Julie Larson-Green - Diving into the new Office 12

The Discussion

• 

  Man, this new UI looks really cool. I love it

• 

  It is just radically cool, I can't wait to use Office 12. I love the new Access too, its taking advantage of the Outlook 2003 view.

• 

  What are the system requirements going to be.  I have already guessed no Windows 2000 support but will this support ClearType fonts and such?

• 

  rjdohnert wrote:

  What are the system requirements going to be.  I have already guessed no Windows 2000 support but will this support ClearType fonts and such?

  
  
  It works just fine on "current" hardware, including tablets and such (which aren't known for being "beefy"). The software that will be handed out is NOT optimized for speed (or stability), though, so ignore anyone who complains about performance and crashing. It's simply not at that point.
  
  But, if you have a system with 256MB or RAM or better, and a better than 1.8GHz processor,  you should be fine.

• 

  WOW!

• 

  Looks like its back to the old drawing board for the OpenOffice.org team, they cant possibly hope to stand up to Office 12

• 

  JoshRountree wrote:

  WOW!

  
  You can say that again
  
  Openoffice (or any other competitor) is dead and burried now!
  
  This exceeds every expectation I had.
  Just AMAZING.
  

• 

  Great video thanks. Few quick questions: I heard Beta 1 will be on MSDN Universal; can you confirm it? Will SBA (2007?) be updated to the new UI too?
  TIA
  Fritzly

• 

  Wow! I'm floored. We've been hearing so much about MS Research -- it's about time that we see the research goes into an actual product. Finally a program that me AND my father can use. It seems THAT intuitive. Congrats Office team.
  
  Just out curiousity -- Office must be a huge cash cow, only behind Windows. What was the politics like in preparing for such a huge change as O12?
  
  

• 

  Out of all the things shown today, this is the one that had me saying wow to everyone.  That is just absolutely incredible.
  
  New XML formats, the new UI.  This is one stunning release.

• 

  orangie wrote:

  hmmm..just Tabs? is it me or am I missing something?
  

  
  Oh yes, you're missing the huge pile of money that will build up in the manager's office because productivity will skyrocket thanks to these tabs
  
  

  orangie wrote:

  
  not all negative, I saw the part where you could use a flash drive as RAM in Vista...like that one
  

  
  Hey, you're weird
  I'm not excited at all by hearing that you can use a flash drive as RAM (actually I think of many reasons to dislike it: will be slower than actual RAM, people just pull it out while being used as RAM (think of the devastating consequences for apps using that memory)).  On the contrary, this Office12 is full of VERY exciting new features, it's not ONLY the UI!!!

• 

  Okay, that's going to take some getting used to. Outlook looks as screwed up as ever.

• 

  Will the Themes (demo'd in Excel & PowerPoint) use some sort of CSS that could be extended to other programs like FrontPage?
  
  It would be awesome if the Theme widget/file could somehow be imported into any document I wanted to create so I could have a common theme set across all documents.
  
  

• 

  00:00 : (crossing arms)  I will not be impressed.  I have been around the block in IT, seen lots of stuff.  I will not be impressed.
  
  06:14 They know what I've been clicking???  I thought the Customer Improvement Program was to improve Customers!!!!
  
  07:30 (crossing arms again)
  
  08:18 Geez, it looks like she's running Windows XP.  I thought Office 12 was Vista-only?  Maybe you need XP + Avalon + Indigo...?
  
  09:03 Ok, so tabs are the new black.  <rolleyes>
  
  09:38 What was that magic incantation...?
  
  10:30 So what, she's hovering over font -- OH.  The document is changing as she hovers over each font.  Neat.
  
  12:01 Memo to me: check to see if clicknpick.com is taken.
  
  12:20 Ok, that's cool.
  
  14:10 Hmmm.  Maybe that should be "chik-n-pick," a restaurant where you choose your chicken entree from... a pull down menu?
  
