Microsoft Office 2010: Backstage View

Here at New Signature we’ve been testing the Office 2010 beta for several weeks now, and BackStage is single-handedly the best feature.

First a bit of background on what led to BackStage. Microsoft has emphasized “customization” in its software packages, which allows users to drag toolbars to their hearts content, and often resulted in changes each time an application has been upgraded. Few would see any resemblence between Office 2007 and the original Word for DOS or Word for Mac. By far, the biggest change occurred with Office 2007′s decision to introduce “the ribbon”, a much larger menu system designed to allow users to quickly reach the features they need.

The developers of Office realized that as they continued to add features, many users were simply unaware of their existence. Because of this, simple tasks like creating a table of contents, or adding a table, ended up taking much longer than they should’ve. With the ribbon in place, users could quickly access the features they needed.

One problem emerged quickly.

The issue, discovered by users as soon as they fired up Office 2007, was that the familiar “file” menu was gone, and had been replaced by a circular button with the Office logo on it. Discovering this “feature” frustrated even veteran users of Office. Worse still, although the ribbon greatly sped up common tasks associated with editing documents, because the file menu was removed, common tasks associated with saving, printing, etc, took much longer.

The development team at Microsoft took thousands of research hours back into the lab, and emerged with a solution sure to delight Office veterans and novices alike called the Backstage View.  In our opinion, it is easy to learn, and easy to master.

The confusing button has been removed, and replaced with the common “file” interface, but the similarities to the old menu system end there. When a user clicks “File” in Office 2010, regardless of the application (Word, Excel, Outlook, etc) a new menu pops up with common tasks users perform outside a document, as opposed to inside a document. This distinction is crucial: Microsoft realized that users only do two tasks with documents: they either manipulate the inside of the document itself, or they perform a task outside a completed document, such as sending it to a friend. The latter was ignored in 2007, and has been rebuilt from the ground up in 2010. These “out” features make the user experience much better.

Want to print a document? Go to Backstage via the “file” menu and the new print dialog appears. No need to click “print preview” because it’s already showing you the document. No need to go into printer options because again, the common options are right there.

Need to send the document to a friend? Backstage quickly ascertains whether you wish to send a link, an attachment, or merely upload a document into SharePoint. The latter becomes even easier, as it’s almost impossible to forget to “check-in” a document to SharePoint, because Backstage reminds you right there.

As Office 2010 gets closer to its release date, we’ll continue to share tips and tricks to help you make the jump. In the various applications, there have been significant improvements under the hood to go over, especially to Outlook. Enabling your office to make the transition seamlessly to 2010 is a key goal of ours at New Signature. Just give us a call to see if one of the new features would make implementation a must-have!