The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has launched a strategic market status (SMS) investigation into Microsoft’s software licensing practices.

The probe, which the regulator touted in late March, aims to establish whether the tech giant’s position in the market has a negative impact on competition and consumer flexibility.

In a statement announcing the move, the CMA said the probe will primarily focus on business software products used by organisations across the country, including:

• Productivity software
• Personal computer and server operating systems
• Database management systems
• Security software

Microsoft business products, which include Windows, Word, Excel, Teams, and Copilot, are used by hundreds of thousands of firms and public sector organizations across the country, the CMA noted, with more than 15 million commercial users.

The regulator highlighted concerns that UK customers “may not always be able to effectively combine software from Microsoft with that of other providers”. This, it said, could limit their ability to access preferred products at competitive prices.

“The CMA’s investigation will examine whether Microsoft has SMS in business software and consider whether it can use that position to limit customer choice,” the CMA said.

“It will assess whether bundling of products, limits in interoperability or default settings can prevent customers switching and weaken the competitive constraints Microsoft faces from rivals.”

Notably, the CMA said its decision to launch the probe comes in the wake of a previous investigation into the UK cloud services market.

The regulator’s lengthy probe found the dominance of hyperscalers including Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS) had a negative impact on competition in the UK market.

Microsoft has repeatedly faced scrutiny over its software licensing practices. Slack, for example, filed an EU complaint in 2020 amid claims the company had engaged in anticompetitive behavior with Teams bundling practices.

EU-based trade group, Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE), filed a similar complaint in 2022, alleging that Microsoft imposed higher charges for customers running software on rival cloud platforms.

Microsoft and CISPE agreed to a settlement in mid-2025, which was met with criticism by other industry groups.

CMA seeks business feedback

This latest probe into Microsoft practices must be completed within nine months, according to the regulator. A decision on whether to designate the tech giant with strategic market status is expected by February 2027.

In the meantime, the CMA said plans to gauge the thoughts of businesses across the country using Microsoft products, as well as challenger companies, over whether product choices may be limited.

This includes concerns surrounding product bundling, lack of interoperability, and default settings used by the company.

“Our aim is to understand how these markets are developing, Microsoft’s position within them and to consider what, if any, targeted action may be needed to ensure UK organizations can benefit from choice, innovation and competitive prices,” said Sarah Cardell, chief executive of the CMA.

A spokesperson for Microsoft told ITPro: "We are committed to working quickly and constructively with the CMA to facilitate its review of the business software market."

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Microsoft has issued patches for more than 60 flaws this month, including six zero-day vulnerabilities that are already being targeted by hackers.

As part of this month's "Patch Tuesday", Microsoft listed 58 vulnerabilities in its own software, as well as four in other tools, including Chromium.

While this number of flaws isn’t out of the ordinary, security expert Dustin Childs noted that the volume under active attack is “extraordinarily high”.

"Microsoft lists six bugs being exploited at the time of release, with three of these listed as publicly known."

Of the six zero-day flaws, five are rated as important and one moderate, rather than the more serious critical. As such vulnerabilities are already being targeted by hackers in the wild, quick patching is advised.

One targets Microsoft Word, allowing attackers to bypass local security features to access advanced control settings and possibly allow code execution. However, as Microsoft noted: "An attacker must send a user a malicious Office file and convince them to open it."

Another security feature bypass flaw being patched also requires user interaction, with a malicious link or shortcut file clicked before the attacker can make use of this bug to slip in.

"Successful exploitation lets the attacker suppress or evade the usual “are you sure?” security dialogs for untrusted content, making it easier to deliver and execute further payloads without raising user suspicion," said Malware Bytes security researcher Pieter Arntz in a blog post.

While users need to be tricked via a malicious link, Childs noted: "Still, a one-click bug to gain code execution is a rarity."

Other zero-day flaws being addressed by Microsoft include a denial of service bug targeting Windows Remote Access Connection Manager, an elevation of privilege vulnerability in Windows Remote Desktop Services, and a bug in Desktop Window Manager.

The last of the six zero-days affects Internet Explorer – though it may be long gone as a browser, it still lingers in Windows. Once again, users need to be fooled into clicking a malicious link to enable this attack.

"The bypass here is simply the ability to reach IE, which shouldn’t be possible," noted Childs, adding that calling IE "always results in a vulnerability somehow."

Patches issued for Azure, GitHub Copilot flaws

The remaining flaws patched by Microsoft included a trio of critical bugs spotted in Azure as well as vulnerabilities that could allow remote code execution in GitHub Copilot.

These flaws all center on a command injection vulnerability, noted Kevin Breem, senior director for cyber threat research at Immersive Labs, and can be triggered via prompt injection.

Breem said this could allow a hacker to embed a malicious prompt that's triggered when a developer uses an agent workflow, potentially slipping past existing security restrictions to run code or commands.

That's particularly problematic as developers may have access to sensitive data such as API keys, he added.

"Coupled with organizations enabling both developers and automation pipelines to use LLMs and Agentic AI with the right prompt, an attacker could have a significant impact," he noted.

"This is not to say stop using AI, but to ensure developers understand the risks and identify what has access to AI Agents, and lastly, least privilege can limit the impact if a developer's secrets are compromised."

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Microsoft has urged users of Office 2016 and Office 2019 to upgrade as both applications approach the end of their extended support deadlines next month.

Both applications will no longer receive updates as of 14 October, the tech giant confirmed last week. The move will also see a host of popular apps under the Office umbrella mothballed, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Similarly, Exchange Server 2016 and 2019 will be scrapped alongside Skype for Business.

This doesn’t mean these Office suites will completely stop working. However, Microsoft has been keen to emphasize that they’ll receive no more updates or technical support.

Opting to stick with these versions puts users at greater risk of security breaches, according to Jeremy Carlson, Microsoft's director of product marketing for the Microsoft 365 portfolio.

“Continuing to use software after end of support can leave your devices vulnerable to potential security threats, productivity losses, and compliance issues,” he wrote in a community notice.

“After that date [14 October], Microsoft will no longer provide security fixes, bug fixes, or technical support for these products.”

Microsoft urges users to upgrade

Naturally, Microsoft is urging users to sign up for Microsoft 365, its most up-to-date suite of applications. For those with fewer than 300 users, there is the option of Microsoft 365 Business Standard.

This, Carlson explained, represents a more cost-effective option based on their individual needs and budget.

“We know there is no “one-size-fits-all" approach for managing end of support – and we encourage you to explore our business and enterprise plans to find the right fit for your organization,” he wrote.

Notably, there is a lifeline for those that aren’t keen on switching to the cloud-based option, Carlson revealed. This comes in the form of the Office Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) 2024.

This option will give users access to the most recent supported on-prem versions of Office for commercial customers.

“The Office Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) is designed for devices that cannot accept feature updates or connect to the internet,” Carlson explained. “Office LTSC 2024 was released last year along with new on-premises versions of Project and Visio.”

A big month for Microsoft shops

October is set to be a busy month for Microsoft customers worldwide. In addition to Office 2016 and 2019 being scrapped, the end of life deadline for Windows 10 also falls on 14 October, meaning users will either be forced to upgrade or continue without regular updates.

Once again, there is a lifeline for those opting to stick with the older operating system – but it’ll come at a steep price.

Extended support for Windows 10 will set enterprises back $61 per device, and that’s just for the first year. Thereafter, the price doubles on an annual basis for a maximum of three years.

As ITPro reported earlier this month, the total cost worldwide could reach a staggering sum. Analysis from Nexthink found maintaining custom versions of the operating system could top $7.3 billion globally.

A significant portion of users appear to be content with the situation, or at the very least are taking their time ahead of the deadline. Figures from Statcounter showed the operating system still holds a 43% market share.