  16:10 (crosses arms)  Ok so it's customizable.  <rolleyes>
  
  17:20 Powerpoint is bor. ring.
  
  17:53 Whoa.  Not so boring.
  
  18:12 Whoa.
  
  18:21 Whoa!
  
  19:05 Whoa!!!
  
  20:24 Impressive.  Oh wait, I wasn't going to be impressed.  (crosses arms loosely)
  
  21:58 Ok, that's useful.  Wow, and it works in the other apps.
  
  23:33 Nice. 
  
  25:30 Nice.
  
  26:32 Well what would any demo be without a bug...
  
  29:30 One less checkbox for using Word as your text editor.
  
  30:08 Was one of those reminders for "Call back Google recruiter"?  </joke>
  
  31:11 Er - there was an edit there.  Wonder what she said?
  
  34:10 What did she say?  "Floaty?"
  
  34:17 Oh this is going to suck so bad.  Floaty = Clippy 2005.
  
  34:27 OH!  Cool!  Ok, not so bad.
  
  36:00 Huh.  That is pretty cool.  I think.
  
  37:21 (eyes start to fill with tears)
  
  37:33 I will not cry.  I will not cry.  I will not cry.  *sniff*  Microsoft is sooooo cool.  I [heart] Microsoft.  *sniff*  (wipes nose on sleeve)
  
  
  
  
  

• 

  Is any of Office 12 written in Managed code?  If so, how much?  TIA

• 

  staceyw wrote:

  Is any of Office 12 written in Managed code?  If so, how much?  TIA

  
  
  No. None. It's C++ still. I believe.
  
  That said, you should check out Sparkle (we'll have a video tomorrow) or Max. They are completely done in managed code.

• 

  Actually much of the server side of Office "12" is since we build on the whole Windows Server System. 
  
  We will have more to say about the opportunities for developers and managed code at the PDC and beyond.
  
  --Steven Sinofsky

• 

  scobleizer wrote:

  staceyw wrote: Is any of Office 12 written in Managed code?  If so, how much?  TIA

  
  
  No. None. It's C++ still. I believe.
  
  That said, you should check out Sparkle (we'll have a video tomorrow) or Max. They are completely done in managed code.

  
  
  What the... My posts have been deleted?! Since when are posts deleted?

• 

  I think I heard the documents will now be completely stored as XML. Is this true? VBA changes? C#A now? It was a pretty demo. I like the look and think many in our company could deal with the change. I know I could. Thanks.

• 

  Jeremy, I accidentally erased some posts here. Can you please repost? I'm real sorry about that.
  
  Steven: thanks for correcting me. Everyone else? Steven is the top executive on the Office team. It's a real honor having him here.

• 

  Oh! My!

• 

  When discussing Outlook it was qucikly mentioned that Word would be the ONLY editor for e-mail with Office 12.  Did I hear that correctly?  Will that mean that Outlook 12 will not be installable with older versions of Office?
  

• 

  Wow. I love the new UI...when I first saw the screenshots this morning I thought i'd hate it, but having seen it in action in this video has totally changed my mind. Can't wait to try it.
  
  
  Quick question, will these "themes" be CSS based or what language will we need to learn to be able to create custom office/corp themes?
  

• 

  stevesi wrote:

  Actually much of the server side of Office "12" is ...

  
  Sorry, can you clarify "is".
  Much of the server side of Office "12" is written in managed code?
  

• 

  Office 12 looks incredibly slick and is definitely going to appeal to users of previous editions of Office and other similiar office productivity applications.  I still can't help but feel like it is going to scare new users though and hope Microsoft does work between now and RTM to simplify the interface for new users.

• 

  618mb? Damn. 41 minutes? Is it in HD? It sure would be great if this had a bittorrent link to speed this propaganda on to my machine... See, there are non-piracy uses for BT... {this post brought to by BugMeNot. I'm not hopping through all those hoops to post one reply once...}

• 

  Does the "new graphics engine" utilize avalon?
  

