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Microsoft Office Web Apps

The official blog of the Microsoft Office Web Apps team
Office Web Apps Coming to Windows Live

Today is an exciting day for us! We are making available Excel, Word and PowerPoint Web Apps for a select group of Windows Live users as part of the Office Web Apps Technical Preview. While the initial functionality is modest it will expand over time. As we get closer to the release of Office 2010 we will make the Office Web Apps available to more Windows Live users.

This early peek at the Office Web Apps will include high-fidelity viewing of Word, Excel and PowerPoint files in the browser. Invitees will also be able to edit Excel and PowerPoint files. Over time we’ll add OneNote Web App and the ability to edit Word files as well. Stay tuned to this blog to hear more about the upcoming features.

03PPTWeb_Viewer_WSS Excel Web App 01WordWeb_Viewer_WSS

We will be rolling the technical preview out to users gradually. In the meantime, if you want to get notifications about Office 2010 and Office Web Apps beta, sign up here.

Brian Hall from Windows Live has also written about the Office Web Apps on Windows Live.

Thanks,
Nick Simons
Program Manager, Office Web Apps

Posted: Thursday, September 17, 2009 9:23 AM by nsimons

Comments

Chris said:

Great news guys!  Keep up the good work...

# September 17, 2009 9:55 PM

John said:

Can I embed video inside of the Word documents within the web app?

# September 17, 2009 10:29 PM

Mike said:

Why would somebody do stuff like that...

# September 18, 2009 2:27 AM

Prometeus said:

To get a Daily Prophet like news paper....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8211209.stm

# September 18, 2009 2:36 AM

Denice Cavanagh said:

Will this replace office live workspace? Does this work in the same manner as office workspace in editing, saving and sharing

# September 18, 2009 12:10 PM

John said:

>> Can I embed video inside of the Word documents within the web app?

> Why would somebody do stuff like that...

Well, basically because if you can't embed things into a Word document then it is just a web page with Special Extra Awesome Features (r) like spell-check (browser already has) and...er...eh...that I pay for?

Will I be able to copy-n-paste a Office Web spreadsheet into an Office Web "Word" document and still enjoy the same functionality (sorting, calculations, formatting, charts, etc)?

My Internet Explorer 8 appears to freeze up for a couple seconds whenever I navigate from one page to another.  I wonder if the Online Office will also suffer from this behavior?

# September 18, 2009 1:05 PM

Hanu said:

Can't wait to see this and feel this. I think it has the potential to change MS web presense. Good luck and do the right things your customers need, make sure it just works and works right and quick.

# September 18, 2009 2:33 PM

samuel Diogo said:

Come on guy!

"Thursday, September 17, 2009 10:29 PM by John

Can I embed video inside of the Word documents within the web app?

"

No comments...

# September 18, 2009 2:44 PM

Andy said:

Does this work in IE6, or is it IE8 only?

# September 18, 2009 6:47 PM

David Ruiz said:

HI!

I Want to be invited to the Office Web Apps beta =) It´s possible?

I´m already invited to use the Office 2010 and I very excited to this new version.

My e-mail is wupsbr (at) hotmail (dot) com

Thanks,

# September 20, 2009 5:15 PM

Luca said:

Please... add Office Web Apps to Mesh! Will be a killer app!

Great job!

# September 21, 2009 10:38 AM

asdf said:

Office Web apps is already better than Google Docs. very surprising.

# September 21, 2009 12:03 PM

Omar said:

I am already in love with this. I can't wait for you guys to really get a nice simple desktop for me on the cloud. I love mesh. I love SkyDrive, and I especially love owa. I can't wait for them to be accessible through a single menu.

Furthermore, I can't wait to see where this goes with Live Writer / live blogging software.

Love the direction and the open channels to feedback. =D

# September 21, 2009 5:35 PM

Christopher said:

Any chance of editing support for 97-2003 documents? I know that there are still many out there who use them...

# September 21, 2009 7:21 PM

Chris [MSFT] said:

A couple of replies:

@David, you can join the technical preview by going to https://skydrive.live.com, uploading an office document, and clicking on the invitation that appears on the screen.

@John, Eric from the IE team talks about IE performance at http://blogs.msdn.com/ieinternals/archive/2009/07/20/IE8-Performance-and-Speed-Tips.aspx.  It is almost certain that a browser addon is slowing down tab creation.

@Andy, we talk about browser support at http://blogs.msdn.com/officewebapps/archive/2009/08/05/9858563.aspx.  

# September 22, 2009 7:21 PM

sanjay shah said:

will excel on the web be able to give me all the functionality of pivot table ?

# September 25, 2009 9:38 AM

Dan Parish (MSFT) said:

@shah

Not ALL, but a lot.  You can drill up/down, apply data type specific sorting, sort on measures, etc.

What you can't do add or remove fields from the PivotTable, or of course refresh external data from SkyDrive.

# September 25, 2009 12:44 PM

nsimons said:

@Christopher

You will not be able to edit 97-2003 Office files however, you will be able to convert these documents to the newer Office file formats using the Office Web Apps.

# September 25, 2009 1:54 PM

Jimmy said:

When will we get the chance to edit word document on SkyDrive? I cannot wait anymore. This app is great.

# October 1, 2009 3:18 AM
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