I get lots of questions about what is new in the next version of Office, Outlook, Sharepoint, Exchange, and other products. Another frequent question is "how can I get an early beta version?". There is also some confusion about the difference between Microsoft Office and Office Live. I will try to sort out some of this and point you to Microsoft web sites for more details.

There are so many new features and services that each product has its own site. Most of the product groups have blogs where you can learn a lot more and ask questions directly. There are also links to sign up for the beta program. Here are links to the sites for Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Outlook, Sharepoint, Project, Access, Groove, Office Live, Exchange, Windows Vista, and lots more.

The Microsoft Office system has evolved from personal productivity products to a comprehensive and integrated system. Microsoft Office system includes programs, servers, services, and solutions designed to work together to help address a broad array of business problems.

The big changes are a more intuitive User Interface which clusters features together in context to what you are doing. So there are not so many drop down menus as before. Instead the relevant features are displayed in a tool bar and change as you do different things. For example, when you highlight a section of text in Word a new menu appears just above your cursor with many of the likely options. This way you don't need to go up to the main menu and navigate through drop down menus.

The other big changes are a server platform and development tools specifically for Office making it a real platform for business applications. Historically Office has been a suite of individual personal productivity tools. Companies have built sophisticated spreadsheets and workflow applications using Word, Excel, and Access. Now there are better tools, servers, and a workflow framework to make it much easier to develop these applications.

Microsoft Office Live really has nothing to do with Microsoft Office. It is NOT an online hosted version of Office. I think the marketing people went a little overboard trying to leverage the Office brand name...and in the process confused a lot of people.

Office Live consists of FREE web site development tools, hosting, Web site statistics, personalized domain name, and e-mail addresses. It is targeted at small business owners and organizations.

There is a "Live Collaboration" upgrade for $29.95 per months that includes something very similar to a hosted version of Sharepoint where you can store and manage documents, create directories, etc. There are also applications for managing projects, a calendar, a basic CRM application, and other basic company applications. It is a great deal for small business.

There are lots of interesting features and services coming in 2007. It has been a long wait but I think users will be very happy with the results.