As parents, change is a big part of our lives. My two boys seem to be growing by the minute and I’m always buying new clothes/shoes/jackets/mittens to replace ones they have outgrown! We listen to the news to make sure we are updated on the latest foods we should incorporate into our kids’ diets and dream about the upgrades and renovations we wished we had time to make in our homes.
But when it comes to technology it’s hard to know when we really need the latest upgrade. No sooner have we purchased something new, it seems to become something old very quickly. But bear with me…changing to Office 2010 is worth taking a look at.
1) Help the kids express their ideas and creativity. Office 2010 opens up a world of design options to give your kids’ creativity wings as well as to help you express your own ideas.
New and improved picture formatting tools, such as colour saturation and artistic effects, transform pictures into works of art:
A wide range of new customizable themes… 
…and SmartArt® graphic layouts offer more ways to make ideas stick:
My screenshot only shows the 16 designs for circular relationships, but there are tons of SmartArt® options for lists, processes, hierarchies, pyramids and more as well.
2) Make group work easier. Brainstorm ideas, keep versions in sync, and meet deadlines faster when doing work in groups. Use the Office Web Apps at www.live.com to share Word 2010, PowerPoint 2010, Excel 2010 and OneNote 2010 documents, and edit these documents at the same time with people — even when they’re in different locations. How useful is this when the kids are working on group projects that require collaboration? The best part…not everyone on the team needs to have Office 2010 as documents can be edited in the browser with limited functionality.
3) Become more organized than you thought possible. OneNote may not be as familiar to you as Word or Excel, but I truly believe it is Microsoft’s best kept secret.
It’s set up like several notebooks each with sections of pages. 
You can save notes, pictures, web pages, e-mail messages and audio recordings all on the same page or in different categories. It is great for students compiling information to be used for research papers, but it is also tremendously useful for parents who have busy lives.
The beauty is that it’s all in one place so you don’t have to go looking for your information.
4) Have a central hub for friends and colleagues. Outlook 2010 not only serves as your hub for email, but with the Outlook Social Connector, you can quickly view history of e-mails, meetings, or attachments you receive from any particular individual:
At the time of the writing of this blog post, there are connectors for Facebook, Linkedin, myspace and Windows Live Messenger available. These connectors can be downloaded and installed anytime once Outlook 2010 is installed on your computer and I will go into further detail about Outlook 2010 in an upcoming post.
Notice how some of the emails in the thread are in the current folder, but some of them (my replies) are in my Sent Items? Now I don’t have to go searching to remember who said what – they’re all listed in one place, even if the thread branches off because one person responds halfway into the conversation. Nice. Conversations can be categorized, prioritized, and conveniently filed as needed.
There’s also the new Quick Steps feature, which lets you perform multi-command tasks, such as reply and delete, with a single click:
Managing my inbox has never been easier!
As I mentioned last week, technology can be intimidating and staying on top of tech trends is often not a priority for busy parents. However, some of the unique and different features of Office 2010 like the ones outlined above can go a long way to making your life and your kids’ lives a little easier.
Interested in knowing a bit about how Office 2010 was developed? Check out this 2 minute video. If you’ve got a few more minutes, check out some of the related videos on how families like yours are using Office 2010.
Each week I plan on delving in a bit further into the Office products we can’t live without such as Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and also take you through ones you may not be familiar with such as OneNote so stay tuned!
Until next week…
Ruth Morton
Microsoft Geek and Mother of Twins