• 

  the new Smart  Tag(should i call it smart toolbar?) is impressive.
  

• 

  We will continue to have support for using the "trident" based editor if you only install Outlook "12" by itself on a machine.  The same system requirements exist as today, which is that Word as a mail editor must match in version to Outlook.
  
  For those worried about any quality issues, we have also done a good deal of work and architected things very robustly.  Even in the pre-beta builds I run it is super solid.

• 

  JChung2006 wrote:

  Office 12 looks incredibly slick and is definitely going to appeal to users of previous editions of Office and other similiar office productivity applications.  I still can't help but feel like it is going to scare new users though and hope Microsoft does work between now and RTM to simplify the interface for new users.

  
  Codejock Software's Xtreme Toolkit Pro provides a feature that's able to create your own theme, it 's really a good idea to solve such problem.
  here is a demo(source include).
  
  
  

• 

  I have always heard Windows XP and Vista for o12
  
  

  Karim wrote:

  00:00 : (crossing arms)  I will not be impressed.  I have been around the block in IT, seen lots of stuff.  I will not be impressed.
  
  06:14 They know what I've been clicking???  I thought the Customer Improvement Program was to improve Customers!!!!
  
  07:30 (crossing arms again)
  
  08:18 Geez, it looks like she's running Windows XP.  I thought Office 12 was Vista-only?  Maybe you need XP + Avalon + Indigo...?
  
  09:03 Ok, so tabs are the new black.  <rolleyes>
  
  09:38 What was that magic incantation...?
  
  10:30 So what, she's hovering over font -- OH.  The document is changing as she hovers over each font.  Neat.
  
  12:01 Memo to me: check to see if clicknpick.com is taken.
  
  12:20 Ok, that's cool.
  
  14:10 Hmmm.  Maybe that should be "chik-n-pick," a restaurant where you choose your chicken entree from... a pull down menu?
  
  16:10 (crosses arms)  Ok so it's customizable.  <rolleyes>
  
  17:20 Powerpoint is bor. ring.
  
  17:53 Whoa.  Not so boring.
  
  18:12 Whoa.
  
  18:21 Whoa!
  
  19:05 Whoa!!!
  
  20:24 Impressive.  Oh wait, I wasn't going to be impressed.  (crosses arms loosely)
  
  21:58 Ok, that's useful.  Wow, and it works in the other apps.
  
  23:33 Nice. 
  
  25:30 Nice.
  
  26:32 Well what would any demo be without a bug...
  
  29:30 One less checkbox for using Word as your text editor.
  
  30:08 Was one of those reminders for "Call back Google recruiter"?  </joke>
  
  31:11 Er - there was an edit there.  Wonder what she said?
  
  34:10 What did she say?  "Floaty?"
  
  34:17 Oh this is going to suck so bad.  Floaty = Clippy 2005.
  
  34:27 OH!  Cool!  Ok, not so bad.
  
  36:00 Huh.  That is pretty cool.  I think.
  
  37:21 (eyes start to fill with tears)
  
  37:33 I will not cry.  I will not cry.  I will not cry.  *sniff*  Microsoft is sooooo cool.  I [heart] Microsoft.  *sniff*  (wipes nose on sleeve)
  
  
  
  
  

• 

  how much money are you guys paying apple from copying their GUI
  
  i mean, cmon, brushed metal is soooo 4 years ago....
  

• 

  macosxrocks wrote:

  how much money are you guys paying apple from copying their GUI
  
  i mean, cmon, brushed metal is soooo 4 years ago....
  

  
  
  the light up tabs are very osx..
  
  SHH! or it will be 4 more years of security updates and bug fixes for you! 

• 

  scobleizer wrote:

  
  C9'es will obviously ask what about this .. what about that...
  

  
  woo hoo I'm in.

  So Excel 12 then...

  Is it faster?
  My users are starting to get twin 64bit machines. Can Excel take advantage of these? Will you ship a 64bit version of Office?

