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Microsoft Office 2010: Ready for Everyday Use?Now also available to private users, Microsoft’s new Office Suite 2010 is designed to provide constant access to documents – whether on desktop computers and smartphones or in the cloud. We’ve taken the new applications for a test drive to tell you how Office 2010 stacks up in everyday use.
Though it’s hard to think of a new feature as controversial and slow to catch on as the “ribbon” interface introduced in Office 2007, Microsoft has stuck to its guns and integrated the concept into Outlook, as well. The company has, however, evidently taken the extensive user criticism to heart and made numerous improvements.

For instance, the tried-and-true “File” menu has made its return. It enables users to access Office 2010’s “Backstage” view, which contains key functions such as “Save” and “Print.” The interface’s individual ribbons can also be adjusted to meet specific preferences.

The other Office applications have only seen minor improvements. Of particular note is the incremental search function in Microsoft Word, which displays every instance found – along with its context – in a preview sidebar. Microsoft Excel users, meanwhile, will be excited to start using “sparklines” – tiny graphics that display the progression of data streams in diagrams. Unlike conventional Excel diagrams, users can integrate sparklines into rows to achieve better clarity.

While it does not come close to offering the functional diversity of products like Cyberlink PowerProducer and Adobe Premiere Pro, Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 now supports enough audio and video editing to enable users to shorten videos, for example, without additional programs. Each of the new Office applications can also work with images much better than before: With just a few mouse-clicks, users can crop pictures, apply graphical filters, or add a 3D effect. In many cases, this eliminates the need for an extra image-processing program.

Office in the Cloud