If you have deployed SharePoint Server 2010 with the Enterprise license to your organization, then you can purchase the Office Web Apps (OWA) add-on to provide your SharePoint portal users with browser-based editions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

In case you wondered, “But what about Access?” don’t fret. Access Services is included with the SharePoint 2010 Enterprise license. The coolest thing about Access Services and OWA is that you can host Microsoft Office documents in your SharePoint portal and your users don’t have to have the full-blown Office applications installed on their computers; the only requirements on the client side are (a) a Web browser; and (b) access to the SharePoint portal.

By the end of this brief article you will understand how to publish Access 2010 databases to your SharePoint portal with a minimum of muss, fuss, or greasy aftertaste.

Back-end setup

The first thing we need to do to get Access Services on its feet is to ensure that the Access Services service application is installed in SharePoint, and that the related server service is running.

Log into SharePoint Central Administration and click Manage service applications from the Application Management category.

SharePoint 2010 Central Administration

If you performed a default installation of SharePoint Server, then you should find a service application entry for Access Services. Ensure that the runtime status is listed as Started.

Verifying the Access Services Service Application

If for some reason you don’t have Access Services installed, you can open the New menu and select Access Services from the service application list.

Adding Access Services to SharePoint 2010

Next, from the Central Administration home page click Manage services on server from the System Settings group (the link is shown in Figure 1). Find Access Database Service, and ensure that its status is Started.

Verifying the running state of Access Services

The final back-end configuration step involves logging into your production SharePoint portal site and verifying that the SharePoint Server Enterprise Site Features are running.

From the front page of your portal, open the Site Actions menu and select Site Settings.

The SharePoint 2010 Site Actions menu

From the Site Settings page, click Manage site features from the Site Actions group.

The SharePoint 2010 Site Settings page

Finally, in the feature list, location SharePoint Server Enterprise Site features and ensure that its status is Active.

Verifying the SharePoint enterprise feature set

Now that we have SharePoint Server prepared to host an Access 2010 database application, let’s fire up the Access 2010 client and get to publishing!

Publishing a Web Database

When you start Access 2010 and navigate to the Backstage View, you’ll notice two types of database templates available: standard databases and Web databases. The chief difference between the two template types is that the Web database templates are pre-set for compatibility with Access Services.

You’ll find that there exists a number of limitations and “gotchas” with respect to Access 2010 database compatibility with SharePoint. Thus, you may be best off my creating your database by using a built-in or downloaded Web database template, and then migrating your production Access database data into the Web database shell.

The Backstage view in Access 2010

In this example, we created a Web database by using the built-in Contacts template.

The Contacts Web database

The good news, regardless of whether you want to publish your existing Access database or one of the built-in Web databases to SharePoint, is that Access 2010 includes a compatibility checker utility. Simply open your target database, navigate to the Backstage View, select Publish to Access Services under File Types, and then click Run Compatibility Checker.

Publishing a Web database to Access Services

If your database does not pass the compatibility check (a highly likely scenario if you use one of your existing, non-Web databases), then the interface turns red and you can click Web Compatibility Issues to view a report of problems found.

Failing the Web Compatibility check

In my opinion, Access does a great job of listing the compatibility problems in the Web Compatibility Issues table it generates. Work to resolve the problems and rerun the Compatibility Checker until the file passes.

The Web Compatibility report

Once your database is “greenlighted” by the compatibility checker tool, you will see the The database is compatible with the Web message and you can complete the rest of the form.

Provide the server Uniform Resource Locator (URL) to your target SharePoint portal, and give a site name. Be sure not to include spaces in your site name; Access Services will host your database in a subsite of the given SharePoint portal.

Publishing to SharePoint 2010

If all goes well during the publication process, you will see the Publish Succeeded dialog box, as shown in Figure 14. Click the indicated URL to visit the new Access Services subsite.

Figure 14: Confirmation of Access Services publication

Using the Access Database in SharePoint

The hard work you exerted earlier in the process in forcing your database to pass the compatibility checker should pay off handsomely when you observe how faithfully Access Services renders your database in a Web browser. It’s pretty impressive stuff, for sure.

The Access Services Web site

The Access Services site template functions a bit differently from most of the SharePoint 2010 site templates. Instead of a Site Actions menu, we have an Options menu that we can use to customize site behavior, edit the underlying source file, or navigate up to the parent site.

Access Services Web site options

Conclusion

At this point you have the fundamentals under your belt such that you should be able to verify the running state of Access Services in SharePoint 2010 and publish an Access 2010 database to your portal. Please be sure to leave your questions and/or observations in the comments area of this post; I’m happy to help.

For further study

• Set Up and Configure Access Services
• The Access Show: Access 2010 demo of Access Services and web databases
• Access Services in SharePoint 2010 – All You Need to Know
• Thoughts on Access Services in SharePoint 2010
• Access 2010 Web Databases: How Can I Put My Access Database On The Web?
• Access 2010 Web Databases: Web Compatibility
• Access 2010 Web Databases: Creating Relationships

• Office 365 review – Part 8: SharePoint Online and conclusion (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 7: Lync Online (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 6: Exchange Online Hybrid, Archiving and IRM (2)
• Office 365 review – Part 5: Migrating to Exchange Online (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 4: Exchange Online (0)

SharePoint (SP) is a versatile application, a bit like a Swiss army knife and that probably accounts for its amazing popularity in businesses all around the world. In SP 2010, and thus SP online the aim is to cover the entire spectrum from personal sites (blogs and Mysite), team and project collaboration sites to intranet / internet publishing sites.

Introduction to SharePoint in Office 365

If you need to share your SP sites with the world you have two choices, either you can share externally with selected users who are invited and who have to login with a Live ID. Alternatively you can create a public facing website with anonymous access.

An excellent feature in SP is support for taxonomies, terms and words that can be used to tag content for better structure. Custom taxonomies, adapted to the businesses or department, can be created at the tenant level and also at the site collection level. For better document management you can attach a document ID to a particular document, this number will always follow this particular document throughout its lifecycle, no matter where in SP it’s moved to.

Each user subscription adds 0.5 GB to the overall storage pool for SP Online, so a company with 500 users will have 250 GB of storage and you can buy more if needed. Overall maximum storage for a tenant is 1 TB, and files larger than 250 MB can’t be stored in SP Online.

Tagging content will really help in organising large numbers of documents.

What’s in and what’s not in SharePoint Online

One often mentioned search system in SP 2010 is FAST, this is not available in Office 365, nor is Business Intelligence (BI) functionality in the feature known as Performance Point. There’s also no Business Connectivity Services (BCS, which connects SP to SAP and other ERP systems). You can’t deploy software solutions that require full trust code, nor can you run custom code at the farm level.

What you can do is run Office Web Apps; they’re integrated into SP online whereas they have to be installed on premise and you can search across site collections (which you couldn’t in BPOS), you can also search for people and their expertise and it supports phonetic search (picking up similar spelt words). Silverlight based interfaces are fully supported as is sandboxed custom software solutions.

Customisation of SP can be done through the free SharePoint Designer but the administrator has to turn this access on, if you’re creating workflows these can be laid out in Visio and then exported directly as a SP workflow. A detail to note is that the More web parts button is in a different location than it is in SP 2010 on premise.

If you have a lot of content in SP on premise today a good deal of planning is required to decide how to proceed. There are no built in tools for migrating SP sites to Office 365 although several third party solutions are available. Also be aware that you can’t store .exe, .vbs, .chm or .com files in SP online.

