Microsoft Office Web Apps review: first look

You don’t automatically get to edit the file, but first have to click an ‘Edit’ button - but this brings up another annoyance in that standard .xls files have to first be converted into Microsoft’s xlsx format. It’s a clear attempt to push that upgrade to Office 2010, especially for Office 2003 users.

The formula embedded into the file were also carried over without issue and charts were also carried over well, but VBA macros are missing from the online party at the moment. However, things are rather limited when it comes to creation – the Home and Insert tabs are the only available at the moment – so you can’t create charts online.

PowerPoint

PowerPoint does a very good job with displaying your uploaded files, but creating content is still limited compared to the desktop version. However, you can create a range of slides and easily add images or choose from a range of smart art. If you want to run the slide show full screen you can do, once you’ve allowed pop-ups in your browser. You could theoretically prepare your slides on the desktop version, use the Live Apps to back it up even use your browser as a presentation tool if you had too.

Word

As there’s no editing currently enabled Word is simply a presentation tool. It does a great job of mimicking the look of your local application, though with no editing the ribbon has yet to make an appearance. The Office 2010 style menu is still in evidence. One feature we use all the time on the desktop version when viewing documents is to keep the file in print view but double click in-between the pages to remove the header and footer area for keeping the text contiguous. That’s not present online at the moment but it’s still early days.

Collaboration

One of the major advantages of an online tool is that it makes sharing documents and collaborating on them so much easier. As it stands though, Microsoft has a lot of work to do in this area. Unlike Google Docs, there’s no quick and easy way of sharing a particular file. What you have to do is share entire folders, so to share multiple files with multiple people you’re going to have to create a lot of folders. You can at least invite anyone using any email address – they aren’t required to have a Windows Live ID. After you add someone they will get an email enabling them to open the folder directly.

All in all, one does get the sense that Microsoft has perhaps made this technical preview available a little too early, perhaps under pressure to show that it too was going to have an online component to its Office 2010 suite. In practice it’s really not ready for use beyond investigating what’s coming up – so don’t think of jumping away from Google Docs just yet.

However, in terms of look and feel, it’s good. If a company is looking to “go cloud”, a suite that looks just like the apps its employees are already using is going to be a big draw. We’re going to have to wait for Microsoft to finish the job but when it does, Google certainly isn’t going to have everything its own way.