Tablet PC & Microsoft Office 12 Beta
Sunday, January 22nd, 2006About two weeks ago I reformatted my hard drive, reinstalled Windows XP Tablet Edition on my HP TC1100 (1 Ghz, 1 gig of Ram) and loaded MS Office 12 Beta. Here are some initial observations. As you will see, nothing you will find here is new since Microsoft bloggers have worked hard to keep us up to date with many visuals & words:
OneNote (Owen Brown)
OneNote (Chris Pratley on the user-oriented view of OneNote)
Outlook (Michael Affronti)
Outlook (Will Kennedy on the super feast new search feature in Outlook (and it IS really fast!)
Outlook (Melissa MacBeth on Tasks and Time Management in Outlook– I LOVE the new ToDo bars and the Navigation Panes– perfect for the screen limited Tablet PC users)
Office (Jensen Harris on the snazzy new interface of Office)
Excel (David Gainer on what is new in Excel)
video at Channel 9 on new UI for Office 12
Microsoft on the new UI for Office 12
For the past 2 weeks I have been using Outlook 12, Word 12, Excel 12, PowerPoint 12, and OneNote 12 as my primary programmes on my tablet pc, both for work and other purposes.
Installing and a new found love
Any glaring problems with installing? The only 2 immediate issues at hand for me were that I had to uninstall two add-ins for Outlook from both MindManager as well as Adobe Pro 7. Both mindManager and Adobe work fine otherwise. I can live with this as I don’t use these features much and I am really thrilled with many of the new features in this Beta version. In order words the benefits of installing Office outweighs the harms. Though, of course, I am fully aware that this is a beta version and snags could come along the way.
The most obvious newness about Office is the retooled user interface. It’s sleek and feature rich and I like the blueish colour in Word. I love, love, love, love the new ‘Ribbon’ that most of the Office programmes will have. Jensen Harris of Microsoft refers to the Ribbon as "a strip across the top of the window that exposes what the program can do." I appreciate this feature because I really did not enjoy the constant playing and futzing around on my Tablet with all the moving Office tool bars. The bars would not ’sit still’ and as a visual person I really like to see as many of my features as possible yet having things look organized. This became even more annoying on my Tablet PC when rotating from landscape to portrait and back. I have wasted many a minute to fix the toolbars so that I am less distracted. Of course, I could have choosen to leave the toolbars messy in Word 2003 but that would require more psychological energy than fixing them!
I should note that not all Office programmes will get the new Ribbon look. Go to this post by Jensen Harris for the who and why.
What I like the best so far
In the past few years I have used MS Outlook email with no problems. I always found the calendar, appointments and tasks quite a hassle to use to the point that I became an inconsistent user of those features. Why? I really had to mouse and click around to get a sense of what the tasks were, my emails and appointments. The UI in Outlook now brings together in one screen, e-mail, tasks, and appointments. This is hot! Now I don’t have to flip back and forth to find this appointment or write this email. I can stay in the same screen view much longer than before. And what is nice for people who use Tablet PC’s and have less than say 17 inch flat panels, the tool and task bars can be set up in such a way that even with my 10 incher tablet pc, I can view it all at a glance!
The picture above of Outlook shows you how my email navigation pane is on the left. I could choose to have all my Outlook folders showing but I like this better. I can set up the navigation pane which allows me to only show my favourite folders, in other words I can choose to only see incoming email from those I have designated as favourites. I really like this because it reduces the distracting emails. I can look at them later when I wish to do so and all I have to do is click on the navigation pane. Note the picture is a bit scrunched up so even on my TC1100 I do get to see way more than is currently showing.
Note that in Outlook email there is a grab and drag feature (see more below). While the ribbon feature is present in Outlook it is not immediately obvious until you start writing emails.
Also the new search feature in Outlook is super fast and handy. I had to find some email today from 2002 and found it it no time. The old Outlook search feature was painfull in comparison! Yay!
To Do Bar
I love the To Do Bar in Outlook 12. Again, it’s because Outlook now allows for a single page view of email, tasks and appointments. Appointments are clearly shown and lots of colours to choose from. Tasks are also integrated into the Outlook single view. It is great to stay on the same view and quickly add tasks. It’s all about integration and a single view. When I use a docking station at work, I use the flat panel for Word or Firefox, etc and the docked tablet is set to my outlook. A small glance from my ever watchful right eye sees all that I need to know.
Grab and drag
I have written previsouly here and here how much I love the grab and drag Firefox extension. Why? When I surf around on the web I am usually in slate mode and control of web pages is higher with grab and drag than with trying to find the side bar constantly. It just feels like a more natural way of moving around on the screen. Smooth and intimate. Of course only a Tablet PC allows for such qualities. In one of these earlier posts I wished for the grab and drag feature in MS Word. Well my wish has come through! Yay! And not only in Word but also in Outlook. Though it will probably be more useful in Word because of reading papers and other documents. I have always disliked reading Word docs on the screen because of the difficulty I have navigating around using the side bar. Yes there are some other features currently to help you navigate but grab and drag is a superior solution for me. The picture below shows you the Ribbon style in Word.
Inking
The picture above shows you what the inking features look like at a glance in Word. While I am not entirely sure I have a feeling that some of the inking features in Word will be expanded. As of now, there are way way more colours to choose from and you can more easier choose the weight of the lines. Also it is possible to stay in grab and drag mode while making comments in the beta Word version. Nothing much else to report on inking so far but that could be because I haven’t noticed it. The same goes with Outlook. The basic inking features now available in Outlook 2003 are similar in this Beta version. I really do hope that some major refinements will be made. I have not really been happy with the inking capabilities in either Word 2003 or the Beta. I know they can be better.
Regardless of some of my complaints, I am very excited about Office 12 so far. I know it will really make a difference in my work.
As an aside, while I have been eager to try out Inkgestures in the Office Beta version, it does not seem to show up anywhere on the toolbar.
In the near future I’ll have a write up on OneNote 12.
