Office 2010 availability dates for UK universities

We have been developing Office 2010 for quite a while now – and many of you have been taking part in that by running the beta versions (at the last count, 7.5 million people have downloaded the beta version).

Late on Friday, Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 reached their last stage in the development process – called Release To Manufacturing (RTM in geek-speak). That means that it is finished and ready to go, and the code is then released to be made into the final product – whether that’s creating the DVDs that you buy in a shop, or creating the download websites for our volume licence customers.

Making the physical disks takes a little longer than the download sites, so here are the dates when you will be able to get hold of Office 2010:

• April 27 – If you already have Office and bought Software Assurance you can download from the Volume Licensing Service Centre
  This covers all universities who have a Campus Agreement, and those of you who’ve bought Office 2007 under the Select licence with the Software Assurance.


• May 1 – You can buy new Office 2010 licences from your Microsoft partner under Campus Agreement or Select.


• June – Home users can buy a retail copy of Office 2010 from the shops

If you’ve missed it, here’s a brief overview of what’s new in Office 2010.