Slide Show: A Peek At Office Live Beta

Office Live Beta just came online and Test Center engineers are pleasantly surprised. While an obvious response to Google Docs, Office Live is different enough that it stands on its own and it's sure going to be a hit in the SOHO market. With Office Live, Microsoft is capitalizing on the huge strengths of its Office suite by offering a remote storage solution to store Office files and share them with other Live users.

Live is tightly integrated with Office 2007 tools. The integration is so seamless that it's hard to tell when files stored in "My Documents" on a local PC begins and files stored in the Live workspace end. Few clicks to accept security and file integration and voila, a user is fully integrated.

What's more, Live comes with an Office add-in that launches Office XP, 2003 and 2007 applications remotely. In Office 2007, a new option appears in the file menu to save files directly into Live.

Office Live Beta provides a set of predefined workspace templates to organize work. Workspace templates cover such diverse topics like Projects, Household, Job Search and School. The workspaces also include Office template files to accelerate productivity. Users can create new files in the workspaces as well.

Steps in creating and saving files are fully automated. Clicking on a saved file in Live automatically launches preview mode. On the upper left side icons appear to edit and work on the file. Users can add comments, create and save multiple versions, share files and save them with multiple names.

The Save As feature saves template files locally first before users can save them into Live. The process can confuse novice users because they have to be aware that the file needs to reside on a local machine before it is uploaded into Office Live.

Microsoft is in the process of consolidating the log on process for its Hotmail, Office Live and other Web assets. However, Windows Live ID functionality hasn't been ported to features inside its tools. With Live, for instance, users need to retype their Hotmail e-mail addresses to share files with other users.