Customising a SP site for a team is quick and easy.

Conclusion

A major consideration with any cloud deployment is the impact on internet bandwidth, moving say a 1000 user’s mailboxes, SharePoint document and VOIP traffic to outside the LAN is going to cause a significant increase in internet data traffic. And if there’s one thing users today don’t like it’s having a “slow network”. The Microsoft Online Deployment Guide (see Resources) gives detailed guidance on bandwidth usage. For troubleshooting client issues don’t forget the Microsoft Online Services Diagnostics and Logging tool (see Resources).

Without going into details on how Office 365 compares to Google’s offering it’s clear to me that O365 is miles ahead in usability and integration, especially since the environments where people interface with O365 (Outlook, OWA, SharePoint and Office itself) are familiar territory for most information workers requiring very little change in to use. The last bastion where Google was ahead was in concurrent editing of a document by several users, this feature was recently added to Word Web App.

Overall there’s no doubt that Office 365 is a great cloud service, offering easy to use and powerful services for email, collaboration and communications with excellent support for integration with existing on premise systems. Many small businesses will drink the O365 Kool-Aid, and there will undoubtedly be many large businesses that will look to see if savings and efficiencies are to be had as well. There will be interesting times ahead in the cloud world.

Resources

Office 365 Deployment Guide for Enterprises

Service Descriptions for each part of O365 

MOSDAL (Microsoft Online Services Diagnostics and Logging) Support Toolkit 

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• Access Services in SharePoint Server 2010 (8)
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• Office 365 review – Part 7: Lync Online (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 6: Exchange Online Hybrid, Archiving and IRM (2)

Lync 2010 is Microsoft’s enterprise voice solution and on premise it offers IM, presence, video conferencing, VOIP as well as phone integration and even the ability to completely replace internal PABX systems. In 0365 Lync Online offers most of this functionality with the ability to connect phones and calling ordinary phones sadly missing. Presence information for co-workers is displayed in Outlook, Office, SharePoint and OWA and there’s “click to call” integration.

Lync client applications & IM federation

Today there’s no Lync client for your smartphone but an app for iPhone, Android and Windows Phone 7 is coming before the end of the year. Just like most other IM clients you simply search the directory to add buddies and their presence is displayed. Unlike Live Messenger and Facebook this presence information is gathered from your Outlook calendar as well as when you manually set it. The Lync client is a separate installation to Office Pro Plus and you need to run the Desktop Setup tool after its installation to configure settings. There’s also a Lync Web App (LWA) that is supported in IE, Firefox and Safari which requires Silverlight. LWA offers IM and desktop sharing but there’s no audio and video support.

Lync Online lets you IM outside the organisation, the administrator can either enable federation with all other O365 tenants with the option to blacklist certain companies or only enable federation with selected companies. There’s also an option to enable IM federation with the Live Messenger network as well as Lync and Office Communications Server 2007 /2007 R2 implementations on premise.

Setting up IM federation in Office 365 is easy but we’re waiting for integration with more IM networks.

Web conferencing

Another popular feature is web conferencing or one to many presentations, these can be scheduled or ad hoc and the maximum amount of attendees is 250. Meeting invitations include the link to the Lync 2010 attendee client for Windows, other platforms can use the web based interface, there’s a Mac client coming “very soon after launch”. If you need to use phone dial in audio support for public webcasts several third party services are available that support Lync Online.

Network configuration for Lync Online

Your corporate firewall needs to have outbound port 443 (for the STUN/TCP and PSOM/TLS protocols), 3478 (STUN/UDP) and 50000-59999 (RTP/UDP) open, as well as allow outbound connectivity to the *.microsoftonline.com, *.lync.com and *.outlook.com domains. Further if your firewall blocks access to public SRV DNS records the Lync client will fail to connect. There are two ways to fix this; one is to create a public global DNS Cname record that points to the 0365 Lync service, this will work for both internal and external clients. The other alternative is to create an internal SRV record.

Administration and phone integration of Lync Online

Administration is done through the Lync Online Control Panel. You can control access to audio, video and IM file sharing on a per user basis. The limitation when Lync online doesn’t offer audio/video capabilities due to local laws in some countries is based on each users location, not the tenant location.

For those businesses that would like outbound calling to phones from Lync third party services are available that integrate with Lync Online. There’s no archiving of IM in Lync Online, this is available in Lync on premise and could be a deal breaker for some businesses that require it for compliance regulations.

Management of Lync Online is a simple affair, mostly because compared to Exchange and SharePoint, Lync doesn’t have the same feature parity with its on premise brother.

In the next and final part of this series we’ll look at SharePoint Online, what’s different compared to SharePoint on premise as well as a concluding look at Office 365 compared to Google Docs and cloud services in general.

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• Access Services in SharePoint Server 2010 (8)
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• Office 365 review – Part 8: SharePoint Online and conclusion (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 6: Exchange Online Hybrid, Archiving and IRM (2)

Hybrid email in Office 365

The integration in an O365 hybrid environment is remarkable, the following features work across mailboxes in the cloud and on premise: Free / Busy information is checked in real time for meeting scheduling, message tracking, multi mailbox searches and MailTips and Out of Office messages work. If you have delegates for a mailbox they need to be on the same side as the mailbox. If your in-house environment is Exchange 2003 you need to add the mailbox role to the on-premise Exchange 2010 server so that it can house the public folders that is used for Free/Busy calendar scheduling. In your planning for a hybrid environment take special care to determine the different namespaces that you need to setup and read through the instructions for setting up Exchange Federation and the organisation relationship with the Microsoft Federation gateway.

Mailbox moves to the cloud are initiated from on premise but O365 actually pulls the data from on premise to the cloud, this means the Mailbox Replication Service has to be running. When you go through the wizard to setup a move of a number of mailboxes you can pause it on the last screen and then start the data transfer at night, there’s also the option to use PowerShell to schedule mailbox moves. Mailbox moves in Exchange 2010 are online; meaning your Outlook can be connected to your mailbox while it’s being moved and you can keep using it, at the end of the move all you have to do is follow the prompt to restart Outlook.

Archiving & Journaling

The E set of plans includes a feature called an archive mailbox. In E3 and E4 this archive is unlimited in storage size and allows organisations to once and for all get rid of all those personal storage files (PST) files that litter many users hard drives. They’re the bane of many Exchange administrators and a nightmare for legal discovery and compliance reasons. You can only have one archive mailbox per user mailbox; administrators can configure policies to move items automatically after a set time.

O365 also offers single item recovery which allows administrators to recover emails or other objects up to 14 days after they’ve been deleted out of the mailbox deleted items folder. There’s an option to increase this to a longer time to provide a slightly different approach to being able to recover and track emails (as an alternative to legal hold), no longer than one year is recommended.

For those business that need to have a record of all communications between particular departments or individuals O365 offers intelligent journaling; this means that multiple emails with the same content are only stored once in the journaling store.

The bell should be tolling for those PST files now that Office 365 offers an unlimited online archive.

Information Rights Management

One feature that’s gaining traction in the enterprise is Information Rights Management (IRM) which allows the protection of Office and other documents while they’re “in flight”. Users can control whether emails can be forwarded or printed etc. as well as set expiration of documents after a certain amount of time. Exchange 2010 on premise offers the ability to use transport rules to apply IRM policies automatically, before this users had to apply IRM settings manually. O365 does NOT offer IRM policies in the cloud but will respect IRM encrypted communications. If you need the ability to apply normal transport rules and journal IRM messages there’s an option to upload your IRM encryption keys to O365.