Based on the current rate of upgrades, this means that around 121 million devices worldwide will still be running Windows 10 by the October deadline.

MORE FROM ITPRO

• These popular Microsoft 365 features are being cut in 2025
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Microsoft has dismissed claims circulating online that it uses customer data to train its AI models, making it the latest firm forced to publicly clarify its AI policy.

A blog post written by author Casey Lawrence initially voiced concerns, suggesting that Microsoft had implemented an ‘opt-out’ feature that, left unchecked, would allow the firm to use customer data in AI training.

“Microsoft Office, like many companies in recent months, has slyly turned on an ‘opt-out’ feature that scrapes your Word and Excel documents to train its internal AI systems,” Lawrence said.

Lawrence warned against anyone using Word documents to write proprietary content, saying that they should ensure the ‘opt-out’ feature is selected. The blog includes instructions on how to opt out of the AI training policy.

Users on social media voiced similar concerns, with one popular tech account, nixCraft, posting a screenshot of Lawrence’s blog to X with a quoted portion of the blog’s text.

Microsoft has since denied these circulating claims, responding on social media by posting a rebuttal of the AI training accusations to its Microsoft 365 X account.

“In the M365 apps, we do not use customer data to train LLMs. This setting only enables features requiring internet access like co-authoring a document,” Microsoft said.

Wary customers

This marks the latest in a series of spats between big tech firms and customers over alleged AI training policies, with both Slack and Adobe recently caught in the crosshairs over similar features.

In May, Slack was forced to update the language of its training policy to allay confusion among users, confirming that it uses some customer data to develop “non-generative AI/ML models.”

Slack said users could opt out if they didn’t want their data used in these models, though many rallied against the firm and the automatic opt-in nature of the policy.

The firm learned its lesson from the training fiasco, though. One company exec told ITPro it had been busy engaging with customers to clarify its AI training policies.

Adobe had a similar issue in June when users complained the firm was training its AI model Firefly on customer content. Like Slack, Adobe updated its policy and sought to assure customers that it would never assume ownership of an individual’s work.

The firm even faced backlash from its own staff, with screenshots from an internal comms channel showing employees complaining about the firm’s poor communication and badly handled response.

Effectively managing page numbers in Microsoft Word is essential for creating polished, well-organized documents. This is particularly important for academic papers, business reports, dissertations, and other formal documents that often include preliminary sections such as cover pages, abstracts, or tables of contents. In these cases, standard formatting guidelines frequently require that page numbering begins only after these introductory sections, ensuring that the main content is distinguished and easy to navigate.

By default, Microsoft Word assigns page numbers to every page in a document, starting from the very first page. While this approach works for simple documents, it can be problematic when you need to exclude certain sections, such as title pages, acknowledgments, or executive summaries, from the page count. Failing to adjust the numbering can result in confusion, disrupt the flow of information, and violate formatting standards set by academic institutions or professional organizations.

Customizing where page numbers begin not only enhances the readability and logical flow of your document but also demonstrates attention to detail and adherence to formatting conventions. This adjustment helps readers quickly locate key sections, reinforces the document’s structure, and projects a higher level of professionalism.

In the following guide, you’ll find step-by-step instructions for setting up section breaks and customizing page numbering in Microsoft Word. These preparatory steps will help you achieve a clean and organized appearance, ensuring your document meets the expectations of your intended audience.

How to start page numbering from a specific page in Microsoft Word

Begin by scrolling to the page where you want the numbering to start. Go to the Layout tab in the ribbon at the top of your screen to access formatting tools.

Click on the Breaks dropdown menu. Here, you’ll see several options for section breaks. In most situations, Next Page is the ideal choice, as it creates a new section that begins on the following page. If you want to keep the content flowing on the same page but still create a new section, select Continuous instead.

After you insert a section break, your document will be split into two parts:

This step is essential because it clearly separates the unnumbered introductory pages from the main content, allowing you to customize your document’s layout to meet professional or academic standards.

You can choose where to position the page numbers, whether at the top of the page, the bottom, or within the margins. Once you select your preferred location, you’ll also have the option to choose a style, including alignment, bold formatting, brackets, and other design features.

At this point, the page numbers will be inserted throughout the entire document. However, you will customize which sections display the numbering in the upcoming steps.

Within the Navigation group of this tab, locate the Link to Previous button. By default, this option is enabled, which means your new section is connected to the previous one and shares the same header, footer, and page numbering format. Click Link to Previous to turn it off. When disabled, this breaks the connection between the current section and the preceding one, allowing you to independently control page numbering in each section.

This step is crucial: it ensures that any changes to page numbers in your new section, such as starting from a specific number, will not affect the earlier, unnumbered pages.

To do this, place your cursor anywhere in the section where you want numbering to begin. Open the Insert tab and navigate to the Header & Footer section, or double-click in the header, footer, or margin area to activate the Header & Footer ribbon.

Next, click the Page Number dropdown and select Format Page Numbers. In the dialog box, find the Start at field and enter your desired starting number, usually 1. Click OK to apply your changes.

This will start page numbering from your chosen section, leaving previous pages unnumbered and ensuring your document meets formal formatting requirements.

To do this, click anywhere within the section you want to keep free of page numbers — usually the first few pages of your document. Then, open the Header & Footer tab and click the Page Number dropdown 

Because you previously unlinked the sections, this change will only apply to the selected section, leaving it without page numbers while preserving numbering in the rest of your document starting from the page you specified.

To change the format, navigate to the Insert tab and open the Header & Footer section. Click on the Page Number dropdown menu and select Format Page Numbers. In the Format Page Numbers dialog box, you’ll find a Number format dropdown at the top. This allows you to choose from several options, including Roman numerals (I, II, III) or letters (A, B, C).

If you’re working on a formal document, such as a dissertation or a report, you might want to apply Roman numerals for the front matter (e.g., i, ii, iii for the introduction and table of contents) and switch to standard Arabic numbers (1, 2, 3) for the main content. You can achieve this by inserting section breaks, unlinking sections, and setting the format separately for each section.

Once you've selected the desired format, click OK to apply the changes. The updated numbering will now reflect the chosen style.

Troubleshooting Common Page Numbering Issues

Even with a careful approach, Word’s section-based formatting can sometimes produce unexpected results. If your page numbers aren't behaving, here are the fixes for the most common problems.

The Essential Diagnostic Tool: Show/Hide ¶
Before you begin, go to the Home tab and click the Show/Hide (¶) button. This reveals all hidden formatting marks, including page breaks and, most importantly, Section Breaks. Seeing where your breaks are is the first step to fixing any issue.

Problem: I deleted the page number on my title page, and it disappeared from the entire document.

Problem: My numbering starts over at "1" in the middle of my document.

Problem: I followed the steps, but the page number on the very first page (page 1) won't go away.

Problem: I can't get the numbering to start on a new page; it just continues on the same page.

Customizing your page number appearance

Once you've set up page numbering, you can further refine its appearance to match the overall style and formatting of your document. Microsoft Word provides various customization options to help create a polished, professional look. Whether you need to adjust the font, size, alignment, or apply formatting effects, these tweaks can enhance readability and ensure consistency with the rest of your content.

Changing font and size

To modify the font or size of your page numbers, double-click on the header, footer, or margin where they appear. 

This will activate the Header & Footer Tools. Highlight the page number, then go to the Home tab, where you can choose a different font, resize the text, or apply formatting options such as bold, italics, or underlining to match the rest of your document.

Applying text effects

For additional styling, Word allows you to apply effects like shadows, outlines, or reflections to your page numbers. 

