• Purchase Office 2007—Customer buys qualifying Office 2007 product (with or without a new PC) from an authorized reseller between March 5 – September 30, 2010.
• Install and Activate Office 2007—Customer installs and activates Office 2007 by September 30,2010.
• Download Office 2010—Customer simply downloads Office 2010 for free when Office 2010 is available, or orders a DVD for a fee. Customer must request upgrade by October 31, 2010.

The following versions of Office 2007 are eligible for the upgrade:

Note that you must buy Office 2007 from an authorized retailer or get it preinstalled in a new PC during the above timeframe. Plus you would have to request your free upgrade before October 31, 2010.

Office 2010 RC (release candidate) is now available for download for all the participants of the technical beta program. Promotions like these are nothing new for Microsoft, and Windows products usually get a similar upgrade path whenever a new version is about to be released. Checkout our Office 2010 Launch Center for more news and feature updates on Office 2010.

[via Neowin]

The build number for the release is 14.0.4734.1000 which is slightly newer build compared to the recently leaked 14.0.4730.1000 Escrow build by WZor. If Microsoft follows is recent public testing strategy, then the build might be released for public download and for MSDN and Technet subscribers in a few weeks, much like the Office 2010 Beta build.

Office 2010 Beta builds have been leaked for download a couple of times and we also have seen the screenshots of the build via WZor. Office 2010 is expected to hit RTM sometime in March, making it ready for the expected June 2010 public release. Microsoft has also announced a Free Upgrade program for Office 2007 customers.

We’ll post the changes and additions to the new Release Candidate once we get access to download the build our self.

[via Neowin]

Update: Office 2010 RC (Release Candidate) is now available for download.

It did take Microsoft a while but they have finally released Office 2010 Beta for public download – after several leaks of course. Unlike the Office 2010 beta Technical Preview however, the public download build is newer than the leaked builds.

Just head on over to Office 2010 Beta center and sign up for the public beta. Alternatively, you can also download it via MSDN or TechNet if you are a subscriber. By the way, the Multi Access Keys are public, meaning that you can share your Office 2010 download keys with your friends – of course they would need the same Office 2010 beta build to use them.

The build number is Office 2010 beta 14.0.4536.1000, And in case you are wondering, here’s what’s new in Office 2010.

Office.com would be home to the upcoming Office Web Apps as well as other new Office 2010 online collaboration features – one of which is a Shared Calendar. I was able to sign up for an Office.com account from within outlook and publish my Calendar online for my friends and colleagues to see, though I wasn’t able to actually view the calendar most probably because I didn’t really have access to those features.

Still it was good to see that UI elements for the new service are already in place for the service, which I guess will be open for testing along with the official Office 2010 Beta later this year. Until then I’ll keep on posting about other new features in Office 2010 so make sure you stick around.

Update: Office 2010 Beta build 14.0.4536.1000 has been released for public download.

Update 2: Office 2010 RC (Release Candidate) is now available for download.

I just opened Word 2010 Technical Preview to write a report when the thought about a possible new leak crossed my mind. And a quick visit to one of the prime locations for such underground activities revealed that my gut feeling was actually true – Microsoft Office 2010 Build 4417 has been leaked into the wild.

The source of the leak can easily be traced thanks to the heavily watermarked images. While I couldn’t get my hands on the leak yet (there was no download links), the screen shots I got show some of the new additions into the Office Suite.

Most notably, the Back-Stage view has been enhanced and looks like has pretty much reached in its final form. Plus there is a new Upload Center to store and share your documents online. I’m not sure if that’s the Office Web Apps or just the Office Live Workspaces. Other additions I spotted include an improved Activation system and newer icons for all the Applications.

I’ve added a couple of screenshots below for you’re viewing pleasure. Oh and if you spot something new in the images, please do share that via the comments.

All the images are via WZOR. And sorry I won’t be providing any download links, so please don’t ask for any. I’ll have more updates once I try out the new version so make sure you subscribe via the button below.

Depending on the content of the clipboard, you are presented with a number of different advanced options for pasting content in your documents.

The options are show as small icons that appear either in the Paste drop down menu from the ribbon or in the context menu when you right click on the document.

