Product Reviews

Office 10 is Microsoft's codename for what is likely to end up being called Office 2002. The main promotion from Microsoft revolves around a re-design intended to address 'issues' raised by its customers. One 'issue' likely to be raised prior to the release of this version, however, will be Microsoft's intention for compulsory registration, arguably allowing piracy to be spotted more easily. Once Office 10 is installed you're asked to register with Microsoft via the phone or over the Internet. If you don't bother to register, the Office 10 applications will work a maximum of 50 times, irritatingly nagging you to register each time they're launched.

Another interesting stipulation change is that instead of buying an unlimited licence, there will be a new one-year subscription service with renewals available through a local retailer or via the Internet. If you don't renew your subscription, Edit and Save will be disabled.

Program changes are apparent from the outset with the enhanced Custom Installation Wizard allowing network administrators to customise the elements of Office 10 to be installed on the users' PCs. There's also a new Custom Maintenance Wizard applet that allows administrators to manage and configure Office 10 after installation.

The user interface of Office 10 is very similar to Office 2000 except that the menus, toolbars and status bars look flatter. Menu items and tools now grow a blue box when the mouse pointer rolls over them, which stays when a tool is selected. Even though the changes look fine, I can't help thinking that it's change for change's sake. The flatter look to the windows may mean slightly less rendering time, but does nothing for readability.

The main Office applications now have an option to display or hide their documents in the task bar. Choosing the latter option returns applications to true MDI (Multiple Document Interface) as in Office 97. The SDI (Single Document Interface) of Office 2000, where every document has its own menus and toolbars, is also available.

Task Panes and Smart Tags

All the Office applications now sport Task Panes. These are areas at the right-hand side of the window that help with whatever you're doing at the time. Some of the Task Panes, such as Search, are shared across the suite and others are dedicated to one particular application. Because the Task Panes are modeless, they're less intrusive than Wizards or other dialog boxes.

The clipboard toolbar in Office 2000 has become a Task Pane in Office 10. It will collect up to 24 snippets describing each one in much more detail than previously available.

Another new feature that's shared throughout Office is the Smart Tag. These are little buttons that pop up near something that may have options. Office watches what you type and provides Smart Tags for things such as names or errors in calculations. One example is the pasted text Smart Tag which can provide options to alter the formatting to fit in with the current style. Smart Tags are both customisable and extensible with Microsoft, third parties and corporate IT departments all able to develop and distribute new Smart Tags with new actions.

The new MHTML

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format allows Office documents to be saved in a browsable form, without having a separate folder containing the graphics. MHTML uses the same MIME encapsulation used in email and is supported by Internet Explorer 4 and above. This is what 'Save As Web Page' should have been all along. If you set this as the default save format and use Web, Share Point or Tahoe folders (Tahoe being Microsoft's new document-management server) as the destination, you can browse the documents in IE without having to constantly open and close Word to see the contents.

The Office applications have been made much more resilient in the event of a crash with both Excel and Publisher having the same document recovery options as Word. Users may be prompted to save their work if Office detects that an application is about to crash. Corrupted documents may be 'repaired' and misbehaving add-ins can be automatically identified and disabled.

When errors occur in Office 10, the applications are much more polite, offering to send the error report direct to Microsoft or your IT department. This automated reporting gives Microsoft's developers and corporate IT departments better data about what's going wrong with the applications. This data is vital for improving applications' reliability but it will take quite a while for the users to see the benefit.

Office 10 uses the same file formats as Office 2000 and Office 97, apart from Access. Access has a new file format, though it can open and use previous formats. However, converting to the new format makes the file unusable with Access 97 or Access 2000.

Document and password encryption has been beefed up in Word and Excel and is added to PowerPoint for the first time. The default encryption method remains the same as in Office 2000 but you can now choose RSA or other cryptography. You can also sign whole documents as well as macro projects, which lets users know if a document has been altered since it was signed.

The HTML Help applet has had a quick revision. You can control its docking/tiling more easily and glossary items and subtopics now expand in place rather than showing new panes. The Office Assistant is turned off by default, so you don't have to see the annoying paper clip or smug bouncing ball unless you want to. Quick access to help is provided by a small box labelled 'Type a question for help' next to the Close document button on the right of the menu bar.

New components

Of the new components, an Office Document Imaging applet allows you to scan images and is used for viewing received faxes. It includes a rudimentary Optical Character Recognition engine, which is modular and upgradeable. A new Diagramming tool allows the user to insert an Organisation Chart, Cycle, Radial, Pyramid, Venn or Target diagram into any Office document. Inserting, formatting and adding text to these diagrams is much easier than trying to create them from individual AutoShapes.

Microsoft seems to be distancing itself from Lernout and Hauspie, which provided Speech Recognition technology for Office 2000. Instead it's developed its own engine but this currently only works in American English, Chinese or Japanese. Claims of 90 per cent accuracy for dictation and voice commands are not quite met in the version that I looked at, but perhaps that's because I lack the American twang.

Finally, Share Point is a task management and scheduling program aiming to provide good team-working facilities.

Office 10 looks to be more friendly and usable than any previous versions, although the speech recognition technology is clearly a first attempt and needs a lot of work. Office Designer gives a huge boost to Office programmability, and Share Point will likely improve team-working for just about anyone.