Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 Beta review

Kurt DelBene, senior vice president of the Office Business Productivity Group at Microsoft, announced the availability of Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 beta via Windows Marketplace for Mobile last week.

“Office Mobile 2010 is also now available in beta, making the Office experience across the PC, phone and browser a reality. Office Mobile 2010 includes mobile versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and new SharePoint Workspace Mobile 2010, and is available worldwide in Windows Marketplace for Mobile for Windows Mobile 6.5 phones.”

1.  Changed icons

You might notice on the screenshots above that the icons for Office Mobile 2010 have changed. In the left screenshot you can see the icon of the Office Mobile folder is changed.

In the right screenshot you can see that the program icons  for Word Mobile 2010, Excel Mobile 2010 and PowerPoint Mobile 2010 have changed as well. The OneNote Mobile 2010 icon looks similar but completely new is the SharePoint Workspace Mobile 2010 application as part of the Office Mobile 2010 suite.

In the following sections I want to address the different Office Mobile 2010 application and try to provide an overview of the different functions and features.

2.  Word Mobile 2010 Beta

Microsoft Word is probably the most used Microsoft Office application, and therefore I will start with an overview of the Word Mobile 2010 Beta application as well. As you can see in the left screenshot above the new Office Mobile 2010 versions are part of the 14 range.

In the right screenshot I have opened a Microsoft Word 2007 document in Word Mobile 2010 Beta on the Windows Mobile 6.5 powered HTC HD2. On the bottom you see a toolbar to use the most important layout elements, when you right a document:  bold, italic, underlined, allignment, unordered lists (bullets), ordered lists, outdent and finally indent.

The left softkey labelled “view” lets you check or uncheck the options “toolbar” and “wrap to window“, which show or unshow the bottom toolbar. Furthermore you can set the zoom percentage, for best reading the document.

The right softkey labelled “menu” opens a quickmenu with more advanced features. At first you can select some basic activities: redo, cut, copy paste. But Word Mobile 2010 also lets you “Find/Replace”, “Spell Check”, “Word Count”, “Insert Date” or change the “Font” and “Paragraph” settings.

3.  Excel Mobile 2010 Beta

The second application I would like to discuss is Excel Mobile 2010 Beta, and in comparison with the Word Mobile 2010 Beta I took a different approach by creating a complete new Excel document on the Windows Phone (while I just opened an existing Word document in the previous section).

As you can see in the right screenshot above I have labels and data to some cells, while you further may notice the toolbar at the bottom of the screen. When I select the cells B1 up to B5 and hit the chart-button on the left in the toolbar, a chart-creation-wizard is openend that guides you through process:  (1) select chart type, (2) confirm datarange, (3) choose data layout (rows or columns), (4) indicate the labels in the selection, (5) insert chart as a new sheet or as an object on the current sheet.

In the screenshot you might further notice that I selected cell B6, which is the SUM of cells B1 up to B5. In other words it is possible to insert functions into your Excel Mobile 2010 worksheet. If it is just calculating the sum of some values there is a quick-button in the bottom toolbar.

However you can insert all the different types of functions you are used from Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010 as well, via the right softkey “menu”, choose the option “insert”, choose the option “function” and there you find the longlist of different functions. In this “insert” menu item you furthermore have the option to insert a chart, insert a symbol or simply insert cells.

Other often used features are the “sort” and “autofilter” data, which can be configure in the “tools” submenu. Furthermore you can do the Excel basics like inserting, deleting and moving cells. You can see some helpfull buttons in the bottom toolbar for inserting the $ sign and format the cell-data into monetary values. Finally on the complete right there is a button to easily zoom in.

4.  PowerPoint Mobile 2010 Beta

The screenshots above show you the new 2010 beta version of PowerPoint Mobile, which we all know is about slideshows and presentations (so it doesn’t need a long introduction).  The main difference with Word Mobile 2010 Beta and Excel Mobile 2010 Beta is that you can’t create a new slideshow, but “just” open, edit and view slideshows & presentations while on the go.

However the biggest improvement in PowerPoint Mobile 2010 is the feature called ”Presentation Companion“.

“After downloading Presentation Companion from this site and installing it on your laptop, it works together with the Presentation Companion feature in Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 [Beta]. Using Presentation Companion, you can: (1) Control the presentation on your laptop from your Windows® phone, and (2) View speaker notes on your Windows® phone as you control the presentation.”

While I personally enjoy the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 to control a slideshow on my laptop, control the volume and having a laserpointer build-in as well, I think the presentation companion is a very useful addition. If you own a Windows Phone there are no additional costs for a  presenter device, and you can view the presentation notes on your Windows Phone.