  Does the IV Columns, 65,000 odd rows limit change? Can I get more on a sheet?

  Since VB6 has been retired, what are you going to do with VBA? VBA.net?

  Are we going to get better intergration with .net? I don't think VSTO for 2005 cuts the mustard for my purposes. It's still very Smart Document centric. I want to expose my .net code via a nice library/contract/interface/whatever right in to a Cell. And that's any cell, in any sheet, when my library is loaded. That's all.

  Obscurely, but important to me ... love the zoom feature. Don't need to see pages - just one big sheet. Do need to be able to adjust the zoom for all sheets in a workbook in one go.

  Love the Formulas tab, gotta be much easier to find formulas you previously didn't know about. Can I easily intergrate my own libraries in there (+ meta-help-data)?
  
  

  Julie wrote:

  
  We've taken a lot of the Auto/Pop-up features out.
  

  
  
  Great we all hate them in my little firm. Even things like the Office clipboard that remembers the last 24 items you copied to it. It leaps out at you to tell you what it's done, thieving a fifth of the screen real-estate, and generaly annoys the hell out of you. I really appreciate the sentiment, it means well, but god it's bloody annoying. My users constantly find themselves fighting the army of auto-formatting rules as well.

  Lastly, and I appreciate not really your fault at all, but  please please can you make Excel more reliable when working with Bloomberg AddIn software? Trust me we do whine to B-berg about it , but if MS phoned them up ans said "hello, you appear to be causing a lot of our users pain" it might provide a helping hand.

• 

  In Excel, if I copy a cell and then type in another cell, will it forget what I've copied when I come to paste it? None of the other office products do that.

• 

  Wow is right. Now a challenge - make the ribbon control available for all to use.

• 

  I really do hope that the spellcheck and grammer is redone in a dramatic way too. Those features are the most used I bet, and probably the most in need of being refitted.

• 

  When the RSS Feeds came in I groaned, yet surprisingly I was pleased with the new UI. Pity I can't say the same for Windows Vista, although the more I see there, the more I'm happy with.
  

• 

  Wow, this interface looks amazingly...SHITTY!

• 

  The evolution of the software is great! I am truly excited to use this new suite soon.

• 

  I haven't seen anything on Access 12 yet. What did I miss, and where can I find it?
  
  Thanks in advance.
  
  David van Leerdam

• 

  dotnetjunkie wrote:

  Openoffice (or any other competitor) is dead and burried now!

  
  
  Not so fast my friend. Things don't tend to work like that. And read "Hardball" by Georg Stalk. I agree with him when he says that if you really want to be competitive, you don't kill the competition, you keep them in a corner and (although it seems contrary to common sense) make sure they have the possibility to get out of there (on, and there is the catch, their own power, not on yours - let them put up a fight). It is vital for a healthy industry. Toyota did it, GM did it, IT should once again become a field of competitors, that's what will get us fast forward.
  
  Having said that, and having seen only bits and pieces of the video so far, I can't wait to get my hands on it. But then again, I love IT, so Openoffice 2.0 beta (1.9 if you will) is running on my machine, and I've Novell SBS 4.5, Suse Linux 9.3, Windows XP, 2003, Easyoffice, Office 2003, Outlook 2003, Thunderbird, Firefox, Visual Studio Express, Perl, MySQL and other beta, trial and stable stuff I can get my hands on that will run on my hardware (it's a cross between a christmas tree and a junkyard, software-wise).
  
  Soooo, when can we muck with it?

• 

  So, I only have one question: will Active Accessibility still work with this new interface?  Obviously this is great for those of us who do not have disabilities, but for those that do, how well will this work?
  

• 

  impressive I'd say , but where did the "Styles" go?
  

• 

  Wonderfull product. Loved the demonstration, because the picture only view on the press release looked so so useless. Like WTF did they do to office, but when you see it moving and menu's are updating, etc. IT'S AMAZING HANDY!!!
  