In the next post we’ll examine Lync Online, which features it brings to the Office 365 experience as well as how IM, VOIP and web conferencing works along with necessary network configuration and how it’s administered.

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• Access Services in SharePoint Server 2010 (8)
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• Office 365 review – Part 8: SharePoint Online and conclusion (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 7: Lync Online (0)

If a business has an on premise Exchange infrastructure today and they want to move to O365 there are a few ways to go about it. The easiest one, suitable for smaller (up to 50 or so) environments is a simple cut over. On Friday its in-house mail, on Monday it’s all been migrated to the cloud. This requires changing the MX record for your email domain to point to O365.

Email migration overview

The next option is a staged (known as simple co-existence in early O365 documentation) migration which offers a unified Global Address List (GAL) but without sharing Free/Busy calendar information. The third option is a hybrid (formerly known as rich co-existence) deployment with sharing of all information between on premise and the cloud. This is also the only model that allows off boarding (moving a mailbox from the cloud back to on premise), all of them of course involve on boarding. Both hybrid and staged leave the MX record for your email domain pointing to your on premises Exchange server. In a hybrid environment you need an Exchange 2010 SP1 server on premise (running the Client Access Server and Hub transport server roles); the license for this is part of the O365 subscription.

Let the Office 365 deployment wizard help out with your email migration planning.

Considerations for Exchange Migrations

In both staged and hybrid Outlook Anywhere (formerly known as Outlook over HTTPS) needs to be enabled before the migration starts and a service account that has full access to everyone’s mailbox needs to be configured.

Migrating can be a fairly complex and involved operation and O365 helps by providing an online wizard that asks a series of questions and then produces a customized, step by step migration plan. Dynamic Distribution lists aren’t migrated to the cloud. One major factor that might impact your internet bandwidth is the fact that Offline Storage files (OST) for everyone’s Outlook has to be resynchronised once their mailbox has been moved to the cloud. Each mailbox is moved to the cloud during the migration so to save internet pipe make sure everyone cleans out old stuff and empties their deleted items before moving them to the cloud. Client side Outlook rules have to be exported and imported manually after the mailbox has been moved to the cloud.

Another thing to inventory in large environments is in-house applications that need outgoing SMTP functionality; for these you either need to leave an SMTP server on site or point these applications to FOPE for outgoing relay. This will work for a small number of apps but if there are a lot of them the manual work of configuring FOPE is going to outweigh the benefits and it’ll be better to maintain an SMTP server in-house.

Not only does the Deployment wizard ask the right questions, the resulting deployment plan is interactive and allows you to track your migration progress.

In the next part of this series we’ll look closer at the hybrid email co-existence scenario as well as how Exchange Online archiving works and what options there are for Information Rights Management.

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• Office 365 review – Part 8: SharePoint Online and conclusion (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 7: Lync Online (0)

Introduction

The email service behind Office 365 is built on Exchange Server 2010 which brings all the power of this messaging and collaboration powerhouse to users without requiring complex in-house infrastructure. As part of the service you get anti-spam and anti-malware courtesy of Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE); you can still continue to use an existing email filtering solution if you want to. Most features of Exchange 2010 that are available on-premise such as multi mailbox search and transport rules are also available in Office 365. Remote PowerShell can also be used but since Office 365 is a multi-tenant environment cmdlets that work forest wide aren’t available. Role Based Access Control (RBAC) is a very powerful feature for configuring what people can do in the environment based on their job role and it’s fully implemented in O365.

What’s in and what’s not in Exchange Online

Some differences between Exchange 2010 on premise and O365 are that the private or public computer choice in Outlook Web App (OWA) isn’t available. If you’re using the full Outlook client it has to be either 2007 or 2010, Outlook 2003 isn’t supported. You can’t segment your Global Address List (GAL) and there is no public folder support in O365 at all, there’s also no S/MIME support.

If you have a compliance server or appliance for checking outgoing mail you can configure O365 to direct all outgoing mail back through your on premise device before delivery. The support for smartphones is on par with on-premise installations including configuration of policies, the E plans also include Blackberry Enterprise server.

Email and calendar access on smartphones is a requirement for today’s Information Workers and the support in Office 365 is as thorough as it is in Exchange 2010.

Exchange Online Administration

Administration is done through the Exchange Control Panel (ECP), the Exchange Management Console (EMC, if you have an on premise Exchange 2010 server), or the Exchange Management Shell (EMS, PowerShell) with some tasks available in the Microsoft Online Service portal. Unlike BPOS you don’t need to have a mailbox account to be able to manage Exchange in O365.

Unless you’re familiar with Exchange 2010 the new ECP web based console is probably going to be a bit of a learning curve. A lot of O365 email features such as journaling, transport rules, distribution lists, user roles and auditing are configured here. ECP will only show O365 users that have mailboxes and you can tell the difference between Dirsynced accounts and native O365 accounts in their different icons. As anyone who’s ever used the Exchange 2010 console knows there’s a node to manage Exchange Online as well as on premise.

You can also reach the FOPE console from the ECP. If particular users are being investigated legally you can enable legal hold for their mailboxes and just like in Exchange 2010 on premise this means that no items can be deleted. The user won’t see any difference in using their mailbox, they can delete emails but in the background they’re not actually deleted; it’s optional to inform the user that their mailbox is under legal hold.

The Exchange Control panel is a great addition to Exchange 2010 and really makes managing communications in Office 365 easy.

Unified Messaging

Unified Messaging (UM) is an Exchange 2007/2010 feature that delivers incoming voicemail as a message in your inbox; if you want to use this in O365 it requires a Session Border Controller (SBC). This is the device that connects your on premise phone system to O365. There are some countries where local laws prevents Microsoft from offering the UM feature, notably India.

In the next part of this series we’ll look at how migration to Exchange Online is done and what needs to be considered in the planning for email co-existence.

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• Office 365 review – Part 8: SharePoint Online and conclusion (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 7: Lync Online (0)

There are three flavours of user authentication in O365: Microsoft Online credentials separate to on premise accounts, Directory Synced (Dirsync) accounts which requires Active Directory (AD) but which still keeps separate password policies or Rich Coexistence which needs AD; Dirsync and AD Federation Services 2.0 (ADFS).

Authentication and user accounts

The first flavour is eminently suited to small businesses; there’s no correlation between the on premises login and the login for cloud services. Note that the BPOS sign in client isn’t available for O365 so users simply enter their password in the individual applications that connect to O365 (Outlook, Lync etc.). This will also work very well for really small businesses that don’t have on premises AD as they’ll only need to maintain the O365 user accounts.

When you add a new user you can send them an email with their temporary password and other information.

Directory Synchronisation

As can probably be guessed the other two flavours are best suited for medium to large organisations. Dirsync requires one server onsite; its job is to copy the onsite AD user and group accounts to O365. There’s still no actual co-existence as such, it’s still two separate environments but one is a copy of the other. In this setup all account management has to be done on premise.

