Mobility in Office 2010

Microsoft Office 2010 provides you powerful new ways to deliver your best work - whether you’re at work or at home, whether you are travelling in a cab or on a flight, whether you are working on a PC, browser or phone. By offering more ways to access your files from virtually anywhere, Office 2010 puts you in control.

As part of Wednesday’s Office 2010 Beta Announcement we announced the availability of the Office Mobile 2010 Beta -- today’s post describes some of the exciting work we’ve done related to mobility in more detail.  Specifically, we’ll talk more about the experiences that make Office 2010 the mobile information worker’s best set of productivity tools on the phone.

Basically, there’re two major offerings we provide for mobile information workers to work on their Office documents. Depending primarily on the type of phone you have, you get to choose whichever way works best for you or is available to you. One way is with Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 and another is with Microsoft Office 2010 Mobile Viewers. We’ll discuss both in detail below, but in short….

…If you are using a Windows Phone

l You get both options. If you want to modify your Office documents, you can use Office Mobile 2010 applications providing rich user experience which customers of Microsoft Office client applications are familiar with. If you just want to quickly view the documents, you can use Office 2010 Mobile Viewers which display your documents in mobile IE browser. We will walk you through the different scenarios in upcoming posts so you know which option might work best for you.

…If you are using a phone built on a non-Windows Platform

l You get the Office 2010 Mobile Viewers option only. As previously mentioned, you get to view the Office documents in your mobile browser whether you have smartphones like iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Symbians or non-smartphones.

The Beta for Office Mobile 2010 is available worldwide in Windows Marketplace for Mobile for Windows Mobile 6.5 phones.  To try the Office 2010 Mobile Viewer, you need to have the Office Web Apps installed on your company’s Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and then you can use explorer on your phone to view Office documents on the server (read this Office Web App blog post for more information on how to deploy the Web Apps in the enterprise). 

In future blog posts, we will explore tips and tricks for the different apps and tools Microsoft Office provides to meet the demands of your busy life on-the-go with your mobile device.  In the meantime, enjoy the information below and we hope to hear your feedback soon!

Office Mobile 2010

           
Word Mobile 2010, Excel Mobile 2010 and PowerPoint Mobile 2010

Office Mobile 2010 also makes it easy for you to review documents on the move by adding the ability to edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. So use your commute time in a cab or on a flight to customize an existing presentation by hiding or rearranging slides, reviewing speaker notes, and even adding new notes as you rehearse. What’s more, you can now use your Windows phone as a presentation aid that enables you to control the slideshow and simultaneously view notes as you engage more effectively with your audience.

           
View images and animations. SmartArt graphics are preserved. Easily manage slides.

Using OneNote Mobile, you can take and manage personal notes on your Windows phone. You can even record voice or take pictures using the phone and bring them to OneNote Mobile or share your notes with your PC and refer to them when you are away.

           
Capture multimedia notes with ease. Take & insert a picture or voice recording and organize your notes with lists.

In addition to files and e-mail attachments, if you get a link to content hosted on SharePoint Online or on SharePoint 2010, you can access it using SharePoint Workspace Mobile 2010, which enables you to browse sites, document libraries, and lists from the comfort of your Windows phone.

           
Access multiple sites and libraries, view and sync libraries easily and access your content offline.

We’ve also done work to allow you to save edited documents to the phone and just synchronize them back to the server in case you lose your mobile connection.

Office 2010 Mobile Viewers

With your mobile device browser, Office 2010 Mobile Viewers will help you stay organized, get things done, and present information by keeping Office at your fingertips.

Office 2010 Mobile Viewers enable you to view Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files in an easy to read small-screen format that maintains high fidelity. Office 2010 Mobile Viewers target a wide range of devices and micro browsers so that people with or without smartphones can take the advantage of the cool features without having to upgrade your mobile phone. Here are a few examples.

Viewing product sales documents on your mobile phone

Imagine you are sitting in the airport when your colleague calls you and says that the inventory data sheet and promotion document you are going to share with the customers later has been modified and saved back on the SharePoint server to reflect the latest status. You don’t need to bother turning on your laptop. You open up your browser from your mobile phone, connect to your team SharePoint portal, select the inventory data sheet, and quickly see the new inventory diagram. You then click on promotion document and see that the visuals have been revamped. You feel confident before you walk on the plane knowing that the customers will surely be happy with your presentation later.

       
Excel Mobile Viewer and Excel Mobile Viewer functionalities

      
Word Mobile Viewer – image view and the Word Mobile Viewer – text view.

Joining a meeting and viewing the presentation on your mobile phone

Office 2010 Mobile Viewers also go beyond just allowing you to view your own files. Imagine you’re stuck in a traffic jam are going to be late for a meeting that starts in 5 minutes. Now you pull out your mobile phone and pop open the email you received from the meeting presenter that contains a URL to the presentation broadcast (“Broadcasting presentation” is a new feature supported by PowerPoint 2010 that will be talked about in more detail in the future). You can now participate in the call and view the current slide in real time as the presentation moves along.

        
PowerPoint Mobile Viewer – image view and PowerPoint Mobile Viewer – outline view.

We hope you’re as excited about Office Mobile 2010 as we are! Future posts will walk you through each of the above mobile productivity tools in more detail so when they are released you’ll be able to use them as we do and improve your productivity on the go.

