Redmond, Wash., June 18, 2010 – Below are links to stories and videos about some of the Microsoft employees who helped create Office 2010. Find out why they focused on the features they did, what they learned along the way, and what it’s like to work on a product that will be used by millions of people.
Farmer a Fairy Godmother of Business Intelligence Solutions
Once upon a time there was Donald Farmer, a business intelligence program manager, who loved doing imaginative things with technology and showing customers that with PowerPivot they can use common programs like Excel to produce uncommon results. See the video.
Professor’s Laser Focus Gets Mathematics into Office 2010
Murray Sargent helped save Windows in 1988, authored theories that helped bring us laser printers, and wrote a book with a Nobel Prize winner. Most recently, he helped make it so people can type and edit mathematical equations in Microsoft Office. See the video.
Office Web Apps Planner Brings Documents to the Cloud
Lead Product Planner Jill Campbell talks about Office Web Apps, the free, lightweight, Web-based versions of Microsoft Office programs that enable people to access their documents anytime, anywhere.
Hooked on a Feature: Timeline View Draws New Users to Microsoft Project
Want to send a project status update without overwhelming people with details? Program Manager Heather O’Cull describes a feature in Microsoft Project 2010 that lets users create colorful, simplified timelines of their plans that can be easily shared using Outlook or PowerPoint. See the video.
Visio 2010 Development Lead on Sharing via the Web
Principal Development Lead Abraham Mathew talks about a new tool his team built that lets people publish and update their Microsoft Visio 2010 diagrams on the Web.
MacBeth Delivers Quick Steps to Speed E-mail Tasks in Outlook 2010
Program Manager Melissa MacBeth discusses a feature she helped develop that lets Outlook users perform multiple actions with a single click. See the video.
PowerPoint 2010 Adds Broad Range of Video Capabilities
Barn-Wan Li and his team created new audio and video features for Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 that enable users to more easily embed video in their presentations, and to overlay text and make basic edits to videos without leaving PowerPoint.
Microsoft Word 2010 Coauthoring Enables Multiple People to Work on a Document at the Same Time
Jonathan Bailor, a Microsoft Word program manager, helped solve a 27-year-old issue: how to help teams efficiently collaborate on documents. The resulting tool, coauthoring, is now available in Office 2010.
Excel 2010 Sparklines: Fitting the Big Picture Into One Cell
Sam Radakovitz developed a feature called “sparklines” for Microsoft Excel 2010 that lets users transform large amounts of data into small, at-a-glance displays that fit into a single cell. See the video.
Former DJ Spins Up a More Social Outlook 2010
Microsoft Program Manager Michael Affronti helped develop two new features for Microsoft Office 2010, one that organizes e-mails by conversation and another that lets people use e-mail to connect socially with friends and professional contacts.