Real Scenarios; Real Life

With each release of Office, we’re closer to achieving what we set out to do more than 20 years ago: Helping users to work better, faster and smarter.  

In creating Office 2010, we’ve invested time to listen to millions of customers, to enhance existing features, and to develop new ones. Now, everyone’s favorite Office applications fit their lifestyle — on the PC, on the phone and on the Web.

ComScore recently announced that they see Office installed on 1 billion PCs worldwide. One billion! That’s a humbling figure, and an amazing number to introduce to Office 2010.

Last week I spoke to Roxanne Rukowicz, one of our beta customers, to find out how she’s using Office 2010 for the meeting and management firm she opened just over a year ago. In her business, she manages everything from black tie dinners to conferences with keynote addresses, golf tournaments and more. I want to share a quick snapshot of our talk:

Takeshi Numoto: What were you expecting when you first decided to try Office 2010?
Roxanne Rukowicz: I was expecting Office 2010 would look like the last version of Office I had, but just updated. I was surprised to see the redesign and expansion of the Ribbon across all the apps, and so many new useful features. And I wasn’t expecting to be able to collaborate with others the way I do now.

Takeshi Numoto: If you were to pick three favorite features in Office 2010, what would they be?  

Roxanne Rukowicz: OneNote is a personal favorite. I never knew it existed before, but it’s great for small business. It’s replaced all of my Post It notes, notebooks and papers that were scattered everywhere. The access to information is incredible, and really cuts down on the time I spend chasing information for projects. With OneNote, everyone on our team can see where we are in the project process, and we can collaborate with a continuous flow of information across different mediums. As a result, we can share our vision with the whole concept in one place – including images from the Web, timelines in Word, and budgets in Excel.

I have Outlook open for a good 14 to 16 hours every day, and the new Conversation View in Outlook 2010 makes my e-mail inbox less cluttered. It allows me to get rid of redundant e-mails and helps me quickly get to the right ones to focus on, so e-mail isn’t too overwhelming anymore. I was ecstatic to discover this ‘filing system’ in Outlook 2010.

And, the new Backstage View in each of the applications makes Office a better overall experience. It gives me a new way to organize all the features and capabilities that I can use in a document.  Backstage give me easy access to things like sharing a document, printing and managing permissions.

Takeshi Numoto: Do you use Office Web Apps?
Roxanne Rukowicz: I do, and they are incredibly useful. I use Web Apps to make last-minute changes to PowerPoint presentations before client meetings, or retrieve a Word document I’ve forgotten to bring with me. With Web Apps, I can always get to all the documents and presentations I care about, and create, edit and manipulate them with a consistent 2010 experience. And the fidelity of the document remains — there is no quality lost because I’m working from the Web versus my PC.

I rent space at my client’s office 90 percent of the time. But I also work at coffee shops, at friends’ houses, or sitting on my sofa at home. So I need to be able to access all my stuff, anywhere I go. I used to take a portable hard disk with me, but now I just use SkyDrive and the Web Apps. I’ve made my files Web-based so I can get to all the planning information I need, no matter where I am. I’m a veritable ‘roving office.’ With the huge capacity of SkyDrive (25GB), I can put everything in my growing number of client folders. It’s like having my computer with me at all times.

Takeshi Numoto: Do you use Office 2010 at home too?
Roxanne Rukowicz: At home, I use Word and Excel a lot, working on client projects. In the office, I tend to have Outlook open all the time, in addition to Word and Excel. Oh – and OneNote too! And a little bit of PowerPoint. Basically, I usually spend more than 10 hours a day using Office.

Takeshi Numoto: What is your overall impression of Office 2010?
Roxanne Rukowicz: To me, Office 2010 is user-friendly and extremely intuitive. And, I now have an organized existence with Office 2010. My business is more professional and efficient because of 2010. I am more tech savvy then I ever thought I could be because 2010 just makes it that easy.

Based on what we’ve learned from the beta feedback, Roxanne’s experience with Office 2010 is indicative of the millions who have been using it so far. I hope you’ll join in the fun and share your own experience with us. To give Office 2010 a spin visit www.office.com.

Posted by Takeshi Numoto
Corporate Vice President, Office

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