Donald Rossberg

Unless you are in my industry you probably haven’t paid a whole lot of attention to Microsoft Office 2010.  In fact since it is not officially released to the public yet, I would be willing to venture it isn’t on many of your “must look at” lists.  As a Microsoft partner Dataworks is able to get  early final release copies of software and I have been testing the RTM of Office 2010 for a few days now.  This review is about the changes to Outlook, and I will post more about the changes to the rest of the platform in future posts.

I have made a short list of reasons why I love the new version and highly recommend updating your license, especially if you are still on Office 2003 or earlier.

1)  Outlook Customization

When you first gaze at the new version of Outlook, you will probably hate it.  At least I did.  In the past I have tried to de-clutter Outlook as much as possible but there hasn’t been much in the way of changing how it looks and feels, with exception to the reading pane location.  In Outlook 2010 you can add as much or as little information as you want on the screen.  For those of you minimalists out there, you can actually configure outlook to only show the message list and reading pane, no clutter at all.  For those of you who like everything at a glance, you will love Outlook 2010 as well.  Outlook had never been so customizable.

2)  Social Connector

The social connector is supposed to replace the need for xobni by integrating your social media outlets and all history with a contact.  It tracks all of the events, conversations, social media updates and more for each of your contacts and people that you coorispond with.

The only potential problem is that in the 64 bit version of Outlook, it doesn’t have that many supported social media outlets (yet), and time will have to tell if Microsoft can pull off replicating someone else’s good idea without botching it.  Once more social media outlets are available, I think it could end up being my favorite change in Outlook.

3)  Conversation Threading

Those of you who have every used Gmail for any length of time can appreciate the conversation style of how messages are displayed.  Outlook 2010 offers you the ability to organize all folders, some folders or even just some messages in a conversation style that really helps keep down on inbox clutter.  There is even a feature for cleaning up conversations so you can keep all of your folders clutter free.

4)  Simplified Menu

This is a point some will probably debate with me.  If you hated the ribbon interface in Office 2007 you will really hate Office 2010.  I personally enjoy the new interface and find it much more logical and intuitive than the previous versions, it does take an open mind and a couple weeks of using it to find things though.  I find the new menu system easy to use, simple and in many ways very friendly to use.  Again, this “perk” is subjective but I would encourage you to use the new interface with an open mind.

5)  Calendar Previewing

Ever get a meeting request and hated dropping what you were doing to check your calendar so you can see if you had time?  I have, and it gets old fast.  With Outlook 2010, when you get a meeting request it actually displays your calendar availability in the reading pane so you can see at a glance if you are free.  This makes you much more efficient because you don’t have to stop reviewing emails in order to see if you can make the meeting.  Just one of many little changes that this new release offers.

While this is hardly a comprehensive list of changes, I think you will find that Microsoft may be heading the right direction with this release and some of the new features will make managing your messaging, social media and contacts easier.  By the way, when you purchase Office 2007, you get a free upgrade license to 2010 when it is released.  Contact your Microsoft Reseller for more information.

As always please leave your thoughts and experiences, your feedback is valuable!