You can choose what the default paste action would be. For example, if you have rich text on the clipboard, then your choices are Keep Source Formatting, Merge Formatting and Keep Text Only.

Keeping Source Formatting keeps the text in the same format as you copied it. Merge Formatting mixes the source formatting with your current style. For example, bolds and italics would stay the same but fonts would change. And Keep Text Only would remove all types of formatting from the copied text.

Images only have the first two options enabled, while raw data – like bitmaps have none. Nice and productive features I must say. Now I wont have to hit that Clear Formatting button every time.

I stumbled upon a rather interesting feature while messing around with the Office 2010 Technical Preview. Its called Protected View which kicks in automatically when you open a document that came from an outside source, like the Internet. A good measure I must say, which would protect your system from malicious content.

You can still view the document while in Protected View, like I was able to run the presentation in full screen. You can’t obviously edit the documents because they are locked for editing. To enable editing, you have to “indicate” that you trust the source by clicking the Enable Editing button from the info bar or the Backstage view.

I’ll continue to post more interesting stuff I find about Microsoft Office 2010 Beta. In the mean time you can read about other new features of Office 2010 that I have already posted, or subscribe to the blog for more updates.

One of the biggest changes in the latest version of Office is the new Back Stage view which replaces the Office menu you saw in Office 2007. Back Stage view gives you an at a glance overview of the entire document, and provides a richer editing experience.

While most of the document editing functions are grouped by specific functionality in the Ribbon toolbars, the Back Stage view provides you with access to functions that affect the entire document. Like document properties, versioning, document statistics, protection and more.

You can still use the usual commands like Open, Save, New (with a newer interface screenshot above), etc. The new document view lets you open the installed templates on your computer or browse them directly on Microsoft Office Live. You can search for something specific if you want to.

My favorite new addition here is the combined Print Preview and Print Setup options. You can change print settings and get a glance of how they would affect the document. New Share features provide you with one click email options as well as saving to PDF and XPS formats.

Specific to PowerPoint, you can also create a video of your entire presentation which will save as a WMV file. The video can contain all the transitions, effects, narrations and gestures you have recorded. I’ll post a more detailed post on this later.

This post is a part of a series of posts on the new features in Microsoft Office 2010 Beta. You can read about other new features of Office 2010 that I have already posted, or subscribe to the blog for more updates. Have an interesting feature you discovered? I’d love to hear it via the comments.

One of the most interesting features of Office 2010 to is the new animated splash screen with the cancel loading button – a first I’ve seen for almost any application I remember. This is extremely useful for those times when you accidentally launch an application and need to close it instantly without having to wait it to load first.

I must say it was difficult to get a screenshot of the splash screen on my PC as it only appeared for about half a second every time I opened an Office 2010 Application. I really like the quick load times and this is just the Beta right now. Things would only be getting better as we get close to final product launch slated for the second half of 2010.

I would be writing more short posts on some of the new and interesting features of Office 2010 so make sure you subscribe. Oh and if you need the Office 2010 Beta, Download it here.

Update 3: Office 2010 RC (Release Candidate) is now available for download.

Update 2: Latest build of Office 2010 Beta is now available for public download.

Update: A newer build (Office 2010 Beta 4417) is now available which improves upon many of the features of the previous version.

The Windows 7 RTM Build wasn’t the only thing leaked today. Apparently, the Office 2010 Beta 1 was also leaked on the internet. The source? same as the one which leaked the Windows 7 RTM.

The leak makes sense as the Office 2010 was supposed to be demoed on WPC 09 along with the Windows 7 RTM. So if the Windows 7 leak is authentic, then so is this.

The leaked build is MICROSOFT.OFFICE.2010.v14.0.4302.1000.BETA.1.VOLUME.X86-64 which has many differences from the build 14.0.4006.1010 primarily a new purple shaded color scheme.

The build is available on various torrent trackers and I’m in the process of downloading it right now. I’ll post more details as soon as I test drive it.

Direct Download: MICROSOFT.OFFICE.2010.v14.0.4302.1000.BETA.1.VOLUME.X86-64.ENGLISH-WZT