At a Poynter Institute writing seminar I recently attended, the class was given writing assignments that we were to print out and read aloud for peer review. The computer lab at the institute was equipped with Macintosh computers and a printer. I had also brought my laptop, which runs Windows and
Office 2010. In the humid heat of St. Petersburg,
office professional plus 2007 sale, Florida, I soon discovered I did not want to carry around a laptop. I could type up my assignment in the air-conditioned comfort of my hotel room. But how would I print it out in the morning for class? I hadn't thought to bring a thumb drive. Then I remembered: I can save it on SkyDrive from my laptop at the hotel. Then at the institute I can get to SkyDrive with the Mac. Nothing to schlep, no thumb drive to lose. On my laptop, I drafted my assignment in Word 2010. When I was finished I used the Save to Web command (click the File tab) and saved it on SkyDrive. In the morning I left the laptop at my hotel and went to the institute, where I used one of the Macs to sign in to Windows Live and opened the document. The document opened in Word Web App, in the web browser (in this case, Firefox). Naturally I noticed a few things I wanted to improve in the five minutes I had before class started, so I clicked the Edit in Browser command and made some final tweaks. Then I switched back to Reading View, went to the File menu,
Office 2010 Serial Number, and clicked Print. A PDF viewer opened, and I used the Print command there to send my assignment to the lab's printer. Done. For a moment I felt a slight sense of weightlessness. Not just the fact that I didn't need to carry around machinery-but also that I wasn't burdened by technological decisions. Questions like, "If I bring the laptop to the lab, how do I connect it to the printer?" or, "Will the Mac be able to open my Word 2010 document?" were moot. It was a joy to be free to focus on my assignment rather than on the tools. The assignment was to write a scene. You can read mine - and see Word Web App - right here in my public SkyDrive folder (link fixed since original post - let me know if it's still not working for you). This was just a one example of how
Office 2010 and Word Web App make life a little easier. If you have Word 2010,
Office Professional Plus, give Save to Web a try. If you don't yet have Word 2010, go to and create an online document right there,
office 2010 serial generator, or upload a document from your computer. You might start to feel unburdened, too. Since I originally posted this,
Buy Windows 7 Enterprise, some new capabilities have been added to Office Web Apps. Read about them in the Office Web App blog. -- Roxanne Kenison <div