
More Office Online: Commenting, printing, Tell Me, and more - bergie
http://blogs.office.com/2014/04/14/more-office-online-commenting-printing-tell-me-and-more/
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DigitalSea
Microsoft have done a great job bringing Office to all platforms of late. I'm
not sure how many people here have used Office Online, but I've used it a few
times and it is one well built application. Works just as fast as a native
application, looks great and I didn't encounter any limits compared to that of
the desktop suite. I used Google Docs for most things, but I will admit I
think Microsoft have always had the better product on their hands.

I read something a little while ago that highlighted the fact Office is still
very much a money maker for Microsoft (office environments and educational
institutes love Microsoft Office). Quite clearly it makes sense a product that
makes you a tidy sum should work on multiple platforms: more eyes = more
money.

I think we are all witnessing a new era for Microsoft. Pushing Office far and
wide for all devices and environments is a strategy they should have adopted
years ago. Better late then never.

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Theodores
The problem with Office is not 'tablets', 'Google' or any of the usual claims.

We no longer write letters, we send emails. We no longer have todo lists in a
spreadsheet, we use a ticketing system like JIRA. We no longer write book size
documents with Word generated 'table of contents', we write blogs or put
content into a CMS. We no longer print stuff out, we open the webpage on our
phone. It is all change, and a lot more collaborative than originally
envisioned in the pre-internet 'Windows for Workgroups' happy days.

Sure lots of people use Office and I doubt anyone can get very far without
their CV being in Word format, however the world has moved on and Office is
left in the past, from an earlier time when people worked and communicated in
'paperless office v.1.0.0'.

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bsilvereagle
When I've done Office work in the "cloud" I almost always end up just opening
the file in the native program and doing my editing there. All too often a key
feature is missing from the 365 versions or rendering starts to severely lag.

~~~
quanpod
Could you share some of those key features or which app
(word/excel/powerpoint) is rendering slowly for you?

~~~
nkw
For us opening word files with numbered or multilevel lists created in Mac
Office 2011 was the problematic feature. These documents open in Online Word
with either a) no list numbers (just as paragraphs), b) list elements with
different indentation from the original document, or c) entirely different
typeface or position for the numbers of the list, or d) all of a-c in the same
document. I don't know if compatibility with the desktop version for numbered
or multilevel lists is important for many users, but in our environment (a law
office) virtually every document we work with (legal pleadings) is almost
entirely a numbered or multilevel list, so for us it rules out using Online
Word right now.

~~~
quanpod
Thanks for the feedback! I'll bring this up to my teammates that work on that
part of the product.

In general, if you're trying us out and see something you don't like or
doesn't work, the bottom right corner should have a button that lets you give
us feedback (and yes, we are looking at it, even though there may not be a
response).

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plg
So this raises the question, especially in the context of the new iOS MS
Office apps, when, oh when, will the MS Office apps for OS X be updated? It's
a long time since 2011...

~~~
wlesieutre
Rumors say later this year: [http://www.macrumors.com/2014/03/11/office-for-
mac-2014/](http://www.macrumors.com/2014/03/11/office-for-mac-2014/)

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United857
I wonder if they're using something like Emscripten to get this so quickly
out.

As recently as 6 years ago (when I was at MSFT), the Office codebase was
pretty much all native (C/C++), some dating back to the early 90s.

~~~
blinkingled
FTA - > Office Online works great in all browsers, but for those of you who
use Chrome, you can now add Word Online, PowerPoint Online and OneNote Online
to your Chrome App launcher to create new Office documents online with a
single click from your desktop

Looks like it's still a web app (not a NaCl/PNaCl port) that allows
integration with the Chrome Launcher.

~~~
igravious
How? Where is this? I'm not seeing it. I'm also not seeing Office in the
Chrome Web Store.

~~~
bergie
Search for the individual apps: Word, Excel, etc.

For example, Word is at [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/word-
online/fiombg...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/word-
online/fiombgjlkfpdpkbhfioofeeinbehmajg)

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bananas
An anecdote perhaps but Microsoft's Office online proposition is virtually
unusable in the "outlook.com" form at least. I haven't tried 365 yet but I
imagine the codebase is the same.

Even in its native browser (IE) it falls over with stupid rendering errors:

[http://i.imgur.com/kLDQ0f3.png](http://i.imgur.com/kLDQ0f3.png)

And it can destroy an 8 core Xeon with a 5000 row 2 column sheet...

No thanks.

Edit: also I'm not walking into another ecosystem. After they shot windows
live domains a few days ago which I and a number of people I know were using,
we're out.