With the page number selected, open the Format tab under Drawing Tools (which appears when a text box is selected). Click on Text Effects to explore different visual enhancements, which can add a professional touch to reports, creative projects, or business documents.

Adjusting alignment

To change the placement of your page numbers, such as centering them at the bottom of the page or aligning them to the right, select the page number and navigate to the Paragraph section in the Home tab. 

From there, choose the appropriate alignment option to ensure consistency across your document and improve readability.

By taking the time to customize the appearance of your page numbers, you can enhance the overall visual appeal of your document, ensuring it meets both your aesthetic preferences and professional standards.

Starting page numbering from a specific page can greatly enhance the readability of your document, especially when dealing with academic or professional papers. This approach ensures that only relevant sections are numbered, improving clarity and organization.

Although it typically takes just a few minutes, adjusting section and page number settings can become complex. Therefore, we recommend dividing your document into sections before you start. This preparation simplifies the process and prevents potential issues.

Once the sections are created, you can easily set the starting point and format for page numbering in the desired section. This approach allows you to manage your document more efficiently by ensuring that unnecessary numbering is omitted from the initial section.

You can further advance your Microsoft Office knowledge by reading our guides on:

• How to use the Microsoft Office Ribbon
• How to insert a tick or a cross symbol in Microsoft Word and Excel
• How to insert and edit footnotes in Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word has been the dominant word processing application since the mid-90s and virtually everyone with a PC uses it.

But Word is not the only option for users and organisations. There are plenty of cloud-based services and tools that people can use to create documents and even collaborate with others.

We’ve compiled a growing list of alternatives to Word that you can use in your browser from any device. This article provides an outline of those choices and why you should consider them.

FreeOffice

Publisher: SoftMaker

Format: Android, Linux, Windows

Price: Free

FreeOffice is a robust office suite, which includes FreeOffice TextMaker, PlanMaker and Presentations. It is really a lite version of SoftMaker Office, which itself is a powerful alternative to Microsoft’s standard office suite. Sharp, familiar design and fast load times make TextMaker one of the best alternatives available. It’s compatible with current (DOCX) and legacy (DOC) Word files, handles password-protected files, and enables the creation of PDFs. Providing all this free on Android, Linux and Windows, it's hard not to recommend SoftMaker’s FreeOffice for customer or business use.

Google Docs

Publisher: Google Inc

Format: Android, Browser, iOS

Price: Free for consumers (Google Apps for Business users pay £3.30 per month per user)

Google Docs is available to those with a Gmail account or uses Google Apps for Business. Docs can be used to create any document or form of virtually any size. As with other Google productivity apps, Docs allows easy collaboration between a number of users. There are a number of themes and templates to choose from including those for letters, reports, project proposals and so on. Collaboration is a big thing with all Google’s productivity apps so any number of people can work on the same document and see what others are doing in real time.

Comments can be left for other users to see rather than emailing multiple copies to and fro or having boring telephone conferences. The cloud-based app automatically saves everything as you go along, so there is no need to hit the save button every time – nothing is lost. Aside from the official platforms, there is also an unofficial app for Windows Phone and Blackberry. A Chrome extension allows users to view and edit Office files without needing Microsoft Office to be installed. This is a great way of working on a document in collaboration with others but does not have the range of functions that would satisfy a power user of Word.

Zoho Docs

Publisher: Zoho

Format: Android, Browser, iOS

Price: Free for consumers, Standard package starts at $5 per user/month; Enterprise package starts at $15 per user/month.

Zoho Docs looks similar to how Word used to look before the Ribbon interface was introduced, thus could be a great alternative for Word users that don’t like the present interface. While it offers a few innovations, such as formatting changes (i.e. changing selected text to capitalise each word), choice of fonts is fewer than Microsoft Office. Collaboration goes further than Google as others can join in and edit a document by signing via a Zoho, Google, Facebook, or Yahoo account. Another cloud-based Word alternative that is available to work with online and offline, however, it could also be too basic for expert Word users. However, that said, Zoho Docs has kept on enhancing features over the years and for some this is a more rounded product than Google’s offerings.

Pages

Publisher: Apple Inc

Format: Browser, iOS, Mac

Price: Free (part of iCloud when you buy Apple hardware or sign up for an Apple ID)

Pages is to Apple what Word is the Microsoft, but designed with the Cupertino firm’s aesthetic in mind. Pages online looks like a very good clone of the desktop version on OS X, and by and large has many of the same functions. There are a number of templates available to start off any project you want and the documents created are compatible with Word so you can import and export these files to other Word users.

Pages can be accessed via the iCloud.com website, although access can be problematic for Android users as Apple makes it difficult for these users to get onto the website (there are workarounds that enable iCloud on Android). Pages is also available on iOS devices as an app. It's a great alternative to Word and simple to use. The app is part of iCloud so you get 5GB of storage for free. However, this storage is shared with other files and iPhone backup so users could run out of space and have to upgrade storage, meaning you will have to pay for extra storage and with Apple that’s not the cheapest on the market.

Word Online

Publisher: Microsoft Corp

Format: Android, Browser, iOS, Windows, Windows Phone

Price: Free for personal use (but paid subscriptions start from £3.10 per user/month)

You can get a cloud-based version of Word for free. As part of OneDrive, users can get an almost fully-functional version of Microsoft’s productivity application when they sign up for a Microsoft account and cloud storage. However, as stated, Word Online is not a functional as the desktop version on Windows but has more than enough features for anyone looking to create simple documents or edit files on the go from a web browser. It also boasts collaboration features, which is something that has only just made itself onto Word 2016 on the desktop. Word Online is great for those wanting a recognisable look and feel they get from the desktop version. However, it may frustrate those expecting a carbon copy of its relative.

Quip

Publisher: Quip

Format: Android, Browser, iOS, Mac, Windows

Price: Free for individual users, $12 per user per month

Quip combines a word processor in the cloud with chat and messaging. It takes it design cues for iOS. Each document created shows the document itself on the right-hand side of the window with a chat window on the left. The service allows you to create and collaborate on documents. Collaboration is done by sharing the file with others; you can then chat and work on docs in real time. The chat window will also display snippets of the document you have been working on. The service was first released as a “mobile-first” word processor and collaboration tool with mobile apps and access through a web browser. It has since evolved to embraced the desktop worlds with apps for Mac and Windows. That said, outside of the collaboration aspects, the formatting functionality is fairly basic.

OnlyOffice

Publisher: Ascensio System

Format: Browser, iOS

Price: Basic package starts from $50 per user/year

OnlyOffice bills itself as offering the features of Microsoft Office with the collaboration features of Google Apps. It certainly looks more feature laden than Google, approaching the design ethos of the desktop version of Word. Users can sign in via Google or Facebook and can upload existing documents from their computer or from Google Drive, Box, Dropbox, OneDrive, or any WebDAV resource. OnlyOffice is more than just a word processor, it also features other productivity apps (spreadsheets, presentations). The enterprise version also sports document management, CRM and invoicing, task management and an email aggregator.

Etherpad

Publisher: Etherpad Foundation

Format: Linux, Mac, PC

Price: Free (Open Source)

Etherpad is an online document editor mainly intended for collaborative editing in real-time. The app is open source and highly customisable. The tool for online document enables collaboration with colleagues or others. It doesn’t require any sign up either. All that is needed is start a new document and share the link to it with fellow collaborators. You can also invite them by email as well.

The love-hate relationship between Apple and Microsoft is clearly back in love' mode at the moment. Following last month's launch of the iOS version of Outlook, Microsoft has now released a public preview of the next version of Office for Mac. It's been five years since Office 2011 was released for the Mac, back in 2010, so this new version is certainly long overdue.