Update: Replace the images of “Excel Mobile Viewer” and “PowerPoint Mobile Viewer” with updated ones. No description or other content has been changed in the update.

Comments

• Anonymous
  November 20, 2009
  It seems the only way of getting this is via windows marketplace. On my phone (a 2 year old HTC Touch) marketplace shows up pretty much empty and, worse, once opened the only way to get it to shut down is to switch off the phone. In short, its (very) heavy and buggy. It isn't clear if 2010 is a free upgrade or you have to purchase it. If it is free can you just post a link to it?

• Anonymous
  November 20, 2009
  I really hope this is unfinished work.  Right now it doesn't look like Office 2010 Mobile does much more than the current Office Mobile.  The major notable exceptions I see are PowerPoint Mobile allowing editing (I don't think mine does not) and SharePoint Mobile (very cool, I will admit). Word mobile looks exactly the same!  It still has tiny un-finger-clickable buttons, and not a whole lot of formatting options. Excel Mobile actually looks worse.  The huge edit pane at the top looks silly.  Does it collapse, I hope, so it can view more of the document like in old Excel Mobile? OneNote Mobile 2010 is a joke, right?  The biggest complaint of 2007's OneNote Mobile is that it had no inking, no drawing, and very limited editing support (no font size changes, etc.).  It always had the ability to embed pictures and recordings, which I almost never used.  We were promised very big things with OneNote 2010 on various Microsoft blogs in the past to address these issues.   OneNote Mobile could be an absolute killer business app that would make Crackberry owners switch to Windows Mobile.  But if it's superficial changes, I can't see anybody being impressed with that. Boy, I hope this is a very early not-feature-complete version.  If we don't get more features on the premiere office application for Windows Phone, then Windows Phone is doomed in the business arena.

• Anonymous
  November 20, 2009
  Is there any way to use the mobile viewers WITHOUT Sharepoint? I use Office for personal projects, so I don't have a Sharepoint server available. Will this be implemented into Skydrive like the regular web apps?

• Anonymous
  November 20, 2009
  Still can't sync the 64-bit version with Windows Mobile Device Center? Worthless :( http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/office2010general/thread/eae53eb6-6c01-4416-b5b4-496a34e96b2a

• Anonymous
  November 20, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 21, 2009
  Will you support Windows Mobile 6 and 6.1 going forward?

• Anonymous
  November 21, 2009
  One more vote for inking in OneNote Mobile. I use OneNote very heavily on a tablet PC and love it. I just want to be able to scribble a quick note on my phone, tag it, and have it sync to my PC when I sync everything else. It's in the nature of quick jottings that I am not in a position or don't have the time to go through a laborious screen-keyboard input, or get the transcriber to recognise my hasty scrawl: the ability to jot, tag and sync notes is crucial. I can't be the only user with this need!

• Anonymous
  November 22, 2009
  Es original

• Anonymous
  November 22, 2009
  The viewers look so much better than full programs.

• Anonymous
  November 23, 2009
  IMHO, the main Office feature for mobile users is synchronization with Outlook. And this feature is still missing for 64-bit Outlook 2010... So it is not very useful for mobile users, unfortunately :-(

• Anonymous
  November 23, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 24, 2009
  @ Ian - It's free, you can find it under Categories | Productivity | Task Management if you are accessing Marketplace from your US-English windows mobile 6.5 (touch-enabled) device else you will not be able to install @ Parrotlover77 - I can see lots of new features in PowerPoint Mobile like Edit slide, Re-arrange slides, much better rendering, PowerPoint companion etc not sure why you are not seeing all these features, are you sure it got installed properly? Yet to try other apps though

• Anonymous
  November 25, 2009
  oki

• Anonymous
  December 09, 2009
  It would be nice if Office 2010 Beta was available for Windows Mobile 6.1 phones. The Windows Mobile 6.5 phones are just not worth upgrading from a Windows Mobile 6.1 phone. If Microsoft would provide an ability to upgrade phones from Windows Mobile 6.1 to Windows Mobile 6.5 that would be great as well. It is very disappointing that inking has not been brought to OneNote Mobile on a Professional device, and more importantly it was said to see inking removed from Word Mobile as it was a very useful feature. Although I understand that you could not get it to fully synchronize back and forth correctly so you removed the feature.

• Anonymous
  December 15, 2009
  Appears that Office Word Mobile does not support Outline View is that correct? (This is a void that Google Docs does not support.)

• Anonymous
  January 28, 2010
  "The Beta for Office Mobile 2010 is available worldwide in Windows Marketplace for Mobile for Windows Mobile 6.5 phones" ... it seems not! I can't see it on a german windows phone 6.5 ... with a german carrier .. any hint how to get the beta ?

• Anonymous
  February 16, 2010
  If you want access to SharePoint but you're a BlackBerry user in the non-Windows Mobile camp, you can still have a full experience -- editing, check in/checkout, workflow, etc http://silverdust.softartisans.com

• Anonymous
  February 28, 2010
  I have a HTC hero and it works great..canny edit all files in there...loved it.! just wanted to say thanks..;-)

• Anonymous
  June 03, 2010
  if u have wm6.1 just update to wm6.5, its heaps heaps heaps better and faster. go to xda devs to find out how