There are some limits to keep in mind, user accounts have to be entered in User Principal Name (UPN) format, i.e. name@domain.something and it can’t have a “.” just before the @ sign. Today there’s no support for multi forest federation (account forests and resource forests) but this will be addressed in the future. All subdomains in the forest are automatically federated. If your domain is in 2008 R2 mode you can’t use the AD recycle bin feature and the Dirsync application today is 32 bit only (a 64 bit version is coming). Dirsync also requires schema extensions for AD, something that wasn’t necessary in BPOS; it’s also a long term commitment as you can’t turn off Dirsync (although that’s also coming in the future). Dirsync comes with SQL Server Express (10 GB database size limit); if you have more than 50,000 users it’s recommended to implement full SQL server.

Dirsync uploads are limited to 10,000 objects, if you have more users and groups than that you have to open a support request to increase the limit. All synchronisations after the first one are incremental; there can be up to three hours delay in account changes on premise being reflected in O365. Hence, if there’s a time sensitive operation such as someone being fired and their account needs to be disabled you can initiate a sync manually. There’s an O365 pre migration tool that checks your AD for issues that can affect a synchronisation. In BPOS there was a filter file available that allowed you to control which parts of your directory was synced to the cloud, in O365 this capability has been removed as it was found to cause too many problems. Another operational issue to be aware of is that if a user is deleted in AD their Exchange online mailbox remains disconnected in the cloud for 30 days so it can be retrieved if necessary.

Single Sign On

It’s recommended that if you’re going through the work of setting up Dirsync you also take the next step and implement AD FS for true single sign on. This is best implemented with a Highly Available ADFS implementation requiring two ADFS servers in the backend as well as two ADFS proxy servers at the perimeter along with a Dirsync server. Trust is established between the directories; O365 relies on Microsoft’s Identity Lifecycle Manager (ILM) which will be upgraded to support Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) in the future. With ADFS you get true single sign on (SSO), users login to their computers and are automatically authenticated to Office 365 with little changes to your current enterprise account management processes.

Planning for how you’re going to manage authentication for Office 365 is critical and the Office 365 deployment planning wizard helps out.

In the next part of the series we’ll look at Exchange in Office 365, which features from Exchange on premise that are included and which are not as well as how Exchange Online is administered and how Unified Messaging can be integrated.

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• Office 365 review – Part 8: SharePoint Online and conclusion (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 7: Lync Online (0)

Please also read part 1 one which covers Office 365  pricing.

System Requirements

The requirement for client machines to use Office 365 are; Windows XP SP3, Vista SP2 or Windows 7; Mac OS is supported in the 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6 versions. If you’re using an existing version of Microsoft Office to interact with O365 it needs to be Office 2007 or 2010 on Windows, with Office for Mac version 2008 or 2011 supported. If you’re using Office for Mac 2008 make sure you have deployed the web services version of Entourage. There’s no included Office for Mac subscription.

Office Professional Plus

The included (in the E3 & E4 plan) Office Professional Plus subscription is managed on a per user basis; there are no activation keys to keep track of. When you assign a user a license their Office Professional Plus will check every 30 days that the license is still assigned to that user. Each user can install Office Professional Plus on up to five computers, making it easy to have Office 2010 on a work computer and a home computer. If a user’s license is unassigned Office will enter warning mode after the next check and continue to function as normal for 60 days after which it will revert to reduced functionality mode (effectively read only) until the license can be verified again.

Office Pro Plus can’t run as an App-V application, nor can you run it on a Terminal Server / Remote Desktop Server and it doesn’t include downgrade rights to earlier versions of Office. As this is a subscription service you should receive an automatic upgrade to the next version of Office (2013?) when it’s released. If you’ve got many client machines it’s recommended to use a network share or System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) to deploy the 750 MB installation.

Office 365 keeps track of the type of license assigned to each user and their service entitlements.

Desktop Setup Tool

Another tool that’ll be part of your O365 deployment is the Desktop Setup Tool, which is downloaded from the O365 web portal and which checks the local OS for missing updates and service pack level as well as configures Outlook, Lync and local Office installations. In small environments just run this on every client machine that’s going to be using O365; be aware that on a Windows XP and Office 2007 the download can be up to 450 MB (depending on how up to date it is), whereas on a current Windows 7 machine with Office 2010 the download is about 45 MB. The portal also lists all the required updates and configuration changes so that you can implement these across large numbers of client machines using SCCM or a third party patch and configuration tool. The Desktop Setup Tool requires local admin permissions and can’t connect through a proxy server that requires authentication.

Make sure you understand what changes the Desktop Setup Tool makes in your environment.

PowerShell

Whilst BPOS offers some PowerShell management capabilities O365 takes this to the next level and lets you manage users, license allocation, email / SharePoint internet domain management as well as administration role management. Currently you need to run PowerShell on Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 (Vista and XP support coming later) to manage O365 and you need to install the O365 snap-in. Currently only the core O365 features and Exchange Online can be managed via PowerShell; Lync and SharePoint support is coming. The PowerShell environment (just like the web portal) respects role based administration so that if you’re a license administrator you can only run license related cmdlets. There’s full support in O365 for the concept of “administering on behalf of” in both PowerShell and the web portal for cases where a partner manages O365 for clients, something that’s not quite as smooth in BPOS.

Administration of Office 365 is more granular than in BPOS.

In the next part of this series we’ll look at how authentication works in Office 365, how integration with Active Directory is achieved as well as the true nirvana of cloud services – Single Sign On.

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• Office 365 review – Part 8: SharePoint Online and conclusion (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 7: Lync Online (0)

There’s been a lot of noise around the beta and subsequent launch of Microsoft’s Office 365 recently. Touted by some as late coming competition to Google Docs and by others as the best productivity cloud service on the planet there’s no doubt that O365 (as I’ll call it in this article) is a great improvement over the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS ).

In this eight part article we’ll look at what O365 is; the different plans that are available and then we’ll dive into the technical details of deployment, interoperability and capabilities. Further we’ll examine the different services that are part of O365; Exchange Online, Lync Online and SharePoint Online.

The Microsoft Online Services portal combines the MS Online Administration Center and the MS Online Services Company Portal from BPOS into one web portal

Office 365 pricing

Let’s get the boring stuff out of the way first; Office 365 pricing, licensing and plans. O365 comes in three flavours: Small Business (the P or Professional plan), Enterprise (E plans, numbered 1 to 4) and Kiosk (K1 and K2). There’s also a plan for schools; Education (called K-12).

Let’s start with the Enterprise plans; these are all designed for Information Workers in medium to large corporations: E1 gives you Instant Messaging / Presence and Conferencing (Lync Online), Collaboration (SharePoint Online) and Email (Exchange Online) for $10 per month (all prices in USD). E2 adds Office Web Apps access at $16 per month. E3 gives you Excel, Access and Visio services in SharePoint, Voicemail and archiving of email as well as a subscription license to Office Pro Plus (Office 2010, running on the client machine) at $24 a month with E4 adding voice capabilities at $27 per month. All E plans give you a 25 GB mailbox.

Don’t be confused by Microsoft using the term “Office” for both the service and installed software. Office 365 is the service you pay for per month, per user, and Office Pro Plus is a version of Office 2010 that you install on end users machines that can save documents to SharePoint online.

For “kiosk” users, those who do non computer tasks in their jobs and only need occasional access to email and documents on shared computers there is K1 which gives web based access to Exchange email and SharePoint (read only) at $4 per month and then K2 which adds Office Web apps for document editing at $10 per month. Both K plans give you a 500 MB mailbox.