  Does the 'flowdy' comes with functions most people use or with features I use a lot? Like when I never use I but always use striketrue will the I disapear and the striketrue button come in the menu? But then only the functions that apply to the selected text.
  
  How does the office team thinks about the problem with the people that just press enter all the time, not knowing the difference between enter and shift-enter?
  
  Like:
  
  Hello
  Line2
  Line3
  Line4
  (emptyline)
  
  will end up as:
  
  <para>Hello</para>
  <para>Line2</para>
  <para>Line3</para>
  <para>Line4</para>
  <para></para>
  
  Instead of what it looks like to the user:
  
  <para>Hello <enter>
  Line2
  Line3
  Line4</para>
  
  I see this kind of mess a lot from teachers and students using word. And I don't wanna know what happends when the autoformating functions start formating that mess.
  
  Again, Thanks for the demo it rocked to see it live, the power of c9

• 

  Actually, concerning the editing surface for composing mail in Outlook12:
  
  Our editing surface will be the Word, regardless of what's installed. If the Word12 product is installed in additon to Outlook12, the you'll get the full Word editing experience in Outlook email.
  
  If Word12 is not installed, then some functionality won't be available when composing email, but you'll still have more functionality than was available using "trident" in Office2003.
  
  Also, in 12, Word will always be the rendering surface for email you've received, even in the Reading Pane.
  
  The Word team has worked hard to make sure we have high fidelity for rendering and composing. It's been truly amazing to see this great work.
  
  One more nugget: Outlook12 now uses Word as its editor for Outlook Meeting Requests, Appointments, Contacts, etc.
  

• 

  stevesi wrote:

  We will continue to have support for using the "trident" based editor if you only install Outlook "12" by itself on a machine.  The same system requirements exist as today, which is that Word as a mail editor must match in version to Outlook.
  
  For those worried about any quality issues, we have also done a good deal of work and architected things very robustly.  Even in the pre-beta builds I run it is super solid.

  
  
  Oops I botched this one.  Please see willk's answer below.  Sorry.

• 

  Oh really? Is Office 12 going to be open source?
  If not, then when expliots are discovered, it will take forever and a day for Microsoft to patch them.
  
  Is Office 12 going to save to an Open XML document format?
  If not then we are still trapped into forever using Office products, which I'm sure Microsoft loves, but not me. I like choices.
  

• 

  Functionally I think the new UI will work great.  But please, make it fit in with the Windows UI standards!  Don't draw your own title bar.  Use standard XP/Vista visual styles when drawing the ribbon bar.  Make Office 12 on Windows XP follow the XP guidelines, and on Vista follow the Vista guidelines.  Make Office 12 an excellent example of a Vista application done right!

• 

  fantastic! beautiful! elegant!
  
  ..oh - and Office isnt looking too shabby either
  
  
  
  i will buy office... i will buy office....
  

• 

  First off, wow. Very impressed with the new interface. I was a bit worried when i heard about no menu and no toolbar, but the result looks amazing, and the in place previews will help no end.
  
  I have one question, that i admit i dont know if its been asked before, but when is this coming out in beta? and how can we get a copy of it??

• 

  ihatemicrosoft wrote:

  Oh really? Is Office 12 going to be open source?
  If not, then when expliots are discovered, it will take forever and a day for Microsoft to patch them.
  
  Is Office 12 going to save to an Open XML document format?
  If not then we are still trapped into forever using Office products, which I'm sure Microsoft loves, but not me. I like choices.
  

  
  
  Shall we feed the trolls?   
  
  If you don't like Office, make your own alternative.  And when exploits are discovered, we'll see how quickly you get to them...with your 2 friends with other day-jobs.  Oh, and maybe if you're lucky, your OSS app will make it out of alpha. 
  
  Apparently, you like choices and yet your username is "ihatemicrosoft".  I like more choices then...because you've shut out a quite logical one.
  
  Do I expect you to understand?  No, because I don't really expect you to stop sacrificing (in more ways than one) at the altar of OSS exclusivity.
  
