch of the next successor of the ‘Office productivity suite’, Office 2010. It surely is a great software package for individual as well as enterprise users but few things that were quoted during the consumer launch of Office 2010 were a little tough to digest.

One such statement that raised a lot of eyebrows is…

“1 billion people rely on Office to get things done at work, home and school”

Now Office productivity suite is surely one of the oldest softwares in Technology business and one of the widely accepted softwares as well but 1 billion people ? That sounds a little over the board.

Well, here’s the truth behind this extrapolated figure of 1 billion Office users

The figure has been estimated by ComScore, a data analytics company that took a number of factors into account while estimating the total number of Office 2010 users across the globe. Here are the untold facts behind the estimation.

1. ComScore estimated ‘PCs installed with any version of Office’, not ‘Users’.

2. ComScore included all those PCs that had some trail version of Office installed, which may or may not be upgraded by the users.

3. 1 billion figure included pirated versions of Office installations as well. As piracy is fairly prevalent across the globe, this could have really pushed the figure of total Office users by huge scale.

4. As ComScore counted PCs not users, there could be decent chances of plenty of users running Office productivity suite on multiple machines, so that implies less users but more machines with Office installed.

The above four factors largely contributed to ComScore’s estimation cross a figure of 1 billion.

As far as users go, there are about 750 million users worldwide using Office productivity suite for getting their work done.

By the way, if you still haven’t bought your own copy of Office 2010, rush to download it right away.

The BIG Day has finally arrived. Microsoft Office 2010, along with Microsoft Visio 2010 and Microsoft Project 2010 has finally been made available for consumers worldwide. Users can simply jump to online Microsoft Store and buy & download their very own copy of Office 2010.

Users can choose from three major versions of Office 2010 productivity suite, namely

1. Office Home & Business 2010
2. Office Home & Student 2010
3. Office Professional 2010

Users can also choose to download a trial version of Office 2010 and upgrade their Trial versions after using it for a while and getting a taste of new features and add-ins in Office 2010 suite. This is a part of Microsoft’s latest approach of giving users an option of  Try & Buy Office 2010 .

According to Microsoft’s official announcement, Microsoft has collaborated with global hardware partners to ensure that over 100 million PCs, laptops, Netbooks etc get sold with Office Starter 2010 pre-loaded onto them. Users can later upgrade their Office Starter 2010 version by buying Product Key Card and self-upgrading their Office 2010 productivity suite.

Office Web Apps are a major draw for the end users in this installment of Office productivity suite.

So go and get your copy of Office 2010 right away !