Prepare for Office Web Applications – get a Windows Live login.
A prerequisite for using the public version of Office Web Applications (browser versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Onenote) will be having a Windows Live login.
We’re suggesting that you get a Windows Live login now, before you decide that you want to try Office Web Applications and then have to go through the account creation procedure.
A Windows Live login is free and there’s no obligation.
In fact there’s a good chance you already have a Windows Live login and have forgotten. Windows Live is just the latest name for a long string of mostly forgotten Microsoft online ventures.
Any Hotmail account is a Windows Live login. Old MSN logins are probably still valid – just now called Windows Live.
You can make or restore a Windows Live login starting at http://live.com/ .
The login can use any email address you want to use, it doesn’t have to be a Hotmail address.
There’s a Lost Password option if you can’t login with your current email address and need to recover an account you made in the past.
It’s possible you’ll end up with more than one Windows Live login, in much the same way as people have multiple Google logins. You might have a personal login and another for business purposes.
If Office Web Applications become popular, and it likely they will if only because of the links with MS Office software, then we expect it will result in much greater popularity for other Windows Live services like the Windows Instant Messenger and the 25GB of online storage called Skydrive.
See Also
- Avoid Windows Live confusion
- A preview of Office Web Application demos
- The new OWA
- Office web apps start on Windows Live
- Office Web Applications preview
- Office on the Web – the naming
- Office 14 news round-up
- Thoughts on Office moving to your browser
- Microsoft to Extend Office to the Browser