However, Office 2011 received mixed reviews from some Mac users, who saw the introduction of the Ribbon' toolbar as an unwelcome intruder from the Windows world. The Ribbon isn't going away, but the streamlined makeover that it receives in this new version of Office for Mac should ensure that it gets a much better reception from Mac users.

Ribbon Redux

The adoption of the Ribbon in Office 2011 marked a conscious decision by Microsoft to bring the Mac version of Office more in line with its Windows counterpart. However, the sheer number of tools crammed into the Ribbon meant that the Mac versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint became much more cluttered and not to put too fine a point on it less Mac-like.

That criticism has clearly been taken to heart by Microsoft, as the single over-riding theme of the new Office for Mac is the move towards a more streamlined Ribbon. There are a few minor cosmetic changes that help here nudging one small set of buttons into a slightly different position eliminates a chunk of wasted space at the top of each document window, and removing the text headings that previously labelled different sections of the Ribbon helps to make the Ribbon look a little less cluttered. But, more importantly, there have also been some major changes to the way that the Ribbon itself is organised.

Word 2016

Word is the major beneficiary here, as a large number of tools and features have simply been removed from the Ribbon altogether. The Styles panel that previously occupied almost one quarter of the entire width of the Ribbon has now been reduced to a single button that activates a pull-down menu. Several tools for working with graphics files and clip-art have also been removed and relocated within the new Insert tab. This tab also incorporates additional tools for creating tables and charts, headers and footers, and even mathematical equations, resulting in a drastically streamlined Ribbon that takes up far less space on your screen.

Some of that space has been used to create a new Design tab that allows you to quickly format text within your documents, and a new Mailings tab to help with mail-merge work. Stepping away from the Ribbon, the document sidebar also gains a handy new Navigation view that lists headings and other important elements within a document so that you can quickly leap to the point you need.

Excel and PowerPoint

Excel and PowerPoint haven't received quite such drastic makeovers. These two apps are more likely to be used in full-screen mode, so Microsoft has left many of the standard Ribbon tools in place. However, the tabs that provide access to additional sets of tools have been completely reorganized. Like Word, PowerPoint and Excel both gain a new Insert tab, which gathers together all the graphics tools that were previously spread across three separate tabs for Tables, Charts and SmartArt.

They also gain a new View tab that provides a number of options for viewing your documents, such as the Notes view in PowerPoint or the split-pane view in Excel. The only minor oddity here is that the Play button for PowerPoint presentations has been removed from the main Home tab on the Ribbon, so when you want to preview your slides you'll need to either switch into the Slideshow tab or remember the fiddly three-finger keyboard shortcut that triggers the Play command.

Excel gains a number of new features for working with data, including PivotTable Slicers and an Analysis ToolPak for complex statistical work. However, PowerPoint mostly concentrates on refining existing features, such as the note-taking tools in its Presenter mode, and improved compatibility with the Windows version of PowerPoint.

OneDrive and the Cloud

Microsoft's Office blog says that the new Office for Mac is powered by the cloud' but, in fact, the 2011 editions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint already had a Share command in the main File menu that allowed you to save documents to OneDrive and SharePoint. The new Office for Mac merely relocates those options to the Save dialog within each app. A simple button allows you to switch between saving to online locations' or on my Mac', and you are then prompted to enter the details of your online account.

The Preview version of Office for Mac currently supports OneDrive and OneDrive for Business, and SharePoint. Apple's iCloud Drive is hard-wired into the Save dialog in Yosemite the latest version of the Mac OS so you can save documents to iCloud as well. The downside of this is that the preview version of Office for Mac currently only runs on Yosemite. Microsoft hasn't stated whether the finished version will also require Yosemite which will obviously cause problems for businesses that are still running older versions of the Mac OS nor has it said anything about supporting additional cloud services such as Dropbox.

Outlook 2016

Strictly speaking, the new' version of Outlook isn't actually new, as Microsoft actually released it for Office 365 subscribers last October. However, the new Outlook is included in this preview and will be part of the standalone edition of Office for Mac released later this year (along with the Mac version of OneNote).

The Ribbon has largely been left alone in Outlook, but there are interface changes elsewhere. Unread messages are now highlighted in blue, rather than bold text, and conversation threads show the entire body of emails rather than just a list of headers. These are small changes, but they do make it easier to quickly scan through the long lists of emails that pile up in our inboxes every day.

Is It Worth Upgrading?

Upgrades to Microsoft Office normally arrive trailing a long list of new features for each of its core applications, but the 2016 edition of Office for Mac focuses primarily on its more streamlined interface in order to improve productivity and ease of use. That's not a bad move, though, particularly given the criticisms that were made of the previous version of Office for the Mac. There are few entirely new features that make the new Office for Mac an essential upgrade, but its improved look and feel will be welcomed by Mac users who need to share Office documents with their Windows colleagues.

Verdict

There’s nothing that makes this a ‘must-have’ update, but the interface overhaul that has been given to the Ribbon makes the new Office for Mac feel less cumbersome and should speed up many routine tasks.

Office 365 isn't a new version of the Office desktop suite; it's a cloud service offering the key server-based versions of desktop applications Exchange mail server with Forefront malware and spam protection, SharePoint document management (which can also power a public-facing Web site) and Lync Online for communications (presence, instant messaging and audio and video calls).

This is similar to the BPOS cloud service Microsoft has been running, but it has newer versions of the server-side software that are multi-tenant and (Microsoft claims) better suited to running as a cloud service. You also get online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook and some subscriptions even include the full Office Professional Plus suite. There's also an Office 365 marketplace for third-party tools that work with the service.

Office 365 is commonly seen as competing with Google Apps so we decided to look at them both.

Google Apps for Business includes Gmail with Postini spam and malware filtering and basic smartphone management, Calendar and Contacts, Google Docs (including spreadsheets and presentations), Chat, Groups mailing lists, Sites (for both intranet and public Web sites).

There's a control panel for managing users and what they can do with the Google Apps tools. You can also control user access to various other Google services like Picasa (which may get more important as Google combines personal and Google Apps accounts into a single account type) and add third party services from the Google Apps Marketplace.

Office 365 is commonly seen as competing with Google Apps so we decided to look at them both to see how similar the services really are and how they compare to each other.

Administration interface

As cloud services, you manage Google Apps and Office 365 online. Despite the simple layout, the Google Apps control panel is confusing until you learn where everything is. Options are scattered between Domain Settings, Settings, Advanced tools and the various links from the Dashboard tab which duplicate the Settings hierarchy. The Dashboard is also cluttered with adverts for optional tools in the Google App marketplace and adverts for new features.

The Google Apps admin page is cluttered with adverts for new features and third-party tools.

The Office 365 admin console is cleaner and better laid out, with a pane for switching between managing users, services and domain, clear explanations of what the main management tools are for next to the links to manage them. There are also handy shortcuts at the bottom of the window and links to relevant resources and community discussions.

By comparison, the Office 365 dashboard is clear and well laid out; you can see immediately what to do.

Google Apps has two levels of administration rights; the 'super admin' who has full access and admins to whom you can delegate some administration tasks. You can give different users a different mix of rights but you have to remember who can do what.

Office 365 has five named admin roles; you can give someone the rights to manage billing, passwords, users or services if you don't want them to have full admin rights. If you need more granularity, you can also set up administrator roles for Discovery Management, Records Management, UM (Unified Messaging) Management and other tasks in the Exchange Control Panel. It's more complex than Google Apps, but enterprises will welcome having the option.

Winner: Office 365. Microsoft's administration interface is not only better organised, it's also easier to handle when delegating management rights to others.

