Office Web Apps Tech Preview

Office Web Apps, browser-accessible versions of several Office 2010 applications, entered an invitation-only technical preview in Sept. 2009, and Microsoft announced additional details about its plans for the applications. The technical preview gives favored customers a glimpse of the user interface and basic experience of viewing and editing in these applications, which could eventually be useful for creating and sharing documents from PCs that aren’t running the full version of Office, such as low-powered netbooks used by mobile workers. However, the preview is far from feature-complete, and important features for IT professionals are not part of the preview.

A First Glimpse

Office Web Apps will include editions of Word 2010, Excel 2010, PowerPoint 2010, and OneNote 2010. Users will be able to create, view, and edit files in these applications through a Web browser. (Microsoft says Office Web Apps work the same in Internet Explorer 7 or later, Firefox 3.5 or later, or Safari 4 or later.) Files will be stored in an online service or an on-premises server, and some of the applications will enable users to work on the same file simultaneously. The user interfaces will be almost identical to the desktop versions of Office 2010, but many features will not be available in the browser—for example, Microsoft suggested that revision-tracking in Word and cell-locking in Excel might not be available in the Web versions of these products. Microsoft also promises tight integration with Office 2010. For instance, Office 2010 users will be able to open, save, and work directly on files that are stored in Office Web Apps sites.