  
  

• 

  Looks nice....
  
  Now, talking about all this xml, will it be possible to include onlinestuff? Like inserting a table in the bottom of my document with my latest blog-entries (by rss/xml)?
  
  And how about .pdf-support? does anyone know if one still have to use Adobes products to make/read pdf's? I really miss that OpenOffice feature where you can "save as .pdf"... 
  

• 

  I like the user's enhanced ability to experiment with choices -- being able to preview what things will look like before committing to the choice. Of course, if you aren't timid about using Undo you can almost do the same thing today, albeit less conveniently.
  
  It was mentioned that all existing add-ins would work in Office 12, but what about those that made modifications to the menus? Or added buttons to toolbars? Or created entirely new toolbars? Won't there need to be some reprogramming to make this compatible?
  
  
  
  

• 

  I have used every iteration of Office and pre office (Word for DOS back in 83 or 84).
  
  This release looks like one major step forward. Looking forward to being able to give it a test drive.

• 

  ask wrote:

  And how about .pdf-support? does anyone know if one still have to use Adobes products to make/read pdf's? I really miss that OpenOffice feature where you can "save as .pdf"... 
  

  
  
  That's a defining feature to me. An Office suite that has it scores with me big time. While I have MS Office, openoffice and easyoffice because I like to play with just about everything I can get my hands on, for practical reasons I use openoffice most of the time because of the 'save as pdf' feature.
  
  btw at the job its MS from beginning to end, so at home I prefer other and preferrably free stuff, just to see how far you can go with it. And as I left the employer from who I had a home user license I'll have to uninstall it anyway and I can't afford €529 ($630) and I refuse to use software illegally. If a vendor wants me to use its product, it must be affordable for me and otherwise he'll have to find another customer  Same with XP. I got it with my PC and chipped in a bit extra because I wanted the pro version. Would I have to buy it for the full price, then it be some free OS (most likely openSuse) on my machine.
  That also means it's very likely Office 12 and Vista will be on my PC as beta or trial versions only (like with Visual Studio 2005 and all the Windows Server System stuff).
  

• 

  Exactly, if the final version of Office 12 looks as good as Julie does, then this will be a fantastic software suite!

• 

  WOW!
  
  It's a completely new UI alright.
  
  Kinda reminds me of Microsoft Bob!
  

• 

  The interface looks great.
  
  Now given we only had a small preview of things to come [and the fact that it was mentioned] it seems really odd that Outlook is not getting  [more of] the new interface. Yes it shows up when creating a new e-mail but by default you get the 'old' standard menu-bar etc. It seems to me Outlook could be considered 'document' centric. I could see the default interface having a band for creating a new e-mail, appointment, task etc. And then logically once you've chosen a type of document then you get an appropriate interface for the document. For example when creating a new appointment it's not difficult to know what parameters people would want to specify for an appointment (start date, end date, etc.) I could imagine this appearing in the area just under the 'tab' bar, in a similar sense to how the new Word interface works, etc.
  
  Since people 'live' in Outlook I'd like to see it get more attention then it's getting. And for it not to get more of the new look and feel through out seems really odd. Also think about the training in the Office suite for these applications. Scenario: "this is how the menu bar works, but for Outlook it's completely different!" ?
  
  P.S. Outlook should also become much more of a PIM, but that's another topic.
  
  

• 

  Wow...this was amazing! Brought tears to my eyes many times.
  
  I wonder how keyword help will be integrated, since it seems to have left the top right on the command bar. And this led to a question: hopefully they will integrate in searching documents (speaking mostly to Word) into the ribbon to make that a more fluid operation.
  
  Another person put out a good question: it seems like styles have been deprecated, although they might have become a variation of the templates that she talked about.

