Microsoft Office 2010’s official demo is still due to come out this July but users were given a sneak peek when Microsoft showed some Office Apps in an effort to showboat Windows 7. Here’s a review on Microsoft Office 2010 based on what viewers saw so far.

Office 2010 looks far different from Office 2010. The Office 2007 ribbon is still there but this time styled the Windows 7 way. The circular Office icon that replaced the “File” menu in older versions has been replaced by buttons that differ in each app (blue buttons for Word, green buttons for Excel, red buttons for Powerpoint and so on). These buttons are much easier to spot and more user-friendly. Window menus which disappeared in Office 2007 are back. Office 2010’s interface has returned to a more standard Windows user interface.

Microsoft Outlook experienced the most changes. Outlook is now equipped with its own custom jumplist. Its taskbar function is also now much more versatile. Just right-click on the Outlook icon on the taskbar and you find shortcuts to create a new email, appointment, task, contact, or open the inbox, tasks window or calendar. Outlook can also alert you if you’ve received new messages even if you haven’t placed Outlook in the notification area. A drag-and-drop function also makes attachments much easier.

The new QuickSteps function in Outlook also makes using the application much easier. The common tasks are all a click away in this toolbar. An option also exists where you can customize QuickSteps with the tasks you find most useful.

OutLook Web Access will also now have all features integrated in Firefox and Safari (for Mac Users). In Office 2007, only a “lite version” which had limited features was available.

The other apps received minimal changes. Some new icons have been added in Microsoft Word. Excel now has an icon for text orientation and that’s pretty much it.

Of course, Microsoft still has a couple of months to add changes to the other applications.

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