Office 365 Updates Web Apps, Management

Office 365, a set of services combining the Microsoft Online Services (such as Exchange Online) with subscription licenses to Office 2010 Professional Plus, received a series of updates during the fourth quarter of 2011. The updates help Office 365 work with more browsers and client devices and enable an organization’s on-site Office 365 administrators to do more without support calls to Microsoft. The updates bring the services closer to parity with their on-premises counterparts, but some additional features will not be updated until early 2012.

Office Web App Updates

The Office Web Apps deliver viewing and limited editing functionality for Office documents from a Web browser. Although limited in editing features from their full desktop application counterparts, the Office Web Apps are useful for kiosk-based workers who do not need an entire Office suite or desktop workers working remotely. The Office Web Apps included in Office 365 received updates, some of which were delivered earlier to the consumer Office Web Apps connected to SkyDrive. The enhancements include browser support for Google Chrome, and for Internet Explorer 9 running in native mode. The Web Apps also now support viewing and editing documents stored in the Open Document Format (ODF), an open file format used by several competitors to the Office suite.