• 

  Excellent, I like the new UI and I think it can be very helpful to the user. Other than the UI, I think there are three main topics that I would like to see improve in Office 12

   

  1) Word Styles: most people don't know they exist or what they are useful for. Every time my thesis text went for a review, my advisor would create titles using the Normal style and then making it Bold, changing Font Size… I hope it will be very intuitive for the user how to make formatting choices and how to structure a well formatted document. How about including a few tutorials?

  2) MathML (and PlotML, ChemML, etc.): more and more people are moving away from LaTeX for scientific publications (although I worked for my thesis project on a Unix machine, I was required to write the thesis in Word because this way it is easier to review the paper without moving from the PDF output to the source code…). However, the Insert Equation command and even the full Equation Editor are not the best choice: it is virtually impossible to search equations and these are treated like images, making it very hard to do a good formatting job. If including all these extensions is not possible, it should be very easy to implement them with plug-ins.

  3) More easily customizable cross-references: it took me a long time to find out how to format multiple cross-references (for example "Figure 1 and Figure 2" to show as "Figure 1 and 2") and it took me even longer to actually do it. This should be much more intuitive and easy to do…

  4) Better support for inserting figures in vector form. The EPS filter is far from perfect (try making an EPS figure with Illustrator CS and importing it into Word 2003, it will not show up no matter what you do, unless you save the file as an EPS for Illustrator 3). It would be great if one could include native formats from popular graphic applications (Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, etc.).

  4) More statistical functions in Excel and a way to save diagrams as figures to be edited in a graphic application, please!

   

  This is simply a list I made from my personal experience and I hope it will be helpful to someone. Thank you for reading it.

• 

  An answer to feature bloat and a reason to upgrade in its own right!  Excellent job!

• 

  Has anyone seen my jaw on the floor anywhere?  I'm still looking for it.  Fantastic!

• 

  I can't wait to test the Beta version of Office 12:D

• 

  Improvement on functionality is one thing, changing the UI like changing your underwear is quite another.

   

  How does the new Office 12 "know" what I need at any particular time? End-users are already tired of having new windows/new bits of info appear or change in front of their eyes based on what I like to call “Microsoft Intuitionism.”
  
  There was a time when I enjoyed new versions of Microsoft products. It was play-time. Now I have grown tired of major changes in UIs. Even if this is all going to be better, I can't help but complain...

   

• 

  ashortridge wrote:

  How does the new Office 12 "know" what I need at any particular time? End-users are already tired of having new windows/new bits of info appear or change in front of their eyes based on what I like to call “Microsoft Intuitionism.”...

  
  
  MS collected usage info for months in order to determine what users are doing and trying to do.  At least they tried.  I'm so sick of everyone complaining but not offering any solutions.  If MS sat back and didn't change anything, everyone complains.  If they change something, everyone complains.   Some people just like to complain because it gives them something to do.  The rest of us are happy with change.  Life changes, so does software.  Hence the "soft" in software.  It was intended to be changable with less effort than "hard"ware.  If it wasn't, it would have been burned into a chip and soldered to the circuit board for all eternity.

• 

  This is one super version of Office. It would seem that the team have taken most things into account with regards to the features. One thing that will not change I am sure will be the massive price tag that is normally attached to this product. With luck this will change thus encouraging more people to take up a legal copy. As we are dedicated users of Microsoft products and loyal followers of Mr Gates you will be offered us a copy of the new office suite at a very low price, yes?

• 

  There is no pleasing some people. First you want all the bells and whistles and the next you complain about being offered the latest features. Must I remind you that Microsoft is a company and as such needs to maintain their market share while keeping the share holders happy. If like Wordperfect they do not provide the customer with new features then another company will and everyone will move over to that product. As an individual with an independant mind you are not forced to adopt the new office suite. So save your bucks and wait for something else to come along, quietly though!

• 

  paulmorriss wrote:

  In Excel, if I copy a cell and then type in another cell, will it forget what I've copied when I come to paste it? None of the other office products do that.