Setup and user management

There's a setup guide to get you started on Google Apps which walks you through things like verifying the domain you're using , creating user accounts and changing your MX records to point to Gmail (you need your own domain to use Google Apps). It's mostly clear and simple, but the duplicated instructions and sometimes circuitous inteface make setup a very fragmented experience. Setting up the Postini spam service tells you it may take up to an hour and again you have to change the MX records to redirect mail to the Postini service and configure some settings in Google Apps email by hand - all of which should be far more automated and suggests that Google has still not fully integrated the Postini acquisition with its platform.

Office 365's Forefront Online Protection for Exchange, SharePoint and Lync Online are running by default so all you have to do is create or migrate users. You only need to configure settings if you want to use an optional vanity domain, to get finer control or if you're integrating with on-premise servers. Thankfully the guides to doing this are clear and detailed.

You can create Office 365 users individually assigning admin rights and turning on services for them at the same time - or by importing a CSV file. You can also connect to an existing on-premise Exchange server and migrate users and mailboxes, or synchronise with your Active Directory to manage Office 365 users with roles and policies the same way you manage existing users (so you can delete a user in AD and they're removed from Exchange Online). You even get PowerShell cmdlets that let you configure Office 365 from the command line.

The Forefront rules and filters are very powerful but the interface is more complex.

To create Google Apps users you can set them up one by one in the control panel or import a CSV file - but most enterprises will use the Google Apps Directory Sync to get user details from AD or Lotus Domino, which the setup guide doesn't cover. This is a one-way sync and you have to leave the tool running on your local server and make changes to users in AD and propagate them up to Google Apps. To migrate mailboxes you have to run an Outlook sync utility individually and you can't migrate distribution lists, so you have to recreate them. It's initially confusing which tools you need for synchronising and migrating different information and settings to Google Apps, especially as the help pages often refer to old tools that have been replaced.

What Google Apps calls 'groups' are merely mailing lists. To control who gets which Google services you need to set up organization units. These cover both the core offerings like Gmail and the wide range of other Google tools whose terms and conditions your business will be deemed to have accepted if users from your business sign in with their Google Apps account - so this is mainly useful for disabling access to Picasa or YouTube if you don't want to accept those terms.

If business users sign into other Google services with their Google Apps account, the business is bound by the terms and conditions, so you can block this.

There's a separate option for whether users get access to functions and features from Google Labs, which could be a new option in Gmail or a tool like Google Moderator for managing a question and answer session at a company meeting (it's unclear what happens to these tools as Google recently announced that it is shutting down Google Labs). You can also use organization units to restrict which domains users can send email to, but you can't use them to control any other settings so it's nothing like as powerful as AD groups. You can't delete an organization without moving or deleting the users first, and deleting a user gives you the choice of deleting their documents or moving them to another user.

Both Microsoft and Google promise single sign-on. If you have Active Directory and AFDS 2, Office 365 users can use their Windows login to sign on to the local network (including any business apps you've integrated with that login) and to Office 365 services. Your Google Apps sign in gives you access to all the online Google services (including services that aren't part of Google Apps if the administrator allows this). It's possible to use a SAML bridge and the provisioning API to make that work with your in-house LDAP directory and local apps, but this is far from trivial to set up and it won't work with Google desktop applications.

Winner: Office 365. Microsoft's product is easier to set up and integrate into your company's existing infrastructure.

Mail server, malware and spam

Office 365 has a simple interface for basic admin options like managing passwords and security groups but you can also use the full Exchange Online interface. This is identical to the Web interface for Exchange Server, so it will be very familiar to Exchange admins. You get a comprehensive set of tools for setting up features like role-based access control, transport rules (such as adding disclaimers to external email) and reports to help you track down any problems along with auditing logs for compliance. If you don't need them then you can stick to the basics and be set up in minutes.

All the key email management features in Office 365 are available through a straightforward interface if you don't want to use the full Exchange interface.

Gmail has vastly fewer options because you don't get to control a mail server, although you do have some control over routing and mail gateway settings. The options are mostly on the level of setting up a vanity URL for users, choosing whether users can use Gmail Labs and chat or allowing Docs results to show up in a Gmail search. With Google looking after the mail server, most businesses won't need more admin options.

There are useful features in Google Apps that aren't turned on by default, and the interface is basic but clear.

Both Google Apps and Office 365 have a mailbox limit of 25GB. There's isn't an archiving option from Gmail, but with Office 365 you have a choice between third-party archiving services or a specific Office 365 plan with unlimited storage for email archiving.

Google Apps for business includes Postini Services for spam and malware detection, but you can't use it is you have multiple domains or if you want to use the Postini Discovery ediscovery and archiving service (in those cases you need to pay for Postini spam services separately). The Postini admin console is separate from the main Google Apps console and has tabs for viewing and deleting or approving messages detected as junk or viruses in the past three days, a week or for as long as it keeps records. The only option for virus blocking is whether you get email notifications that a mail has been quarantined, so you can check and release it if it's a false positive.

For spam you can whitelist individual senders, domains or mailing lists and block specific addresses or domains, set up inbound and outbound content filters for specific words, phrases or patterns and create attachment filters by size or type. You can also choose five levels of spam blocking, from lenient to very aggressive, and use category filters to put more emphasis on blocking explicit, 'racially insensitive' and financial spam. Oddly, IP whitelists to avoid spam filters go under the email settings pane, not in the Postini configuration page.

The Forefront admin console is also separate and has a very different interface from the rest of Office 365; it's powerful but also confusingly complicated for anything except checking quarantined email - we'd like to see this simplified for admins who don't already have Forefront expertise. What you get are the powerful Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE) tools; not just malware and spam filtering, but options to safelist specific IP addresses, options for auditing and tracing messages and extensive filtering rules for both inbound and outbound email. You can therefore write rules to stop your users emailing out confidential information such as credit card numbers. You can upload dictionary files when you have a lot of values to use in a filter and manage rules by type; there are a lot more options compared to Postini.

Neither service lets you add additional reputation services or real-time block lists, but both let you use SPF for your own reputation - only Google Apps supports DKIM so far.

Winner:Tie. There's no outright winner in this category. Gmail is perfect if you want to get up and running as quickly as possible, while Office 365 provides fine grained controls and capabilities that will suit particularly fastidious organisations.

Mobile management

With Google Apps for Business, you can manage Android devices (as long as they run Android 2.2 or later). You can set a policy that enforces a password of a particular strength and wipe lost devices and users can remotely locate or lock their phone or make it ring. You have to manage rolling out device security as it requires an app users download from Android Marketplace, but turning on device security stops them using Android Marketplace until the app is installed (there's a direct link to get around the chicken and egg problem here).

There's also a connector to allow you to manage BlackBerry users of Google Apps from a BlackBerry Enterprise Server, and options for applying password and other device policies to smartphones using Google Sync or Exchange ActiveSync, which can end up as a confusing mix of management options.

Fine control of smartphone security in an interface that will be familiar to any Exchange administrator.

Office 365 has a more unified and comprehensive approach. Exchange Online gives you the same mobile device management as Exchange Server using ActiveSync Policies which work to some extent on virtually all smartphones including Android, iPhone. BlackBerry and Symbian as well as Windows Mobile and Windows Phone. You can enforce strong passwords and encryption, control individual device features (like Bluetooth), configure sync options like whether attachments can be downloaded on a phone and wipe devices automatically if the password is wrong too many times. You can also block or quarantine specific mobile devices from connecting. Users can even block or wipe their own phones.

Winner: Office 365's unified and comprehensive approach to smartphone management makes it the clear winner here.