The P plan for small business (up to 50 users) gives you Instant Messaging / Presence and Conferencing (Lync Online), Collaboration (SharePoint Online as well as Office Web Apps) and Email (Exchange Online) for $6 per month along with a public facing simple website and a 25 GB mailbox.

Benefits of Office 365

The premise for O365 is simple: small, medium and large businesses spend a big proportion of their IT budget running Exchange (the world’s most popular email system) and SharePoint (the world’s most popular collaboration platform) on premise today. Whilst email and collaboration services are essential to many businesses today there’s a lot of work involved; hardware has to be maintained, software patched, and upgrades planned and executed. Many corporations are on older versions due to the cost and complexity involved in upgrading. By moving to a cloud based service all the maintenance of the infrastructure goes away and the business simply pays a monthly fee for the service, provided by Microsoft with a financially backed Service Level Agreement (SLA).

O365 is based on Microsoft’s latest releases which were all developed with multi-tenant, hosted environments in mind; Exchange 2010, SharePoint 2010 and Lync 2010. And this is the greatest strength of O365, it’s not new software, it’s mature, tried and tested production systems, used today by hundreds of millions of users around the world, just offered in a different format: as a pay as you go service in the cloud.

Office 365 is available in 21 languages and in 40 markets around the world

In the next part of this series we’ll look at how Office 365 is deployed, system requirements, what needs to be installed on the client, what Office Pro Plus is and how the Desktop Setup Tool is used as well as PowerShell integration.

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• Access Services in SharePoint Server 2010 (8)
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• Office 365 review – Part 8: SharePoint Online and conclusion (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 7: Lync Online (0)

Now that you have an overview of the Office 2010 KMS activation and MAK activation, I can address the question of whether KMS or MAK is the better option to activate Office 2010. Most of the arguments also apply for Windows Vista and Windows 7 activation.

Microsoft recommendations

You need at least 5 Office 2010 installations if you want to activate Office 2010 with KMS; however, Microsoft recommends using MAK activation if your network has fewer than 25 computers. If you have more than 50 Office 2010 machines, Microsoft recommends going for KMS.

Management

The biggest advantage of KMS is that the Office clients don’t have to be configured. Once your KMS host is running and activated, you usually won’t be bothered again with activation issues. By contrast, MAK requires that you ensure activation whenever you install Office 2010. However, you can also automate the MAK deployment process.

Limited number of MAK activations

Another downside of MAK activation is that whenever you have to reinstall a machine, the number of possible installations with the corresponding MAK key is reduced by one. Some organizations deploy new OS images when major updates are required, such as Windows service packs, or when a user has messed up his desktop. In such an environment KMS is probably the better option.

180 days

The biggest downside of KMS is that Office clients have to be activated again after 180 days. Thus, you always have to ensure that your KMS infrastructure is working properly. The main advantage of MAK is that once a machine is activated, it will stay activated as long as you don’t make major changes to the computer.

In the field computers

Using KMS to activate Office 2010 on the laptop computers of business travelers is at best problematic because the computer might not be able to reach the KMS host when the 180 days are over; Office 2010 will then start complaining. Since the user can continue working with Office, this might or might not be a big deal, depending on who is using the computer.

Working with MAK and KMS activation

Since there are situations where KMS activation is problematic, many organizations end up working with MAK and KMS. The downside of this option is that you have to deal with two different activation methods, which increases the complexity of your infrastructure. Because MAK activation is the more flexible option, it might make sense in some environments not to use KMS activation.

By now you have probably realized that there is no clear answer to the question of whether KMS or MAK  is the better to activate Office 2010. I certainly didn’t cover all possible scenarios here. Thus, before making a decision, you have to evaluate your own environment. Bottom line: If you have a big network where new machines are added frequently, KMS is usually the better option. In a small static network, MAK is often the preferable solution.

• Access Services in SharePoint Server 2010 (8)
• Office 365 review – Part 8: SharePoint Online and conclusion (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 7: Lync Online (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 6: Exchange Online Hybrid, Archiving and IRM (2)
• Office 365 review – Part 5: Migrating to Exchange Online (0)

In the last post of this series, I discussed Office 2010 KMS activation. Today, I will have a look at the second option that Microsoft provides for volume activation—the Office 2010 MAK activation. Like in my previous post, I will only list the most important facts you have to know.

Office 2010 MAK activation key facts

• MAK stands for Multiple Activation Key. This doesn’t stop people from saying “MAK key.”
• A MAK key can be used to activate multiple Office 2010 installations, contrary to an ordinary product key that can only be used to activate one installation. The number of possible activations depends on the number of Office licenses you have purchased.
• Unlike with KMS activation, every machine has to be activated only once. You have to activate Office 2010 again only when significant hardware changes (for instance, the hard drive) occur.
• You can get MAK keys at the Volume Licensing Service Center.
• The MAK key has to be deployed to the Office 2010 installation. There are five ways to do this— two before you deploy Office 2010 and three after installation. Before Office 2010 deployment: Office Customization Tool (OCT): OCT is part of the Office 2010 setup program and can be started with setup.exe /admin. During the procedure you can enter the product key (MAK). Config.xml file: If you deploy Office 2010 through a network installation, you can use config.xml to specify the MAK key. After Office 2010 deployment: Volume Activation Management Tool (VAMT) 2.0: VAMT is a free Microsoft tool that allows you to deploy MAK keys (among other things). Backstage view: The Backstage view is the new menu in Office 2010 that you can access by clicking “File” in an Office application. You can find product activation under “Help.” ospp.vbs script: The ospp.vbs script can be found in the Office 2010 installation folder (%installdir%\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14). The script can be used to configure Office 2010.
• There are two different ways to activate Office 2010 with VAMT: MAK independent activation and MAK proxy activation. With MAK independent activation, each computer will contact Microsoft’s activation service, whereas with MAK proxy activation only the computer where VAMT is installed needs access to the Internet. You can choose the activation method in the VAMT user interface.
• Additional reading: Configure and deploy volume activation of Office 2010 Plan for volume activation of Office 2010

• Access Services in SharePoint Server 2010 (8)
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• Office 365 review – Part 7: Lync Online (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 6: Exchange Online Hybrid, Archiving and IRM (2)
• Office 365 review – Part 5: Migrating to Exchange Online (0)

Many admins who still haven’t upgraded to Vista or Windows 7 will first have to deal with volume activation when they deploy Office 2010. Microsoft’s documentation about Office 2010 volume activation is quite comprehensive. Today, I will summarize the key facts about Office 2010 KMS activation. In my next post, I will cover MAK activation, and in the last post of this series I will compare Office 2010 KMS and MAK activation.