  
  
  Try doing CTRL-C/CTRL-C to copy.  This puts it in the persistent, multi-clip Office clipboard.  It's then there to paste back - in fact, you can copy multiple things to the Office clipboard using this and paste them as you like, not just in order.

• 

  The Office 12 GUI looks amazing. We cannot wait to play with the real stuff, so we decided to hack our own application a bit in order to remove the menu and replace the GUI with something which looks and behaves very much like the Office 12 ribbon.
  
  For those who would like to check our revamped application too, it is available here. See the associated blog entries here.
  
  And here is a screen shot:
  
  
  
  Pierre

• 

  Office 12, This is Amazing! I love the new UI and layout. Its gonna save alot of time creating all those documents and to scale to see huge doc's this is just better.

  The design and speed of functionality is freaking amazing, I wanna get my hands on this product pre-Launch.

  It has all the features and functions of easy that we've been crying out for years, am stoked about this one.

  Bring it on Office 12 Team.

• 

  Looks fairly promising to me.  I'm looking forward to trying it out with my own two hands.
  
  There's one thing I'd like to see specifically addressed, and I hope an insider can chime in with some info.  I'm a keyboard user; I go for long periods of time without using the mouse.  In many applications, things that pop up automatically and respond to mouse cursor position never go away if the mouse happens to be too close to them.  I'm concerned that the Floatie will stay in place if it happens to appear underneath my (unused) mouse cursor.  One thing that really steams my pork buns is having to stop what I'm doing to move the mouse cursor so some ill-informed popup goes away.
  
  I'd also like to see a way to pop up and navigate the Floatie from the keyboard, but that's secondary.
  
  

• 

  What about COM addins?
  
  What about REAL integration between the office products respective object models (e.g. Outlook and Word integration, ...)?
  

• 

  Who copied who? Dreamweaver MX or Office 12? This "new" Office 12 GUI has already been implemented in Macromedia's Dreamweaver MX!
  
  ramida

• 

  willk wrote:

  Actually, concerning the editing surface for composing mail in Outlook12:
  
  Our editing surface will be the Word, regardless of what's installed. If the Word12 product is installed in additon to Outlook12, the you'll get the full Word editing experience in Outlook email.
  
  If Word12 is not installed, then some functionality won't be available when composing email, but you'll still have more functionality than was available using "trident" in Office2003.
  
  Also, in 12, Word will always be the rendering surface for email you've received, even in the Reading Pane.
  
  The Word team has worked hard to make sure we have high fidelity for rendering and composing. It's been truly amazing to see this great work.
  
  One more nugget: Outlook12 now uses Word as its editor for Outlook Meeting Requests, Appointments, Contacts, etc.
  

  Okay, third try...once again, the joy of Channel 9's craptacular post editing tools rises to the plate and hits a home run.
  
  What about winmail.dat attachments when you read Outlook email in other mailers on other platforms? Please tell me that entire concept has finally been shot in the head.
  
  How about people who just want to use plain text for 90% of their emails? Will setting that default be easier
  
  What about the inane dialogs and wizards? Will common tasks like rules and delegation be able to be accomplished without 345345 levels of dialogs and mandatory wizards? Maybe the O12 team can talk to the Entourage team for "How to do things without infinite layers of dialog boxes".
  
  

• 

  One of the things that users always ask after importing data into a spreadsheet, setting up some extra tabs with certain views, and then formatting it perfectly for the boss, "How can I add next month's data and keep all of the graphs/formatting/views the same without doing all of this work again?"
  
  
  

• 

  I just can't wait to use this new software it looks cool, MICROSOFT YOU ROCK!!!!:D

• 

  Cool stuff, and awsome video quality. Please make more videos in hi-res!
  

• 

  Is it just me, or does both the audio and the video play very slowly? I've tried with the IE inline player and WMP. Other videos play fine

• 

  Hello,
  
  Do you know where I can download the office ui and or point me in the right direction. I am trying to build applications using the office ui. I am a beginner. Any help is appreciated.
  
  Thanks
  
  SKI