Document management

Google Docs has no equivalent to SharePoint Online. Sites is a nice simple tool for creating internal or external Web pages and with Google Docs, you can control whether users can publish or share documents outside the business and whether documents default to being private or public. Otherwise sharing is an ad hoc thing that users control.

SharePoint Online combines workflow, document management and Web publishing and it looks professional straight away.

SharePoint Online combines Web page authoring for external sites with a full document management tool with libraries, lists, templates, discussion tools, shared calendars, RSS feeds, workflow, check in and check out options and version control plus powerful search options. Your Team Site includes pages for every user where they can blog, share links and documents or access their files on the move. Taking advantage of all the options is more complex but it's also far more powerful.

Winner: Office 365 has much more capable sharing features, but these are correspondingly more complicated to manage. If you need them though, then it's worth bearing with.

Chat and talk

Google Chat is the same simple but powerful tool available to the public; users can see presence for Google Apps contacts inside Gmail and start a text, voice or video chat from there once they've downloaded the plug-in. Alternatively they can use the Windows Google Talk software for text and voice chat or file transfer. Management is minimal; you can block chat outside the organisation or just warn users but you can't block file transfers.

Microsoft's Lync Online is more powerful. The extensive management options let you choose whether users can transfer files, make audio or video calls and talk to people outside the business or just colleagues.

Users can see each other's presence and status in Outlook and Outlook Web Access (including information from someone's Exchange calendar), and in any Office app where you're collaborating. It's possible to start a chat, voice or video call from there or from the Lync client. Microsoft is also promising Lync clients from a range of smartphones, offering IM first and voice features later. If you have an in-house PBX you can also set up unified messaging (like dialling phone calls from Outlook) and integrate voicemail with Exchange Online although we weren't able to test this.

Lync Online automatically federates with Windows Messenger and AOL for instant messaging.

Lync Online automatically federates with Windows Messenger and AOL for instant messaging. It can also federate with on-premise Lync servers if permitted by the server admin.

Google Apps can federate with any XMPP service, but to make that work you have to edit the SRV record in your domain by hand (or ask your domain hoster to do it for you), and you then get federation with all the services Google is connected to - you don't get to choose which are allowed or blocked. Similarly, you can allow users to chat with any Gmail or Google Apps user or block them all; you can't pick and choose which Google Apps-using companies they can communicate with and you can't block or allow chat access for specific users (individually or by groups).

Lync Online also incorporates the features of LiveMeeting; you can switch from an IM chat to an online meeting with up to 250 people with audio, video and Web conferencing, and you can schedule meetings in advance through Outlook. If you want to let people phone in to a meeting without needing Lync (customers for example), you can buy an audio conferencing service for Lync Online from BT.

Winner: Office 365. Google App's chat and messaging features are fine for most users, but for more fine-grained controls, Office 365 is better.

Online apps

Online apps like Google Docs are primitive compared to the richness of the full Office suite. In general, the features of the Office Web Apps and Google Docs are broadly similar, but while many like the sparse interface of Google Docs for its simplicity, the Office Web Apps tend to have the edge in sophistication.

Create a PowerPoint presentation in the Office Web Apps and you get good-looking themes and images you place are automatically sized to fit; a Google Docs presentation starts out in plain black and white and the designs aren't as appealing.

The Office 365 Outlook Web App has good self-service features for users (and you only see the admin links if you're an administrator).

Office Web Apps make inserting images from your hard drive the same simple experience it is in a local app. Google Docs gives you a wider choice for inserting images from a URL or a Google image search in a document, but it's a completely different dialog box in a presentation where inserting an image has fewer options and is a clunkier experience. The mismatch of features between different document types in Google Docs is more extreme and more jarring than in the Office Web Apps.

Sharing is better integrated in Google Docs, with a big blue Share button on the page that opens a popup dialog box. The Office Web Apps make you save the document and take you away from the editor to choose who to share it with, and take you back to viewing but not editing the document. This is because Microsoft assumes that you won't share a document until you've finished working on it. Updates appear live in Google Docs; this also happens in the OneNote Web App but the other Microsoft Web apps make you save your own changes to see edits by other users.

There are many features in both Outlook and Outlook Web that are missing from Gmail from macros to Quick Steps. Gmail equivalents tend to have fewer features which some users prefer because they're simpler. Gmail's stars, labels and priority buttons let you do much the same things as Outlook's flags, categories and folders with the advantage that a message can have multiple labels instead of being in only one folder.

You can turn an email into a Gmail task and then make a reminder, although this isn't quite as immediate as setting a follow-up flag for a specific day directly on an email. Filters the Gmail equivalent of Outlook rules have far fewer actions; in Outlook you can play sounds, send an automatic reply or even print a message that matches a rule. Gmail does include all the mostly commonly used ones though such as filing, forwarding and deleting messages.

Google Apps for Business Gmail users finally get the option to request read receipts, but these have to be enabled by the administrator and Gmail doesn't respond to delivery or read receipt requests in emails sent from Exchange. Gmail only shows the request when you close the message (Outlook shows it when you open the message) and you have to decide for each message as Gmail doesn't have Outlook's don't ask me again' checkbox. Even more irritating; if you don't want to send the receipt the button you click is marked not now' and Gmail will ask you again every time you read the message.

Apart from creating resources using Google's complex naming structure, you have only a few controls for calendar sharing.

Google Calendar can include shared resources - like rooms and projectors that need booking - which you create by typing in the details one at a time. Oddly there isn't a drop-down picklist to ensure the resources are given consistent names or a wizard to help with the complex naming conventions Google suggests, so you could end up with six conference rooms and one meeting room if you're not careful. If you follow the convention suggested, all resources that start with the same three letters will be grouped into a hierarchy but you can't do this manually.

Exchange Online has templates for creating resources like rooms (as well as equipment that isn't in a fixed location); you can even say which users can reserve rooms without permission and how often.

The Google Calendar features for end users aren't quite as powerful or complex as in Outlook, but you get the important options like overlaid calendars and recurring appointments. The Quick add tool that lets you type in a sentence, including the day and date of what you need to do, which then sets an event on the right day at the right time is a phenomenal time saver.

Winner: Tie. The Microsoft Web Apps for crediting documents are more sophisticated than Google's equivalents, but Google Docs has better sharing and collaboration features. Exchange Online has a plethorea of configurable options, but many organisations won't need these and may prefer Google's less feature-packed but also less cluttered approach.

Office and working offline

Depending on which plan you sign up for Office 365 includes download rights for the professional version of Office 2010, which includes OneNote, Publisher and Access as well as the usual Word, Excel and PowerPoint. You can load and save documents from all of them into the SharePoint Online site included in Office 365 and use the online collaboration features to edit documents at the same time in the main apps.

Depending on which plan you sign up for Office 365 includes download rights for the professional version of Office 2010.

This is a bargain; you get the full power of Office and the back-end servers that enable all the features, from using Information Rights Management to control who can distribute a file to asking people to update a database by replying to email. One great feature for businesses; you can host PowerPoint presentations online and present to a group of people on the Web, letting them ask questions and make comments ideal for training or sales pitches.

Also available are the publicly accessible Office Web Apps; Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote all but PowerPoint let multiple users edit the same document at the same time. SharePoint synchronisation neatly takes care of making documents available offline as well as accessing them from anywhere online.

Although offline access to Gmail and Google Docs (without the deprecated Gears plugin) is still only available to Google employees, Google recognises that offline document access matters. You can run software to sync Outlook with Gmail, Calendar and Contacts, and to move Outlook Notes to Google Docs (though they're read-only, it doesn't sync notes filed in folders - and if you use Outlook on multiple PCs you have to run the tool on all of them because categories, follow-up flags and other settings don't sync fully otherwise).

