April, 2009

Today as part of the Exchange 14 annoucement we officially announced the name and availability of Office “14” products and technologies!

Exchange Server 2010 will become available in the second half of 2009. Microsoft Office 2010 and related products will enter technical preview in the third quarter of 2009 and become available in the first half of 2010.

Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft Visio 2010 and Microsoft Project 2010 are scheduled to enter technical preview in the third quarter of 2009 and release to manufacturing in the first half of 2010.

I am looking forward to share with the developer community the latest news related to our Microsoft Office 2010 release.

The Office 2007 SP2 is available now for download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=B444BF18-79EA-46C6-8A81-9DB49B4AB6E5&displaylang=en

Here are some improvements on SP2 that matter to developers:

• Save as PDF and XPS: One of the coolest things you can do from Office 2007 Word, Excel, and PowerPoint is “Save As” PDF or XPS. You can also programmatically Save AS ODF or XPS using the OM. Here’s a cool video that shows how to do this:


Update: Also, here's a great sample VBA sample code from Ron de Bruin: http://www.rondebruin.nl/pdf.htm

Before SP2, you could download a free add-in to get this functionality. The SP2 offers this functionality out-of-the box.

• Save as ODF 1.1 for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint: OpenDocument 1.1 (ODF) has been added as an available file format for saving documents in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Our decision to support ODF is just one aspect of Office's broad commitment to choice and interoperability, as covered by Tom Robertson today on the Microsoft on the Issues blog. See Doug Mahugh’s great blog post for details.
• New External File Format Converter API: In addition to allowing you to edit the ODF 1.1 format within Office 2007, SP2 also supports a new External File Format API that can be used to edit other document formats as well. With this API, users can choose to save their documents in any format they want. You can find more details at Stephen Peront’s blog. We are planning to release some developer documentation that shows how to work with this API on MSDN.
• Charting Object Model for Word and PowerPoint: A charting Object Model (OM) for Word and PowerPoint has been added to align with the charting support in Excel. Many customers expressed a need to programmatically insert, manipulate the size, and set the formatting of the charts similar to what was provided in the Office 2003 release. David Hale has a great blog post where he explains all the details.
• SharePoint and WSS 3.0 updates: Microsoft® Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0  Service Pack 2 (SP2) and Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007  Service Pack 2 (SP2) include updates designed to improve performance and availability in your SharePoint server farm, along with fixes to known issues across SharePoint Products and Technologies. In addition, SP2 provides enhancements designed to support greater interoperability, improve user experience and reduce administrative burden. Finally, SP2 provides the groundwork for an eventual upgrade to the next major version of SharePoint Products and Technologies. You can find a high-level overview of what Sharepoint SP2 offers here and at the SharePoint Team blog.

Gray Knowlton has a couple great posts that explain more details of this release:

• Office 2007 Service Pack 2 Kiosk
• Office 2007 Service Pack 2 Kiosk, with more staples

We have some great news for Office and SharePoint developers. We launched this morning a new section on the MSDN Office Developer Center where you can find Office and SharePoint books that matter to developers. We also provide free book chapters!

MSDN Office Developer Bookstore

Here’s the set of links where you can find our bookstore pages:

• Office Developer Bookstore
• Book Excerpts for Office and SharePoint Developers
• Books for 2007 Office System Developers
• Books for Access Developers
• Books for Excel Developers
• Books for InfoPath Developers
• Books about Office Development with Visual Studio
• Books for Outlook Developers
• Books for Project and Project Server Developers
• Books for SharePoint Designer Developers
• Books for SharePoint Server Developers
• Books for Windows SharePoint Services Developers
• Books for Word Developers

Why books matter to developers?

Research has shown that books are one of the most popular learning resources among developers. I agree with Research. Devs love books and most of us like collecting books with code samples. Why not have a place where we can have a live inventory of cool books that matter to Office and SharePoint developers? Also, MVPs and experts from our development community have authored more than 40 Office and SharePoint top-seller books. Why not help promote their work and wisdom? To make it even better for the community, the Office Developer Documentation group has contacted different publishers and acquired more than 70 book chapters. You can access book chapters on MSDN for free from our bookstore. Some book chapters are already published and some are coming soon. We will keep adding them to our book excerpts page as we publish more.

We joined the Amazon Associates program, so you if you want to buy a book, you can go directly from our bookstore pages to Amazon.

Not a developer? If you are an IT professional or an Information Worker and want to find Office and SharePoint books that matter to you, you can also find books on TechNet and Office Online (coming soon).

We’d like to invite everyone from the community to make our bookstore even better by referring more books. We are interested in hearing your recommendations for Office and SharePoint books that matter to developers. You can contact us through our Facebook group, our MSDN_Office twitter feed,  or you can leave your comments @ this blog entry.

Enjoy!

MSDN® is sponsoring a coding contest for Office 2007, named OfficePalooza! This sweepstakes will run two weeks beginning April 20, 2009, and features ten fun Visual Basic of Applications™ (VBA) coding challenges in the form of puzzles and games. Each entrant will earn a chance to win one of hundreds of available prizes, determined by a random drawing at the end of the contest.

About OfficePalooza
What’s this all about, and where did this crazy idea come from, anyway?

OfficePalooza Challenge Preview
Get a preview of the types of challenges you’ll be seeing with these short summaries. We’ve also included deadlines so you’ll be able to plan ahead.

Getting Started with VBA

If you’re new to Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), this article might help prepare you for the challenges.

The Story of Binder Clippy
An introduction to our mascot, Binder Clippy!

Find all details about this contest at the Office Palooza Web site: http://blogs.msdn.com/officepalooza/

In conjunction with this contest, an Advanced Business User theme will run on Microsoft Office Online from mid-April to mid-May, and will showcase the automation and extensibility aspects of Office 2007 through macros, custom VBA coding, the Fluent UI, and Office Open XML.  This collaborative effort will also highlight existing and newly-created content on the MSDN Microsoft Office Developer Center.

Share the news!

Some other bloggers who have already blogged about this contest:

· http://www.dailydoseofexcel.com/

· https://www.obacentral.com/en/Learn/Lists/Upcoming%20Events/AllItems.aspx

· http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/archive/2009/04/14/test-your-vba-coding-skills-and-win.aspx

Join the contest and have fun!