Office 2010 KMS activation key facts

• KMS, which stands for Key Management Service Host, is software for Windows that works as a proxy for Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Office 2010 activation.
• Office 2010 volume editions are delivered with the KMS client, which doesn’t have to be installed. KMS clients will find the KMS host automatically through DNS.
• When an end user starts Office 2010 (no admin privileges required), the KMS client will contact the KMS host, which will then activate Office 2010 automatically. This means you don’t have to enter a product key on the client side.
• Windows 7 (volume editions) and Windows Server 2008 R2 are delivered with the KMS host that can activate Office 2010.
• The KMS host for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 can’t be used for Office 2010 activation.
• Make sure that a DNS server that supports SRV records is available and that you have sufficient privileges. More information about KMS DNS configuration can be found here.
• KMS 1.1 can be downloaded and installed on Windows Server 2003 SP1 or later: 32-bit or 64-bit. After you install KMS 1.1, you have to update to KMS 1.2. You need at least Windows Server 2003 SP2 for that.
• For all Windows editions, you will need the KMS host license files for Office 2010, which are included in the Office 2010 KMS Host License Pack.
• Make sure your firewall allows outbound connections for the server where the KMS host runs. The KMS host will contact Microsoft’s activation service.
• You also need the Office 2010 KMS host product key, which you can get at the Volume Licensing Service Center if you purchased Office 2010 licenses. You will also need the Office 2010 activation ID “bfe7a195-4f8f-4f0b-a622-cf13c7d16864.”
• The KMS host has to be activated with these commands: slmgr.vbs /ipk <Office 2010 KMS host key> slmgr.vbs /ato <Office 2010 activation ID>
• You will need at least 5 Office 2010 installations before client activation starts (not 25, as for Windows Vista and Windows 7).
• After installation, Office 2010 will work normally without activation for a grace period of 25 days. After this, users will see notification dialogs whenever they start an Office application. After the 30^th day, the title bar will turn red, reminding you that activation has failed. There is no Reduced Functionality Mode like with the retail editions of Office 2010. Thus users can still continue with their work.
• You can rearm Office 2010 5 times to extend this grace period to 180 days.
• Every KMS-activated Office 2010 has to renew its activation after 180 days.
• To verify which Office 2010 clients have been activated, you can use Microsoft’s free Volume Activation Management Tool (VAMT).
• Additional reading: Configure and deploy volume activation of Office 2010 Plan for volume activation of Office 2010

In my next post, I will cover Office 2010 MAK activation.

• Access Services in SharePoint Server 2010 (8)
• Office 365 review – Part 8: SharePoint Online and conclusion (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 7: Lync Online (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 6: Exchange Online Hybrid, Archiving and IRM (2)
• Office 365 review – Part 5: Migrating to Exchange Online (0)

This article explains how you can rearm Office 2010 and for what you need this feature.

Office 2010 is certainly the best Office suite out there. However, compared to Office 2007 it has one major drawback: Like Vista and Windows 7, Office 2010 has to be activated. However, Office 2010 behaves a little different than Windows if it is not activated. Rearming Office 2010, that is resetting the grace period, works similar as rearming Windows.

Office 2010 Reduced Functionality Mode

Retail versions of Office 2010 will only run in Reduced Functionality Mode (RFM) after the grace period of 30 days has been exceeded. In RFM Office, documents can only be viewed but not modified.

Volume editions of Office 2010 don’t have an RFM. However, Office will start nagging users with messages after 25 days. You can just imagine how many helpdesk calls it will provoke if you don’t ensure that Office 2010 has been activated during this grace period.

Activating Office 2010

You can use the latest version of the Key Management Host (KMS) or activate Office 2010 with VAMT. Either way shouldn’t be doable within 25 days after the installation.

However, it might be difficult to activate Office 2010 during the grace period if you deploy a pre-installed Office with an OS image. The grace period begins immediately after you installed Office 2010 on your master PC. If you have to perform other configurations before you create the master image, then it is quite possible that 25 days is too short. You also have to take into account that it might take some time until Office finds a KMS host or until you activate it manually.

This is where Office 2010 rearm comes in. This features allows you reset the grace timer to 30 days grace. If you rearm Office right before you create the OS master image, you can be sure that you have the full 25 days before users will bothered with Office activation notifications or before the retail edition goes into Reduced Functionality Mode after 30 days.

How to rearm Office 2010

You will find some complicated instructions on the Web of how to rearm Office 2010. Most of these articles were written before Office 2010 was released. There are also third party tools that allow you to rearm Office 2010. However, I recommend following Microsoft’s instructions. This topic is too sensitive to rely on third party tools.

To rearm Office 2010, you only have to run ospprearm.exe in %installdir%\%Program Files%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform from an elevated command prompt. "%Program Files%" has to be replaced with %Program Files (x86)% if you installed Office 2010 32-bit on Windows 64-bit.

Rearm Office 2010 – ospprearm.exe

Since you can rearm up to 5 times, you can run Office 2010 for 180 days (30 days + 5 x 30 days) without activating it, if you rearm it every time after the 30 days grace period has been reached.

Another effect of rearming Office 2010 is that the client machine ID (CMID) is reset. The KMS host uses the CMID to identify unique clients. This allows the KMS host to count Office 2010 correctly.

Rearming Office 2010 Trial

Office 2010 rearm could also be useful if you installed Office 2010 Trial. The Office 2010 Professional Plus Trial comes with a special activation code that will allow you to test Office 2010 for 60 days. There are reports on the web indicating that you can also rearm the trial version of Office 2010. Office 2010 Trial indeed comes with ospprearm.exe. However I doubt that rearming will work after you used the trial activation code because rearming makes only sense with an Office installation that hasn’t been activated.

Office 2010 Activation Wizard

You can run Office 2010 Trial without activating it but every time you launch the Office 2010 Activation Wizard will pop up. If you cancel this dialog, you can continue using the Office application. I suppose this will only work for 30 days. If you have experience with rearming Office 2010 Trial, please let me know.

• Access Services in SharePoint Server 2010 (8)
• Office 365 review – Part 8: SharePoint Online and conclusion (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 7: Lync Online (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 6: Exchange Online Hybrid, Archiving and IRM (2)
• Office 365 review – Part 5: Migrating to Exchange Online (0)

I came to the conclusion that a fairly objective review of such a complex product isn’t possible. There are simply too many new features. And choosing among the many improvements will always be highly subjective. Even though you may be interested to know what I like about Office 2010, such information is of little value when it comes to the question about whether deploying Office 2010 in your organization makes sense because I am probably not a typical end user.

Another approach would be to list all new features and functions. This would allow you to find out which, if any, new features would justify an upgrade. If 4sysops were a blog for Office users, this would indeed be an option. I tried something comparable with all new Windows 7 features.

However, knowing about all new Office 2010 features would only be helpful for YOU to decide whether an upgrade is worthwhile. But can you also make this decision for the users in your organization? I think in most companies IT pros play a crucial role in the decision process about software upgrades. I suppose in many organizations the Windows Vista evaluation went more or less like this (of course, not in yours):

Admin 1: So shall we deploy Vista?

Admin 2: I have read that Vista is a complete failure.

Admin 3: I installed it yesterday on my PC at home. So far I didn’t find a single new feature I really need. UAC starts getting on my nerves. Even worse is that there are no Vista drivers for my old webcam. I downgraded to XP.

Admin 4: Admin 5 told me that he has heard that our ERP software is not supported on Vista. By the way, he can’t come to this meeting because he left early today.

Admin 6: InfoWorld wrote that XP is much faster than Vista. Our PCs wouldn’t be powerful enough for this bloated OS. By the way, InfoWorld launched a “save XP petition”.

Admin 7: So we all agree that Vista is only a mess?

Admin 1: Okay, I’ll tell the boss that we had better stick with what we know.

And this is how the decision process went about Windows 7 in the same organization:

Admin 1: So shall we deploy Windows 7?

Admin 2: Everyone says that Windows 7 is what Vista should have been.

Admin 3: My new webcam works well with Windows 7. Windows 7 is supposed to be very secure.

Admin 4: Admin 5 went home early today, but he said we will need new ERP software anyway because the vendor went bankrupt.

Admin 6: Our old PCs are too slow for Windows 7, but this is normal for a new operating system. We should buy new PCs.

