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Office Web Applications preview

See a video preview of Office 2010 web applications for Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Microsoft has released a video showing some features from the upcoming Office Web Applications


In the Word web application you can see images and tables in a web based version of a Word document.

Excel web application shows charts, tables, graphs and conditional formatting. There’s a simple example of changing a cell and seeing the chart and formatting adjust accordingly.

For PowerPoint they show transitions, animations and SmartArt. ‘Presentation on the Go’ means a web based presentation can be shown on PC or Mac with various browsers.

There’s a quick demo of co-authoring – working on the same document at the same time with changes reflected automatically in both.

As with all these limited demonstrations it will be more useful to try them yourself. It’s already clear that some Office software features will display in the matching web application but you won’t always be able to add or change that element online. This is all part of Microsoft’s move to web applications while trying not to cannibalize their lucrative sales of Office software.

One thing is clear, if it wasn’t already, to use Office web applications hosted by Microsoft you’ll need a Windows Live account.  A Windows Live login is the same as a Hotmail login, if you have one of those.

You can create a free Windows Live login using any email address from http://login.live.com may as well get one now and prepare for the future.

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