This is a great example of a perfect integration of Microsoft Office 2010 beta on your laptop and Microsof Office Mobile 2010 beta on your Windows Phone. In other words it’s an outcome of the three-screens-and-a-cloud strategy, which is directing and pushing Microsoft to new results !!

Download and install the Presentation Companion add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint from the Microsoft Download Center, while the screenshot above shows you an example slide (with graphics perfectly shown on your the display of your Windows Phone).

5.  SharePoint Mobile 2010 Beta

On the Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog I found the following description to get an idea of what is possible with Microsoft SharePoint:

“Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies, improve team and organization effectiveness by providing scalable collaborative work spaces, easily deployable and manageable infrastructure, and extensible application platform as well as a unified suite of enterprise-scale applications that satisfies diverse business-critical needs, such as managing content and business forms, simplifying how people work together across boundaries, and enabling better informed decision-making.”

Although Microsoft SharePoint is not my field of expertise, the SharePoint Mobile 2010 Beta application provides end-users an additional way of connecting with the Microsoft SharePoint Workspace while on the road (if that is the right interpretation of the definition above). In that case it is a very clever move from Microsoft which will help business users being more productive and more effective on the go.

Again a great result of the three-screen-and-a-could-strategy which inter-connects Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 2010 (previously know as Microsoft Groove) on your laptop and Microsoft SharePoint Mobile 2010 beta on your Windows Phone.

6.  OneNote Mobile 2010 Beta

The last and fifth Office Mobile application is Microsoft OneNote Mobile 2010 beta, which according to the left screenshot above still has a version number in the old 12.x range while the other Office Mobile 2010 applications have a version number from the 14.x range.

This implicates that OneNote Mobile 2010 Beta hasen’t changed in this new release of the Office Mobile 2010 Beta suite. I compared the version number with OneNote Mobile on a Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional powered device, and the version numbers are almost identical.

However OneNote Mobile 2010 Beta is a nice application to capture notes on your Windows Phone. While there are the basic text manipulation features like “cut”, “copy”, “paste”, “undo” and “redo” you can also insert lists (numbered or bulleted) and format the text with styles (bold, italic, underline, strikethrough).

Furthermore you can take- and insert a picture to a note direct from within the OneNote Mobile 2010 application, which can be extremely helpful -for example for an engineer working on a location and needs to explain the situation to his colleagues-.

I must admit that Microsoft OneNote (2010) on my Lenovo X60 Tablet PC is extremely helpful, since I can write down notes directly on my machine. Honestly I think this is a very helpful tool, especially for students and mobile professionals but unfortunately there is no support to write down handwritten notes in OneNote Mobile (despite I can synchronise the OneNote Notebooks via ActiveSync or Windows Mobile Device Center to a Windows Phone).

Furthermore there are so very competitive programs on the market like Evernote, which have a truly multiple platform support and extend functionality with Ink Notes, Snap Shots, Audio Notes, Uploading Files. This all takes place in an over the air scenario, and in the premium subscription I honestly like the Evernote PDF Search.

Concluding thoughts and wrap-up

I would like to start this section with a picture of a slide during a session of the Microsoft Office Team, when I was fortunate to attended this years Mobius conference a little more than a week again. The picture gives you a nice overview and is taken by  Gonzague-Alexandre Gay, Editor in Chief of Akihabaranews, so please have a look at his website as well.

The most significant improvements in Office Mobile 2010 Beta are the addition of the complete new application SharePoint Mobile 2010 and the presentation companion feature in PowerPoint Mobile 2010.

By doing a head-to-head comparison with Microsoft Office Mobile on a Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional device, it feels that there are quite some similarities with Word Mobile 2010 and Excel Mobile 2010 (and less new features). OneNote Mobile 2010 Beta still has the old version number and doesn’t seem to have changed at all.

Kurt DelBene, senior vice president of the Office Business Productivity Group at Microsoft, furthermore announced the laptop- and cloud versions of Microsoft Office 2010 as well as the SharePoint Server 2010 product:

“We’re excited to announce the public beta of the 2010 versions of Office, SharePoint Server, Visio, Project and Office Web Apps for business customers.”

Overall I can only conclude that Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 is an extensive and very powerfull application suite that keeps mobile professionals productive and effective on the go.

Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 is a true extention of the Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 for your Windows desktop. Furthermore I’m really curious to see the features and functionality in the announced Microsoft Office Web Apps.

Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 goes beyond viewing and basic editting of Office documents attached to e-mails, but is a true productivity suite for the modern mobile professional and business user. Get your copy of Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 Beta from Windows Marketplace for Mobile and let us know what you think !!