Admin 7: So we all agree that Windows 7 rocks?

Admin 1: Great. Then I’ll tell the boss that we need new ERP software, Windows 7 licenses, and new PCs because this will reduce our costs.

You don’t want to know how this organization will evaluate Office 2010. The question is if IT pros should decide at all whether software upgrades that affect the work of end users make sense or not. In my view it is impossible to anticipate the implications of an Office upgrade. Even if you run extensive tests and inform yourself about every new feature, you still don’t have clue about the effects on the work of end users. That said, theory can’t help you here. What you need is empirical data.

My recommendation is to put together a group of end users who try Office 2010 for some time. It can’t hurt to include some of those users who refuse to learn new software simply because they will retire in five years anyway. Don’t forget to ensure that they are trained first.

After some months you only have to ask your test subjects one question: Do you want to downgrade? If even the I-retire-in-five-years-anyway group doesn’t allow you to touch their PCs, you know what you have to do.

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• Office 365 review – Part 6: Exchange Online Hybrid, Archiving and IRM (2)
• Office 365 review – Part 5: Migrating to Exchange Online (0)

In the last article I looked at the installation of the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Office 2010. In this part I’ll cover the important considerations in choosing which platform to go with. This principally comes down to the advantages and disadvantages of Office 2010 64-bit.

Office 2010 64-bit advantages

Apart from the general ability to address more physical memory, the main advantages of using the 64-bit version of Office 2010 will be experienced by power Office users, who, for example, might use Excel spreadsheets which reference massive amounts of data, or who regularly work with Office files greater than 2GB in size. Microsoft Project also benefits, with the ability to handle large, multiple subprojects contained with the main project.

64-bit machines also have a security advantage via mandatory hardware-based DEP (Data Execution Prevention) for native 64-bit applications. With the 64-bit version, this protection is now available to Office.

Office 2010 64-bit disadvantages

The increased protection and scalability of Office 2010 64-bit unfortunately comes at a cost.

Many applications interface directly with Office, either via ActiveX controls (eg: Internet Explorer) or third-party add-ins (eg: Adobe Acrobat or internally-developed business apps). Because these external interfaces have never had to be made available in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavours, some applications won’t be able to natively communicate with the 64-bit version of Office 2010 until ISVs and in-house developers have had the time and opportunity to update their solutions accordingly. Office 2010 64-bit will install some 32-bit ActiveX controls so that the 32-bit version of Internet Explorer can interface correctly, but even then some functionality like “Edit in Datasheet” will only work in Office 2010 32-bit.

Microsoft Access database files which have had the source code removed cannot be accessed cross-platform. For example, an .MDE file developed with a 32-bit version of Office cannot be used on Office 2010 64-bit. Likewise, an .MDE file developed on Office 2010 64-bit cannot be used on a 32-bit version of Office.

Differences in “bitness” (a registry key which records the application version) can cause issues in OLE scenarios. When a registered application on an OLE server is different to the installed version, or if a 32-bit object is embedded into a 64-bit application, compatibility issues may be encountered. Additionally, because there is a lack of Intel MMX technology support on 64-bit processors, 64-bit GDI (Graphics Device Interface) may experience some differences in performance compared to the 32-bit version.

Finally, some VBA code written for 32-bit applications will not automatically function seamlessly on a 64-bit platform, and will need to be updated accordingly, as will custom applications which make MAPI calls to Microsoft Outlook.

These various considerations may mean that, in spite of the benefits it provides, Office 2010 64-bit is not a viable option for many customers. This is why, from the position of maximising compatibility within customers’ environments, Microsoft is recommending the 32-bit version regardless of the bitness of the underlying operating system.

Office 2010 32-bit recommended

By default, the Office 2010 media will install the 32-bit version. There is a setup.exe in the x64 folder on the installation media which will install the 64-bit version.

Microsoft’s approach is unsurprising. In spite of the increased popularity of 64-bit operating systems, true 64-bit applications still remain the domain of power users – users who exclusively use a small range of applications in a way which is far more advanced compared to the usage of the vast majority of everyday users. This is also true in other areas which rely heavily on computing, such as digital art and CAD.

Personally, while I’m a heavy Office user there is no way that I could ever push it hard enough to justify installing the 64-bit version, but all my Windows 7 machines are 64-bit and I’m looking forward to seeing how much better the 32-bit version of Office 2010 runs. However, this is not to say that 64-bit applications won’t become the norm over time, and Microsoft have done a good job in continuing to push 64-bit computing across all aspects of the IT industry.

Also read the first part of this article: The installation of the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Office 2010

• Access Services in SharePoint Server 2010 (8)
• Office 365 review – Part 8: SharePoint Online and conclusion (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 7: Lync Online (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 6: Exchange Online Hybrid, Archiving and IRM (2)
• Office 365 review – Part 5: Migrating to Exchange Online (0)

With the ever-increasing availability of high-storage RAM, 64-bit processors and the systems to power them, all at prices within the reach of every consumer and SOE, 64-bit computing is fast becoming the normal state of play.

According to the Microsoft 2010 Engineering blog, customers who have access to download the product media (such as customers with a VL agreement with Software Assurance, and MSDN/TechNet subscribers) will have a choice about which version they would like to download (both are available). Customers who buy the physical media will receive both versions. Software Assurance customers will have access to the media from April 27^th.

Installing Office 2010 64-bit on Windows 7 64-bit

Although Windows XP came in a 64-bit flavour, Windows Vista was the first Microsoft OS to make it especially accessible and feasible for everyday computing. There was comprehensive driver support (eventually) and very few compatibility or stability issues. Windows 7 64-bit has proven to be very popular in both consumer and business environments, and Microsoft has been working hard to ensure that it’s full product suite accommodates both platforms.

If you are running a 64-bit version of Windows deciding on which version to install will depend completely on how you use Microsoft Office. Obviously only the 32-bit version can be installed on a 32-bit version of Windows, but there should not be the automatic assumption that if you’re running a 64-bit version of Windows, that the 64-bit version of Office is the logical choice.

Office 2010 64-bit is supported on 64-bit editions of Windows Vista SP1, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2. It is not supported on Windows XP x64. Office 2010 server products such as SharePoint Server, SharePoint Foundation and Project Server are supported on the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Installing Office 2010 32-bit on Windows 7 64-bit

The 32-bit version of Office will run fine on 64-bit Windows, as do most 32-bit applications thanks to the x86 emulator WOW64 which runs on all 64-bit versions of the operating system. Because the operating system can reference the 64-bit memory address space and can therefore make use of physical RAM above 4GB, the 32-bit version of Office will automatically receive a performance boost when running on 64-bit Windows, due to reduced memory swapping, disk read/writes and disk thrashing in a multi-application environment. This is the scenario which Microsoft envisages will be the most appropriate for the vast majority of users.

Installing Office 2010 64-bit and 32-bit on the same computer

The two versions of Office 2010 cannot exist side-by-side on the same physical system. This is true whether a single Office product is installed or the full suite. For example, if the Office installer finds Outlook 2010 x86 installed, it won’t allow you to install Word 2010 x64, so the 32-bit version would have to be removed fully before the 64-bit version could be installed.

