Joe Friend

Every post you make as a blogger can be a huge learning experience. In Friday's post on the new Word 2007 blog post authoring feature I made a fairly modest claim that the HTML emitted by the feature would be better than the standard HTML from previous...

If you haven't already, now is a great time to sign up for Beta 2 of Office 2007. Just go to the Office 2007 Preview site and click on the Register Now button. You should get notified as soon as Beta 2 is available for download.

Word is a great tool for writing stuff, right? Blogging is all about communicating with words (and pictures, too). So, why not use Word to write your blog posts? Stop, don't jump to the end of this post to push the comment button yet. I'm not an idiot...

I returned to Microsoft (after a 7 year hiatus) in late 2003 just as the Office 2007 effort was getting under way. Landing on the Word team, where I'd spent a couple years in the mid 90s, was pretty exciting for me. After being away from Microsoft for...

I'm amazed by some bloggers ability to write tons of blog posts. Jensen , Dave , Brian , and all the other Microsoft Office bloggers are doing an incredible job writing interesting content for their blogs. Blogging was definitely much easier when I was...

Okay, I suck as a blogger. No way to deny it. My last post (from 11/27/05) ended with "More tomorrow..." and then silence. I've got a lot of good excuses (including the dog ate my blog server) but I'll save 'em for the next time I screw up. Let's just...

This is a common question for all of the Microsoft Office applications, but particularly so for Word. It's a close relative to the question, "Aren't you finished with Word yet?" Recently one of my nephews visited from Oklahoma. After seeing the Microsoft...

If you haven’t made your way to Brian Jones’ blog, do so immediately. He’s announced some very exciting news Microsoft’s plans to standardize the new Microsoft Open XML formats . Also, Scoble has an interview with Jean Paoli regarding the news. We...

Okay, okay. Office 12 beta 1 shipped. I’ve procrastinated as long as possible, but now I’ve really got to start sharing about all the amazing stuff we’ve done in Word 12. So, without futher ado I will start posting. Really. You’ll see stuff soon. I...

Now that Microsoft Watch has linked to my blog I really must get things going. Shortly after the last post I made the decision to hold off on posting much until Office "12" beta 1 was out the door. You don't need to wait much longer and I promise there...

It's time to get this blog jump started. Best laid plans of mice and men and all. But first a little background on me. I'm the lead program manager for Microsoft Office Word. That means I manage the team that designs the new features in Word. If you...

The Office 12 Preview Site now has an RSS feed that you can subscribe to so that you can get the latest and greatest news. Here's more info on how to use the Office 12 RSS feed .

Well, the news is out. If you watched the PDC keynote this morning you know that Office 12 is a huge leap for us. Chris did a great job demoing the new user experience (of course, I wish he spent more time on Word). Here are some great places to look...

Not much can be said now, but in just a couple weeks all sorts of great news will be coming out about Office 12 . I'll be sharing information about our plans for Microsoft Word. Can't wait to spill the beans! Until PDC my lips are sealed.