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Additions to Office Web Apps

Microsoft adds some more features to their online service, including printing.

Microsoft’s online version of Office – Office Web Apps has been revised with some extra features including printing.

A major difference between the traditional Office software and the online service is how they are updated. Software is updated with a rush of new features, mostly when you buy and install a new version. Online services can be updated in a more gradual way with new and updated features coming every few months.

So back in June 2010 Office Web Apps went fully public and only three months later there are new features being added.


Printing in Word

The Print item has been added to the File menu, but in the Word Web App only – not in Excel, Powerpoint or OneNote.

OWA - Print in Word.jpg image from Additions to Office Web Apps at Office-Watch.com

Print was already available, but only in the separate Reading view.


Excel – charting

Insert Charts is now available on the Insert tab

OWA Excel - Insert Chart.jpg image from Additions to Office Web Apps at Office-Watch.com

Column, Line, Pie, Bar, Area, Scatter, Doughnut and Radar charts are available.

Once inserted you have some options for tweaking the chart. Click on the chart and a Chart Tools tab will appear.

OWA Excel - Charting options.jpg image from Additions to Office Web Apps at Office-Watch.com

Don’t expect all the choices you have in Excel software.


Excel – autofill handle

Now you can put a formula into one cell, then copy it to adjacent cells by dragging the source cell down or across. This is one of those features that most Excel users take for granted these days, until they find it didn’t work in the browser based version.

Click on the source cell with the formula to be copied then place the mouse pointer over the bottom left corner so the cursor changes to a cross:

OWA Excel - Autofill cursor.jpg image from Additions to Office Web Apps at Office-Watch.com

Sequential autofill also works. Select cells with the numbers 1 and 2 then drag to other cells which will be populated with 3, 4, 5 etc. The increment is set by the difference between the two source cells eg cells 2 and 4 will extend to 6, 8, 10 etc.


PowerPoint – add clipart

The Word Web App could already access the Office Clipart library, now a Clipart button has been added to the Insert tab. Microsoft boasts that this lets you choose from over 200,000 royalty free images and drawings.


PowerPoint – more themes

When you make a new presentation you’re given the choice of some pre-defined themes. An unstated number of extra themes are now provided.


In-house and hosted Office Web Apps

At this stage these changes are limited to Live.com users. The original Office Web Apps download for installing on hosted and in-house servers, as an extra for Sharepoint, doesn’t appear to have been updated.

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