If you were following my tweets, you might be knowing that I got a invitation from Microsoft to test Microsoft Office 2010.

Invitation to test Microsoft Office 2010

Yeah, From the screen shot it should be evident that I’m using a mac now. I testing Office 2010 by installing it on my Windows 7 Virtual Box image. Being a usability guy myself, In this article, I will primarily focus on usability aspects of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. I haven’t used OneNote or any other software that comes with Office. Again, feature wise, Microsoft has added a lot new things to Office 2010 (so they say…) If you want to know more about those features, head on to http://www.office2010themovie.com/ Before I wrap up, I will also touch up some minor UI glitches in Windows 7, lack of uniformity in the UI, and what I find interesting.

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So lets get started.

Word

Splash screen of Word 2010

Whoa… That little splash screen was animated!!! and it lasted only for a second or so. Word 2010 opened up near instantaneously. I was running within a VirtualBox. So I expected it to be slow. Yet to my surprise, the startup was fast. On a real PC, i think one wouldn’t even notice the splash screen. It’s really super fast.

The first thing one would notice is the new “Office Button” The already awesome Office Fluent UI (Codenamed ribbon) has gotten some tweaks especially the Omnipotent Office Button. Clicking that button takes you through a great looking “task centered” page dubbed as Outspace.

Clicking the Office Button reveals this "Omnipotent" UI

The tasks are grouped (highlighted in orange in the screen shot above) elegantly. Clicking a group brings up a separate pane where actions related to that group can be performed. In the above screen shot, what you see is the actions related to the “Info” group. But I’ve a little gripe here. There is no visual cue that a group can be clicked. It appears as if only the buttons are clickable. Moreover, going by classical Windows (or Mac) philosophy, a menu option is usually suffixed with a ellipsis (…) when clicking an item brings up a new dialog or something. However, this guideline was not followed in designing this UI. As such, it’s quite confusing to know what’s going to happen if I click something, before actually clicking it. Small things, but one should really put some effort on the usability aspect of things rather than focusing just on aesthetics.

Second thing I noticed was the support for other open formats. Interestingly (or EU Court pressure?) Office 2010 supports Open Office’s ODT file format natively.

Native Support for OpenOffice Files

Nice move from Microsoft which I think many of us will like. Even throughout Windows, I noticed Microsoft’s love (or false love?) for open formats. In fact MS Paint, now saves files in PNG format by default as opposed to Windows Bitmap file!

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The Office Fluent UI (Ribbon) didn’t have any major UI uplifts. But that should probably because it’s already awesome. Neat and task oriented. However, I still miss the “Search Commands” plugin in Office 2010. Though there is a version of Search Commands plugin that works with this technical preview, In my view, this should be a part of default installation. With over 2000 commands in Office, it’s simply impossible to remember everything. So is the options dialog.
When Microsoft Office 2008 on Mac can include a search button why not Office 2010 on Windows?

You can spotlight for commands in Word 2008 for Mac (but not on Windows)

I can’t understand this. If Microsoft can do it for Mac, why can’t they do the same for Windows…? As of Office 2007 the Options pane UI is too clumsy. It still remains clumsy in 2010. Not much changes from 2007 to 2010.

Much of the functionality and features remain the same. However, there was tighter integration with SharePoint Server and Office for Web. If you are going to use it only as a client software, then I would say there is no point in buying 2010 (if you are already using 2007).

Excel

Similar to Word 2010, much of UI part of Excel remained the same. I remember Microsoft shunning Multiple Document Interface long long ago. But still, even in 2010, Excel remains *partly* MDI. People really need to compare two Excel sheets side by side.But even with the excellent Window Management (esp Aero Snap) of Windows 7, because of the MDI nature of Excel, you got to open two instances of Excel to compare them side by side. The screenshot below should illustrate my thoughts.

