A big day for Office 2010

So today we pull back the curtain on Office 2010. Product managers know that launch is the most exciting (and exhausting) time. Late nights building demos on "not release candidate" builds, refining the storytelling, making sure we're not missing any key new features, and so on. The last mile of product communication is quite difficult, requires a lot of dotting and crossing. Having watched this version of Office evolve from concept to reality has been quite a journey, filled with fascinating discussions large and small. (Remind me to blog in the future about arguments on what an acceptable download size is, and why fonts matter so much.)

This is my second launch for Office, and the 14^th (or so, I've lost count after 10 years) product launch I've been involved with in my career. What is unique about the build-up to 2010 for me is the anticipation of something so new and innovative, and the expectation for Microsoft to deliver something great in this release. Now that I've been using Office 2010 for a while, I am confident that the early Tech Preview testers of the product will find a lot in there, as will the folks testing the broader public beta down the road.

I wanted to take a minute to point you to some of the great resources you can use to learn more about Office 2010.

• Videos and discussion on Office 2010: https://www.microsoft.com/office2010
• The Awesome movie trailers: https://www.office2010themovie.com
• SharePoint 2010 Preview site: https://sharepoint.microsoft.com/2010/sneak_peek/Pages/default.aspx
• John Durant is a long-time Office coder and Office expert: https://blogs.msdn.com/johnrdurant/
• Paul Andrew is a SharePoint guru and is leading the charge for SharePoint developers: https://blogs.msdn.com/pandrew/
• Steve Fox is an Office developer evangelist without peer: https://blogs.msdn.com/steve_fox/

I'll have a lot more to share on this blog as we move forward with 2010. Some of the topics that you will find here:

• Open XML and the Open XML SDK
• Application and Macro compatibility with Office 14
• Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)
• Connecting with Office developers in the wild
• And much more.

Office 2010 is a groundbreaking release, and with it folks will be reminded why Microsoft Office has been the leading innovator in business productivity software for 20 years.

Comments

• Anonymous
  July 15, 2009
  Great movie! I hope the product is that good. Where can I download the beta? When will it be released? I can't wait for the new Office!

• Anonymous
  July 27, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  July 27, 2009
  I quite excited to use this new program. I'm hoping the new features exceed my expectations.