Watch the video for an overview of Office Web Apps.

Microsoft likely created this free version of Office to compete directly with GoogleDocs which is also a popular, free, cloud-based office suite. The advantages of Office Web Apps include:

• High quality templates, clip art, and chart tools that are displayed just as they would be in Office 2010 software
• Integrates with current Office 2010 software, so you can create documents on your desktop and upload them to Web Apps
• You can share your documents with others and they can edit them simultaneously
• PowerPoint slide shows and Excel tables and charts can be embedded into blogs and websites

The main disadvantage of Web Apps is that they only offer a limited version of the tools offered in the actual software programs. You will notice that a lot of features and commands are missing from the program’s Ribbon in the Web App version. However, you can still accomplish a lot if you do not need to get too fancy or complicated with documents.

PowerPoint Web App Ribbon

Getting Started

In order to use Office Web Apps, you will need to sign up for a free Windows Live account, since your Office documents will be stored in Windows Live SkyDrive. Every time you need to create, upload or access your documents in Web Apps you will need to sign in to your Windows Live account.

• Go to Windows Live to get started with creating an account.
• Go to Using Office Web Apps in Windows Live SkyDrive for directions on how to start using Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote with Web Apps.

Not quite ready? Click through the Web App slide show below to learn even more about what you can do with Office Web Apps.

Finally, if you are new to Microsoft Office and would like to learn how to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint, you can visit our Office 2010 tutorials to get started.

Our free and popular Microsoft Office tutorials are now available with the new  Word 2010, Excel 2010 and PowerPoint 2010 versions. Whether you want to update your workplace skills or simply learn the software for personal use, our simple-to-follow, thorough tutorials can help. With step-by-step instructions, vivid screenshots, engaging interactives and easy-to-follow videos, they make learning the software easy and fun.

Check out a sample of a few of our video tutorials below:

Check Out Our New Office 2010 Tutorials

Check Out Our New Office 2010 Tutorials

Check Out Our New Office 2010 Tutorials

More Free Office 2010 Tutorials Coming Soon!

• Our instuctor-led Online Classes for Word 2010, Excel 2010 and PowerPoint 2010 will be available by the end of February.
• Access 2010 will be available by the end of March.
• We will also create tutorials for Outlook 2010 and Publisher 2010.

Visit our Office 2010 subject page to get started.

Excel worksheets don’t always look great on paper because they’re not designed to fit on a page—they’re designed to be as long and wide as you need them to be. This is great for editing and viewing  on screen, but it does mean that your data might not be a natural fit to a standard sheet of paper.

However, this doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to make an Excel worksheet look good on paper.  In fact, it’s not even that hard. Here are some tips for printing in Excel:

• Preview your worksheet before you print. You can see exactly how your worksheet will look on the printed page by using the Print Preview feature. In terms of saving you time and paper, the preview is your most valuable printing tool. You can even make certain changes within the Print Preview, like clicking on and dragging the print margins to make them wider or narrower. Check the preview as you change printing and layout options to make sure your spreadsheet looks the way you want.

• Decide what you’re going to print. If you only need to look at a certain segment of your data, don’t bother printing your whole workbook—just print that data. You can print just the worksheet you’re viewing by going to the print pane and selecting Print Active Sheets, or you can select Print Entire Workbook to print the whole file. You can also print a small segment of your data by selecting the data, then choosing Print Selection in the print options.



• Maximize your space. You’re limited by the dimensions of the paper you’re printing on, but there are ways to make the most of that space. Try changing the page orientation. The default orientation is good for data with more rows than columns, but if your worksheet is wider than it is tall, change the page orientation to landscape. Still need more room? You can change the width of the margins on the edge of your paper. The smaller they are, the more room there is for your data. Finally, if your worksheet isn’t huge, try playing with the Custom Scaling Options to fit all your rows, columns, or even your whole worksheet on one page of paper.
• Use Print Titles. Once your Excel sheet is more than one page long, understanding what you’re looking at can get tricky.  The Print Titles command lets you include a title row or column on every page of your spreadsheet. The columns or rows you select will show up on every page of your printout, which makes reading your data a lot easier.
• Use Page Breaks. If your worksheet takes up more than one sheet of paper, consider using page breaks to decide exactly which data should be on which page. When you insert a page break in your worksheet, everything below the break is moved to a different page than everything above. This is useful, as it lets you break up your data exactly the way you want.

Following these  tips will go a long way to making your printed worksheets easier to read. For more printing tips and more detailed instructions for the tips listed above, review our  Excel 2010 Printing lesson.

Along with the standard suite changes like the new File Tab, Customizable Ribbon and Backstage View, Excel offers some new features for data visualization, formatting and analysis.

Watch the video to learn more.

What’s New in Microsoft Excel 2010

Sparklines and Slicers are probably the two coolest features in Excel 2010, since they make it a lot easier to quickly visualize your data. The ribbon improvements will also be appreciated by anyone who didn’t like the Excel 2007 interface. In addition, there are subtle improvements throughout the program to help increase your productivity.

There have been some major additions to Excel 2010 that are targeted toward businesses. One feature is called PowerPivot, and it is a separate, free download that can bring together data from many different sources and let you analyze it within Excel. You’ll also be able to easily share Excel spreadsheets (or any other type of Microsoft Office document) with your coworkers using SharePoint Server 2010, which is a web-based service provided by Microsoft.

Stay tuned as our series on the new suite continues with the launch of Office 2010 on May 12.

In its simplest form, Excel can be used to create basic formulas—add two numbers together, for example. The formula =2+3 adds the numbers 2 and 3. The cell in which the formula is defined shows the answer, 5.

But what if you work with a lot of numbers, or with numbers that change frequently? You would instead write a formula that includes cell references. Type a number in one cell (cell A1), type a second number in a different cell (cell A2) and then write a formula that adds cell A1 and cell A2. It doesn’t matter what numbers appear in these cells, or how frequently they change. The formula will adjust the answer depending on whichever numbers are fed into it.

Excel comes equipped with a number of pre-defined formulas, called functions, that simply the formula-writing process. Functions are very common formulas, like adding a range of numbers. Why write a formula if Excel has a function that does the same thing?

Say, for example, that you want to find the average of 12 numbers written in 12 different cells. You could write the following formula:

=sum(B1+B2+B3+B4+B5+B6+B7+B8+B9+B10+B11+b12)/12

or you could create a cell range to include these 12 cells and then select the Average function. Quick. Simple. And you get the same answer.

Excel has many different functions. The best way to become familiar with them is to display the Insert Function dialog box. You can type a description of what you want the function to do, or you could browse through a list of functions in any of twelve categories. Find the function you want and select it.

Now, of course, if you work with numbers a lot and are pretty good at writing mathematical equations, then you will want to write more sophisticated formulas that meet your special needs. This is not a problem in Excel. If you can say what you want to do in a sentence then you can write a formula to do it in Excel.

Check out Creating Simple Formulas in Excel and Creating Complex Formulas in Excel for more.