Excel is still MDI in Office 2010

Moreover, by default, a “New Excel Sheet” opens within the same instance. And, if you have Excel pinned to your Taskbar, clicking on the Excel icon on the taskbar when an instance is already running, just brings that instance to front. If at all you want to open another instance(for comparing two excel sheets), you got to open it from the Programs list. From the above screenshot, you can see how difficult it’s to compare two documents that lie entirely within the application. It defeats the very purpose of all the innovative windowing mechanism brought into the Windows 7.

In the screen shot below, I can easily compare two word documents side by side using this Aero Snap feature.

Comparing Files using Aero Snap is easy because Word is SDI

This is something Excel should have. But atleast for the past ten years (from office 2000), Microsoft has not looked at the usability aspects of Office. I agree, they have been innovating on the SharePoint side, but at the same time, minor usability aspects like this should be addressed. You can’t ignore these issues for over a decade.

The MDI document management model itself is decade old. For example, in the screen shot below, you can’t even close an inactive Window without making it active. Where as elsewhere in Windows, you can.

The inactive sheet has to be made active before you can close it

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When Windows 7 is superior in Window Management, why not leave the Window Management aspect of the application to it? Simply un-acceptable. This minor glitch has been in Excel for over a decade (from 1997 I suppose). Microsoft itself has moved away from MDI when they moved from Visual Studio 6 to Visual Studio .NET (2001-2002 timeframe). But even in 2010, Excel remains in MDI.

Outlook

When I first started Outlook I was greeted by the Outlook Wizard. It seems like, Outlook 2010 supports SMS, though I didn’t test it out.

Does Outlook 2010 support SMS?

Thankfully, GMail IMAP configuration was easier than Outlook 2007. If I’m not wrong, Outlook 2007 by default configures POP3 and we as a user have to go through various settings pane to change it to IMAP. But in Outlook 2010, the default mail configuration was IMAP. Happy!!!

However, My first experience was quite bad. Outlook crashed! Restarted it, and it went on fine though. It could even be because I’m running on a VM. But what really frustrated me is the UI. Why doesn’t Microsoft follow their own UI conventions? Why is this Windows 2000 like UI appearing on Outlook 2010?

Microsoft says it has scrapped off Windows Classic UI in Windows 7. Then from where did such a button come from? With Vista, Microsoft moved the OK button from center to right. Alongside, they should have changed it’s appearance to match the OS it’s running on. But they didn’t. I’m not stressing on the aesthetics here, But the uniformity. If’ I’m running Aero, I should see Aero themed buttons, and not Windows Classic buttons. This kind of uniformity mismatches are spread throughout Vista/Windows 7.

Another such example is the “End Program” dialog.

This one is a normal "Not Responding" window.

Why Microsoft, Why? UI Anomalies, can easily frustrate an already frustrated user. Consistency and standards is a very important usability evaluation heuristic.

Microsoft said, Office 2010 will be more “task centric”. Meaning that new workflows, for doing the same thing etc., should be present… But unfortunately, apart from the Office Button UI, not much has changed. The below is a screen shot of the “Mailbox Cleanup”

Old Old Mailbox Cleanup Dialog

The thing is already complicated. If Office 2010 is “task centric”, there should be some other easier to use dialogs/interfaces for doing the same task. But when you click the “Cleanup options” from the Office Outspace, this same old dialog pops up. I don’t understand how can this be called as “task oriented”. The Office Outspace innovation should have been implemented throughout.

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Conclusion

To conclude, I didn’t find anything enchanting in Office 2010, apart from the “Outspace” UI. But Office 2010 was a bit faster compared to Office 2007. If you are already running Office 2007, I don’t think there is any compulsion to migrate to 2010, but if you are still using 2003, Office 2010 is a must buy. Infact in the entire era of Microsoft Office, I would support only Office 97 and Office 2007 (and maybe Outlook 2003 for it’s spam protection). Everything else were sort of minor updates. Microsoft should really consider making the “Options” dialog more task oriented. A kind of ribbon innovation and they should incorporate the “Search Commands” plugin into the Fluent UI by default. That would really make Office 201X a great update. Let’s see…