Microsoft Office 2010

Microsoft Office 2010 (also called Office 2010 and 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 updates, and a changed user experience. A 64-bit version of Office 2010 is available, although not for Windows XP or Windows Server 2003.

On April 15, 2010, Office 2010 was released to manufacturing. The suite became available for retail and online purchase on June 15, 2010. Office 2010 is the first version to require product activation for volume licensing editions. In Office 2010, every application features ribbons in its user interface.

Office 2010 marks the debut of Office Web Apps, free online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, which work in web browsers. Office Starter 2010, a new edition of Office, replaced the low-end home productivity software, Microsoft Works. Microsoft's update to its mobile productivity suite, Office Mobile 2010, is released for Windows Phones running Windows Mobile 6.5 and Windows Phone 7.

As of December 31, 2011, almost 200 million licenses of Office 2010 have been sold.

Office 2010 is the last version of Microsoft Office with support for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

History and 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 January 10, 2009, screenshots of an Office 2010 alpha build were leaked by a tester.

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 was released to retail customers.

On November 17, 2010, Microsoft sent out invitations to a select number of testers at the Microsoft Connect portal to test a beta build of Office 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1). The final version was released to the public on June 27, 2011, with a version number of 14.0.6023.1000.

On April 8, 2013, a beta build of Office 2010 Service Pack 2 (SP2) was released. The final version was released on July 16, 2013, with a version number of 14.0.7015.1000.

New features
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.

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 (beta) form, however, Office 2010 only supported the Transitional variant, and not the Strict. The intent of the ISO/IEC is to allow the removal of the Transitional variant from the ISO/IEC compliant version of the OOXML standard. Microsoft Office 2010 supports OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.1, which is an OASIS standard.

New features also include a built-in screen capture tool, a background removal tool, new SmartArt templates and author permissions. The 2007 "Office Button" was replaced with a menu button that leads to a full-window file menu, known as Backstage View, giving easy access to task-centered functions such as printing and sharing. A notable accessibility regression from 2007 is that the menu button scores worse with the Fitts's law accessibility calculation than previous versions. A modified Ribbon interface is present in all Office applications, including Office Outlook, Visio, OneNote, Project, and Publisher. Office applications also have functional jump lists in Windows 7, which would allow easy access to recent items and tasks relevant to the application.

Features of Office 2010 include:
 * Ribbon interface and Backstage View across all applications
 * Background Removal Tool
 * Letter Styling
 * The Word 2007 Equation editor is common to all applications, replacing Microsoft Equation Editor 3.0
 * New SmartArt templates
 * New text and image editing effects
 * Screen Capturing and Clipping tools
 * Live collaboration functions
 * Jump lists in Windows 7
 * New animations and transitions in PowerPoint 2010
 * View Side by Side/Synchronous Scrolling in Word 2010

A new feature in Microsoft Office 2010 is Outlook Social Connector, which allows users to connect to and receive updates from their social network inside Microsoft Outlook. When users view their emails a name, picture, and title is available for the person they are contacting. Upcoming appointments can also be viewed with this new feature and users can request friends. Outlook Social Connector currently supports Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Windows Live Messenger.

The Volume edition can be activated using a Multiple Activation Key (MAK) which is limited by the number of times a machine can activate when connected to Microsoft's servers, or using a Key Management Server (KMS) which requires activation every 180 days.

Removed features
The following features are removed from Microsoft Office 2010.


 * Removed from the entire suite:
 * Microsoft Office Document Imaging application
 * Microsoft Office Document Scanning application
 * Wordart as its own object (became stylized text)
 * Office Startup Assistant (Osa.exe)
 * Office Diagnostics tool
 * Support for MSXML version 5
 * Research and Reference pane for Internet Explorer


 * Features removed from Microsoft Word:
 * Smart Tag auto-recognition
 * Person Name smart tag
 * AutoSummary feature
 * Support for Word Add-in Libraries (WLL)


 * Features removed from Microsoft Access:
 * Access Calendar ActiveX control
 * Replication Conflict Viewer
 * Data access pages


 * Features removed from Microsoft Outlook
 * ANSI offline Outlook data files (.ost) for Exchange synchronization (now Unicode-only)
 * Calendar rebasing tool
 * DAV connectivity for HTTP account types
 * Exchange 2000 connectivity
 * Exchange Message Security feature support
 * Postmarks


 * Features removed from Microsoft PowerPoint
 * Macro recorder
 * Save as Web Page feature
 * The ability to publish a stand-alone presentation via the Package for Presentation Disk feature


 * Features removed from Microsoft Publisher
 * The ability to create new Web Publications

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) for preloading on Windows PCs and is intended to replace 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 preinstalled 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. Specifically, it lacks the following features:


 * Customizable quick access toolbar buttons in both programs
 * SmartArt
 * Math and equation editing
 * Full screen reading view in both programs, custom views in Excel Starter
 * Reference features (Citation, Bibliography etc.)
 * Tracked changes and comments
 * Compare and combining documents
 * Document permissions and protection
 * Automatic table of contents and table of figures or authorities
 * Macros
 * Add-ins
 * Any additional custom commands not exposed in the ribbon
 * Customized ribbon tabs
 * Bookmarks
 * Cross references
 * Footnotes and endnotes
 * Captions and index
 * Signature line and digital signatures
 * AutoText
 * Content controls and objects
 * Building Blocks Organizer
 * Language packs to change the user interface
 * Built-in sharing via fax recipient or saving to SharePoint
 * PivotTables and PivotCharts in Excel Starter
 * Slicers in Excel Starter
 * Connections to external data, data validation rules, consolidated data and data tables in Excel Starter
 * Error checking, calculation steps and circular references in Excel Starter
 * Modifications to column and row headings in Excel Starter
 * Ability to toggle row groupings, panes and workbook windows in Excel Starter

Comparison

 * Remarks:
 * 1 Office Personal boxed (retail) product is for non-commercial use and can be installed on two devices: A primary PC and a portable device such as a laptop; Office Personal OEM version can only be used on one computer. Office Personal is available in Japan only.
 * 2 Office Home and Student boxed (retail) product can be installed on three PCs in the same household and is for non-commercial use; Office Home and Student Product Key card version can only be used on one computer. Office Home and Student is not available in Japan.
 * 3 Retail version is offered through MSDN or TechNet only.
 * 4 Office Customization Tool is used to customize the installation of Office by creating a Windows Installer Patch (.MSP) file and replaces the Custom Installation Wizard and Custom Deployment Wizard included in 2003 and earlier versions of the Office Resource Kit which created a Windows Installer Transform (.MST). Office Customization Tool is only included in Volume License editions.
 * 5 Boxed SKUs of Home and Business or Professional editions of the product can be installed on two devices: A primary PC and a portable device such as a laptop.
 * 6 Office Professional Academic has been replaced by Office University.

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.