There's a connector toolbar for Office that lets you sync documents to Google Docs; the latest release fixes many of the problems in the first version, but it's not as polished as the SharePoint integration and converting files into Google Docs for editing online doesn't preserve all document features (the same thing happens when you open an email attachment in Google Docs). You can't edit watermarks, smart art, charts or footers in Office Web Apps, but you can see them in the read-only viewer and they're preserved in the document so you get them back when you open it back in Office. Google Docs doesn't show those details and doesn't keep them if you edit the document. Even fonts and line spacing can change when you move Office documents in and out of Google Docs.

Winner: Office 365. Microsoft's offline support is far from polished, essentially being dependent on SharePoint and subscription access to the full Office suite, but this is also, unsurprisingly, far more capable than Google's cumbersome and crude offline tools.

Service levels and support

The Google Apps dashboard repeatedly told us that there might be a problem with an unspecified Google Apps service; whenever we clicked through to the dashboard all the services showed as having no issues, but seeing the warning virtually all the time was concerning. Office 365 has a similar service health dashboard; neither service had any major outages or failures while we were testing them, but Office 365 didn't keep warning us of non-existent problems.

Despite frequent warnings about a problem, Google Apps didn't record any disruptions to the service.

Both services promise 99.9% availability. Google Apps measures this on a monthly basis with a credit of three days of service if the SLA is not met in a month; Office 365 credits 25%, 50% or 100% of the service cost if the SLA falls below 99.9%, 99% and 95% respectively.

Google Apps has no planned downtime; Office365 does schedule maintenance when usage is likely to be low for example Lync might be unavailable for five minutes at 1am on a Saturday morning and dates and times are listed five days in advance in the support area.

Support is definitely better with Office 365. Support is requested using the admin console and your requests are managed there, but 24-7 phone support is also available with response times from 15 minutes to four hours depending on the severity.

Issues with Office 365 can be broken down by exactly which part of the service is affected.

Google Apps also has 24-7 phone support but only for critical problems that involve more than half your users and affect the Google Apps Web services. If the problem was with mobile emails you'd be stuck with email support, which doesn't cover weekends.

Winner: Office 365, but only just. It's tough to judge how reliable a cloud service is, but Microsoft's technical support has better availability which is reassuring.

Verdict

Google Apps has a flat price of 33 per user per year; Office 365 has a range of prices from 6.50 to 17.75 a month, depending on whether you want Office, Office Web Apps, SharePoint, Lync or archiving it can be more expensive but you can choose what services you want to pay for and there are discounts for volume pricing (including transferring existing Exchange and SharePoint server licences to Office 365).

Google Apps is in a constant state of flux.

Google Apps is in a constant state of flux; the whole service is migrating to a new platform, there are two versions of the control panel available, there are options to give users access to previews of new interfaces and features from Google Labs which itself is going away, with no indication of what happens to the features it provides and new features like return receipts arrive periodically. Getting continuous, instant improvements is one of the benefits of cloud services, but if you're managing the service and supporting users you might prefer Microsoft's approach where updates come at regular intervals and you can choose whether to adopt them immediately or by a specific date.

That underlines one key difference between the two services that has little to do with features; Office 365 has the professional feel of a service planned in advance and designed for administrators; Google Apps has the feel of a service that has grown by leaps and bounds, but sometimes in a rather haphazard way that's not always consistent.

In the end, the two services are both powerful but they suit different audiences.

In the end, the two services are both powerful but they suit different audiences. If your business already uses Microsoft tools, Office 365 is the logical progression, giving you server workloads that integrate with and make the most of your existing investments. It's a comprehensive, powerful, end-to-end cloud platform for business that doesn't make you do everything online, which many businesses find a step too far. You can have all the power of Exchange and SharePoint without the bother of configuring and running them.

If you need a mix of on-premise and cloud services, having to manage both Active Directory and the Google Apps control panel is more work than being able to do everything through System Center. Google Apps is a better fit for businesses starting from scratch online with no legacy systems who can benefit from the simplicity without having to keep the service in sync with on-premise tools, but it has definite limits.

MICROSOFT OFFICE 365 SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Operating system: Windows XP SP3 or later; MacOS X Leopard 10.5 or later; Windows Server 2003 or later Office client: Office 2007 SP2; Office 2008 or later; Lync 2010 Administration and Office Web Apps: a modern web browser Active Directory-based features: single forest GOOGLE APPS SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Modern web browser

Microsoft Office is arguably one of the most important suite of programs available for the Mac. Despite the increasing number of competitors, such as Apple's iWork or the free OpenOffice, without Microsoft Office, the Mac would arguably not be viable as a business computer. This makes the latest 2011 version of Office especially important.

Each of the Office programs is full of features and foibles, so we've dedicated individual reviews to each one:Word 2011Excel 2011PowerPoint 2011Outlook 2011

The biggest change in this version of Office is the replacement of the previous email program, Entourage, with a brand-new Mac version of Outlook. There are plenty of changes affecting the entire suite though. Among them is the Ribbon interface, which will be familiar to Office 2007 and 2010 Office for Windows users. It is designed to make it easier for users to discover and use the wealth of available features in each program. The Visual Basic for Applications scripting language for creating macros has returned - an especially important feature for Excel power users.

A less noticeable and potentially less welcome change is the introduction of product activation to Office. Previous versions simply required a license key, but Office 2011 now has to validate itself with Microsoft's servers during installation before it will work so you therefore can't use the same licence non-concurrently on a desktop and a laptop as you could with previous versions. Although an understandable counter-piracy measure, it could be inconvenient if you have to deploy Office on an office full of computers.

The biggest competitor to Office is now the Google Apps online suite. Although not as fully featured as Office, and therefore not as capable at creating complex documents, it has proven very attractive to many businesses. This is due not only to its low cost, but also due to its web-based nature allowing easy remote access, lack of maintenance and, most importantly, allowing multiple people to work on a document simultaneously.

Companies that have stuck with older Macs will be left out in the cold. Office 2011 requires Macs running Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8 or later on an Intel processor. Laggards still using PowerPC Macs and Mac OS X Tiger 10.4 will have to be content with Office 2008, but if you're still using such old computers then it's likely you're not too fussed about keeping up with the latest software releases.

Unlike its competitors, Office isn't cheap. We've reviewed the Home and Business Edition which comes with Outlook. A single user licence costs 162 ex VAT. If you don't need Outlook, the Home and Student Edition single user licence costs 72 ex VAT a significant drop. Word, Excel and PowerPoint (but not Outlook) are each available separately at 85 ex VAT. If you need any two of them however, it's more economical to simply buy the entire suite.

Verdict

None of the improvements in Office 2011 for Mac are revolutionary, but they are nonetheless useful and together make Office 2011 the best Mac office suite yet. It's not perfect though – there are still features found in Office 2010 for Windows that aren't present here. Plus, the accompanying Office Web Apps are inferior to Google Apps for collaborating online. If your document creation needs are fairly simple, OpenOffice, iWork or Google Docs is more than sufficient, but for serious work then there's no choice other than Microsoft Office 2011.

Processor: Intel only Memory: 1GB (minimum) Hard disk: Mac OS Extended disk with 1.8GB free space Display: 1,280 x 800 pixel resolution or higher OS: Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later

Microsoft has planned its biggest ever Patch Tuesday for October, with a total of 49 vulnerabilities set to be fixed.

This is over three times the number of security holes fixed in last month's Patch Tuesday.

Of the 16 bulletins, four have been rated critical, where the flaws could lead to remote code execution. These four affected all versions of Windows.

One of the critical vulnerabilities affects Internet Explorer versions 6, 7 and 8, whilst two of the flaws, classed as "important," affected Microsoft Office one for Word and one for Excel on all platforms.

