Microsoft Office

Micosoft VP of MS Office Kirk Koenigsbauer showed off a new OneNote today, with a demo of the program's added features, including the ability to add media and edit quickly.

Koenigsbauer's demo shows the digital note-taking program's abilities with text, media, inking, and more, according to the CNET Live Blog from today's press event.

The program features a new "radial menu" -- a circular toolbox of sorts designed to let users easily edit the note's content -- and an ability to easily grab content to bring into OneNote. This includes using a tablet … Read more

When Microsoft was readying its Office 2010 suite, many wondered whether the company would follow Google down the cloud-first path. As Office 2010 users know, that didn't end up happening.

But with the coming release of Office, code-named Office 15, Microsoft finally is moving a lot of its focus to the cloud.

A Consumer Preview (aka public beta) of the Office 2013 client -- plus previews of a bunch of new Office service plans -- is set to be available for download as of July 16 starting around noon PT, the same time as a San Francisco media event … Read more

Microsoft's new version of Office will take heavy advantage of the cloud.

Demoing the upcoming new suite at a press conference today, Kirk Koenigsbauer, a corporate vice president for Office, explained how Office apps will sync key settings by using SkyDrive as a central repository.

After you sign in, you'll see the same settings, templates, dictionaries, and recent documents across all your Windows devices: PCs, tablets, and smartphones.

Using Word as an example, Koenigsbauer showed how users can insert pictures through the traditional Office.com clipart, through image searches via Bing, by opening something from SkyDrive, or by … Read more

A demo of PowerPoint by Kirk Koenigsbauer, a corporate vice president for Microsoft Office, showed how Windows 8 tablet users can employ taps, swipes, and other gestures to create presentations. Users can also draw on their presentations via a stylus.

A demo of the new version of Outlook also revealed how to go through their e-mail messages and quickly go through their in-boxes by tapping on messages. A new Quick Actions tab lets people move, delete, flag, or forward messages as well. Finally, a feature in Outlook called Peek offers an interactive look at People, Calendar, and Tasks.

Microsoft has pulled back the curtains on the latest version of its Office suite.

At a press conference today, CEO Steve Ballmer announced the new version, noting that a preview edition of the cloud-based Office 365 edition will be available for people to try out today.

Ballmer called this "the most ambitious version of Office we've ever done." Touting the cloud-based Office 365, the CEO also said that this is a version that lets users simply click start and being running.

Office 15 launched as a technical preview this past January, available for testing to only a … Read more

REDMOND, Wash. -- Microsoft has been beefing up its design chops in recent months, pushing the sleek Metro user interface in Windows 8 and diving into hardware design with its striking Surface tablet prototype.

But maybe the most daring makeover comes today as Microsoft unveils the new-look Office. The productivity software suite is among Microsoft's longest-in-the-tooth products, dating as it does back to 1989. It's ballooned from a relatively compact offering of word-processing, spreadsheet, email and presentation software to a vast collection of applications, each of which gets countless new features with every release.

Elegant design is often … Read more

Microsoft is expected to take the wraps off of its latest Office today and the product launch may be more strategically critical than Windows 8. Of course, you'd never know the role of Office 15 judging by the headlines. The numbers, however, tell a different tale.

As Mary Jo Foley noted, Office, which is likely to be known as Office 2013, has a few question marks. It's unclear how folks will get it. Functionality is an unknown -- at least for those of us without a copy of the beta -- and integration with Windows 8 will be … Read more

As interesting as what's in the next version of Microsoft Office are the company's distribution plans for getting its coming productivity software and services in the hands of more potential users.

Reports are circulating that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will take the public wraps off Microsoft's next version of its Office suite and services, known collectively as the Office 15 wave, on July 16. While select testers have had their hands on private builds of these products for several months, there's been little concrete information on when and how Microsoft plans to make final versions available … Read more

The June 12 Microsoft TechEd keynote was billed as being all about Windows 8 for business. But the only bit of new information shared during the hour-and-a-half presentation was a quick glimpse of branding for the next version of Office, codenamed "Office 15."

During a demonstration on stage of Windows on ARM, director of program management Linda Averett showed a quick glimpse of what Excel on the device. The software was identified as a preview of "Office 2013 RT" (with the "RT" representing Windows RT, the final name of Windows on ARM).

(A screen … Read more