Additionally, if you have any of the following 32-bit applications installed, an installation of Office 2010 64-bit will be blocked:

• Microsoft Excel 2010 Viewer
• Access database engine of Microsoft Access 2010
• Microsoft Office 2010 (Click-to-run)
• Compatibility Pack for Office 2007

Although a reason for this has not yet been fully articulated, it makes sense that the supporting Office infrastructure and shared programs must all be on the same platform. It is also possible that the different versions might be usable on the same physical system if one of them has been virtualized, using Microsoft Application Virtualization for example. The latest build, version 4.6, supports 64-bit apps and 64-bit operating systems.

Office 2010 Upgrade Paths

If you’re already running Office 2007, you can upgrade to Office 2010 32-bit on either a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows. Office 2007 cannot be upgraded from 32-bit to Office 2010 64-bit (this is a limitation which is consistent across all Microsoft products). There is no information currently available as to whether it is possible to upgrade from Office 2003 to Office 2010.

• Access Services in SharePoint Server 2010 (8)
• Office 365 review – Part 8: SharePoint Online and conclusion (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 7: Lync Online (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 6: Exchange Online Hybrid, Archiving and IRM (2)
• Office 365 review – Part 5: Migrating to Exchange Online (0)

The good thing is that you can get Office cheaper if you only buy the product key without the DVD. I have been criticizing Microsoft’s practice of selling software in colorful boxes as if the internet didn’t exist. It appears Microsoft has finally arrived in the internet age. Let’s just see when the boxes become history. What I find remarkable is how big the price difference is.

It will be interesting to see if Microsoft can repeat the success of Windows 7 with Office 2010. After the Vista marketing debacle many bloggers believed that this is the beginning of the end of Windows. It appears this prophecy won’t come true any time soon considering that Microsoft has already sold 90 million copies. But I suspect even more people are out there who think that MS Office is obsolete because the future belongs to cloud-based Office applications such as Google Docs. I seriously doubt it simply because a web browser will never offer the same capabilities as a full-blown operating system. If this ever happens, a browser will become as complex as Windows. The other question is whether Microsoft-critical Europe won’t move increasingly to Open Office considering those high prices.

You probably have heard that if you buy Office 2007 now you can upgrade to Office 2010 for free. However, just in case you have no use for a colorful Office 2010 box, you can save money if you just wait. Office 2010 will RTM in April, businesses will get it on May 12, and consumers will have to wait until June.

Below are the Office 2010 prices for Europe (in euros) and for the US (in US dollars). The first price is for Office and the second price is for Office plus colorful box. It appears there are no product key card versions for the academic version and the single editions. I wasn’t able to find the US prices for the individual products. Please let me know if you know more.

• Office Home and Student 2010 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote): 109 euros, 139 euros | 119 dollars, 149 dollars
• Office Home and Business 2010 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook): 249 euros, 379 euros | 199 dollars, 279 dollars
• Office Professional 2010 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, Access): 499 euros, 699 euros | 349 dollars, 499 dollars
• Office Professional Academic 2010: 109 euros | 99 dollars
• Word 2010: 189 euros
• Excel 2010: 189 euros
• PowerPoint 2010: 189 euros
• OneNote 2010: 109 euros
• Outlook 2010: 189 euros
• Publisher 2010: 189 euros
• Access 2010: 189 euros
• Academic version for each of the above individual products: 59 euros

• Access Services in SharePoint Server 2010 (8)
• Office 365 review – Part 8: SharePoint Online and conclusion (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 7: Lync Online (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 6: Exchange Online Hybrid, Archiving and IRM (2)
• Office 365 review – Part 5: Migrating to Exchange Online (0)

I also recommend having a look at this presentation from Chris Capossela, Senior Vice President of the Office products. Just in case you prefer a written introduction, I recommend Paul Thurrott’s comprehensive preview. And if you want it a little shorter you can check out Mark Wilson’s Office 2010 feature summary.

If you want to try the Office 2010 technical preview you can register now at the Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview Waitlist Registration. However, not everyone will be invited to test the pre-release. As far as I know there is no concrete release data for a public beta yet.

Office Web Applications is probably the most interesting enhancement. But it seems we have to wait until August. However, you’ll find a presentation about it below.

Microsoft Office 2010 Introduction

See What’s New in Microsoft Office 2010

Microsoft Word 2010

See What’s New in Microsoft Word 2010

Microsoft Excel 2010

See What’s New in Microsoft Excel 2010

Microsoft PowerPoint 2010

See What’s New in Microsoft PowerPoint 2010

Microsoft Outlook 2010

See What’s New in Microsoft Outlook 2010

Microsoft OneNote 2010

See What’s New in Microsoft OneNote 2010

Microsoft Publisher 2010

See What’s New in Microsoft Publisher 2010

Microsoft Access 2010

See What’s New in Microsoft Access 2010

Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 2010

See What’s New in Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 2010 (Formerly Microsoft Off…

Microsoft Web Applications 2010

See What’s New in Microsoft Web Applications 2010

Microsoft Mobile 2010

See What’s New in Microsoft Office Mobile 2010

• Access Services in SharePoint Server 2010 (8)
• Office 365 review – Part 8: SharePoint Online and conclusion (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 7: Lync Online (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 6: Exchange Online Hybrid, Archiving and IRM (2)
• Office 365 review – Part 5: Migrating to Exchange Online (0)

Service Pack 3 for Office 2003 has several new features. The main reason that speaks for SP3 is that it improves security. You probably heard that SP3 blocks some older file formats because of security reasons. There was a lot of stir on new sites about this issue. Word files older than Word 6.0 cannot be opened anymore with Word 2003 SP3. The same applies to files older than PowerPoint 97. Excel 4.0 charts will be blocked as well. More detailed information and instructions on how to re-enable all file types after installing Office 2003 SP3 can be found in this KB article.

Most comments I’ve read about this issue were somewhat critical. I think, it is just another example showing that security has top priority for Microsoft now. It even comes before backward compatibility. In my view, this is quite an amazing strategy shift.

The other noteworthy feature is that this SP is supposed to improve compatibility between Office 2003, Office 2007, Vista and Internet Explorer 7. More information can be found in this InfoWeek article.

I wonder what happens if you install Service Pack 3 on a machine that has Office 2003 and Office 2007 installed. We do this on some of our computers to allow users to decide which version they want to work with. Note that this solution is not for users who want to switch back and forth between the different versions because there is always a certain delay. This KB article has more. Please let me know if you tried deploying SP3 for Office 2003 on computers where Office 2007 is already installed.

• Access Services in SharePoint Server 2010 (8)
• Office 365 review – Part 8: SharePoint Online and conclusion (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 7: Lync Online (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 6: Exchange Online Hybrid, Archiving and IRM (2)
• Office 365 review – Part 5: Migrating to Exchange Online (0)

There are a couple of related downloads:

• The 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 1 (SP1)
• Microsoft Office Language Pack 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1)
• Microsoft Office Project 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1)
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1)
• Microsoft Office Visio 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1)
• The 2007 Microsoft Office Servers Service Pack 1 (SP1)
• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 with Service Pack 1

If you didn’t deploy Office 2007 yet, you might also be interested in this post at WinBeta. It explains how to slipstream SP1. This way you won’t need an extra step if you want to install Office 2007 together with this service pack.

• Access Services in SharePoint Server 2010 (8)
• Office 365 review – Part 8: SharePoint Online and conclusion (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 7: Lync Online (0)
• Office 365 review – Part 6: Exchange Online Hybrid, Archiving and IRM (2)
• Office 365 review – Part 5: Migrating to Exchange Online (0)