This Patch Tuesday announcement also marked the first time Microsoft Word 2010 had been included in an advisory.

The vulnerabilities are due to be patched on 12 October.

Next year, Microsoft will release a new version of its Office suite, which will imaginatively be called Office 2010. However, you don't have to wait that long the beta is available to download now.

Another version of Office? Really, another one?

You might have just got used to Office 2007 but hold onto your hats as here comes another one. It's not the final release though, which will actually will be out in 2010 as the name suggest, but it's beta, so at least you can try it for free now.

Where can I get the beta and how long can I use it for?

You can download the beta from here and you can use it until 31 October 2010 when it is set to expire.

What versions will be available?

There are three versions Office 2010 and each one will be available as a separate beta. Office Home and Business will include, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook, Office Professional will add Publisher, and Professional Plus will further add InfoPath, Communicator, and SharePoint Workspace.

So what's new in Office 2010?

Every application has had some kind of work done but some have changed more than others. Highlights include Outlook now being able to handle more than one Exchange account and getting threaded messaging support. OneNote is now available in all SKUs and had enhanced sharing features for SharePoint users. Video now works properly in PowerPoint. Word and PowerPoint also now get a co-authoring mode, and image tools are enhanced so you don't need to leave word to work on pictures.

There's also an enhanced Backstage' the place across all apps where you click to do basic tasks such as printing but also to connect to web services and edit metadata.

Oh, and it looks prettier too. Visual tweakery includes an improved and updated ribbon interface, with enhanced colours to make things clearer to see.

For the full low-down, check out our review of the betahere.

OK, that's all fine but I thought all apps were online now?

While some organisations may have moved to cloud computing-style services such as Google Docs, Microsoft is only going to go that way fully when it's good and ready. In the meantime, it's got another client side application suite to sell you, and yes, that's Office 2010, also known as the Cash Cow.

However, it isn't ignoring the cloud - part and parcel of the new release are the new Web Apps, which are online versions of your favourite Office Apps. Well, Word, Excel and PowerPoint anyway. The main idea is that you'll be able to work on and offline more easily, share documents and collaborate with colleagues. The Web Apps will work in IE and Firefox, but not Chrome or Safari.

Will I have to upgrade my hardware?

Probably not. This is the first office suite to be available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions, but all processors sold in the last few years are 64-bit compliant so that shouldn't be a problem. 500MHz and 256MB of RAM are listed at the minimum requirements, but we'd recommend at least a 1GHz CPU and 1GB of RAM to get the best out of it.

Can't I just stick with Wordpad?

Actually no. All new PCs will ship with a free, though ad-supported and heavily cut-down version of Office 2010, called Microsoft Office Starter 2010. It will look like Office 2010 with a Ribbon interface, but you'll be able to upgrade directly from it to full Office, in case you feel that Microsoft isn't rich enough.

Microsoft has been ordered to stop selling Microsoft Word in the US, after finding itself on the wrong end of patent infringement suit.

The US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas sided with technology company i4i, which alleged that Microsoft had willfully infringed a patent relating to the creation of custom XML documents.

The software giant has been ordered to stop selling Microsoft Word - the cornerstone of its Office suite - in its current form within 60 days.

There's also a fair amount of cash involved. Microsoft must pay $40 million for the initial infringement, $37 million in prejudgment interest, including an additional $21,102 per day until a final judgement is reached in the case. The court also ordered Microsoft to pay $144,060 per day until the date of final judgement for post-verdict damages.

We're still awaiting Microsoft's comments on the verdict, though reports suggested it is planning an appeal. However, even if the ruling stands the software giant could simply strip the feature from Word, preventing the need for it to be removed from the shelves.

Microsoft today unveiled the first version of its Office 2010 suite at its Worldwide Partner Conference.

The technical preview is the first time the next version of the Office suite has been made publicly available, at first to attendees of the conference. It will be released in the first half of 2010, but we will see a beta before then.

Web-friendly

The major news is that the web-based versions of the Office lineup will take on so-called cloud apps like Google's Docs and Adobe's Acrobat.com.

Office product manager Chris Adams told IT PRO that Microsoft is looking to make applications like Word, Excel and PowerPoint available anywhere be it the desktop, mobile phones or via browsers.

But he stressed that not all features will make it to the mobile versions.

He compared it to Outlook. To get full functionality, users need to access Outlook via their desktop computer, but a feature-limited email client is also available via web browsers and mobile phones.

"What we're looking to do is take the same idea and extend it to Office as well," he said. "We're definitely not looking at replicating features across all three."

Instead, Microsoft is hoping users will work in all three versions, letting them edit documents on the go. For that to work, documents need to flow easily between different versions of the Office suite. "Customers are unwilling to accept any loss of formatting or loss of document fidelity," he said.

The web-based apps will be available in three versions. Businesses will be offered a paid-for, on-premise version, while others can buy a subscription via Microsoft's new online services system. There will also be a free version, targeted at consumers and small businesses registered to the Windows Live web portal, which has some 400 million users.

Microsoft doesn't think offering a cut-down version of Office over the web will hurt sales of the suite, however. "We are really confident about the momentum we have," said Adams, adding that the free version might be ad funded something Microsoft is yet to make a call on.

While he stressed the web apps will "complement" the desktop version, Adams admitted some users might just use the free edition. "In some scenarios, web access is perfect for some users," he said.

Aside from the web versions, the Office upgrade adds a few more new features.

Multiple users will now be able to edit documents at the same time, with documents locked at the paragraph level.

The suite also gets a new image processing tool, so users can edit pictures without leaving the window. It includes a dedicated tool to cut backgrounds out of pictures handy for when you need a photo of yourself, but only have your Facebook profile shot of you on holiday to hand.

Similarly, PowerPoint gains a video editing tool, which includes the ability to select just a portion of a clip to play.

Cut and pasting also gets an upgrade. When you go to paste text into a document, a preview image is shown of the three options keep source formatting, merge, and plain text so you can see how it looks before you make your decision.

Outlook gains two new tools. The first is conversation cleanup, which brings together multiple replies in an email thread, condensing it and removing duplicated content to make it easier to read. The second is an "ignore conversation" button for when you're added to email threads that you don't actually need to be part of.

The suite also sees the extension of Microsoft's fluid user interface, which is designed to streamline tasks. For example, when you go to print, Word will automatically show a preview of the printed document, saving a few clicks.

Fewer SKUs

There will be just five versions of Office 2010, down from eight for the 2007 version.

The first two will be the volume purchase editions, sold to large organisations. These will be Office Standard and Office Professional Plus.

Office Standard will include Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word as well as new additions OneNote and Publisher. The Professional Plus version adds enterprise tools such as Access and new SharePoint Workspace.

The other three versions will be available for download, off the store shelf or pre-installed on PCs.

The low-end version will be called Home and Student, and adds OneNote to the standard lineup of Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

Next up is Home and Business, which adds Outlook. The top-end version is dubbed Office Professional, and adds Publisher and Access.

Microsoft has said it is looking into reports that Word 2002 Service Pack 3 has a flaw which could let attackers in.

The software maker said it is aware of "limited, targeted attacks" which have seen remote code be executed in the software when the attacker's .doc file is opened. Microsoft stressed that to be hit by the problem, users would have to not only open the attacker's email or web link, but download and open the attachment as well.

It said that Word 2002 SP3 is the only vulnerable program from the Word line-up, but users could also see Word 2000 unexpectedly exit if a hacked .doc file is opened.

For more details, view the advisory here.

As the issue is still being investigated, no fix has yet been issued. Yesterday, Microsoft issued a similar warning for ActiveX in some versions of Access.