Today is a real milestone for people who use Windows Live. Starting today, a select group of SkyDrive customers will be invited to try out a technical preview of the Office Web Apps which are online companions to Excel, Word and PowerPoint, available for free via Windows Live SkyDrive. Over time, as the final version is released, the Office Web Apps will become available to all 500 million+ users of Hotmail, Messenger and other Windows Live services.
While the tech preview doesn’t have all the cool features that will be available in the final offering, it does show off the exciting potential of extending your Office experience to the Web. You can easily access and work with your Office documents from virtually anywhere with an Internet connection.
When those of you participating in the Tech Preview upload or create a new document, you’ll be able to view them much like you do today using the familiar Office toolbars and user interface. The Office Web Apps provide a high-quality experience in terms of both features and fidelity. . And it will be very easy to share your documents in password-protected folders and give permission to whoever you want to have access – just like with any other SkyDrive files.
Personally, I’m excited that, in the final release of the Office Web Apps, I’ll be able to access Office documents from virtually any PC and then be able to share them, show them, edit them, and collaborate on them with people around the globe. I do a lot of presentations so it will be particularly helpful for giving presentations right from Internet Explorer (or Firefox or Safari). Because I’m kind of an Excel geek, I’ll be able to share my spreadsheets in all their glory – with conditional formatting, charts, and more. In the final release, I will also be able to share notes from OneNote in real-time with others.
Over the coming months here are some of things you can expect to be able to do in later versions of the Office Web Apps:
Why are we making Office Web Apps available as part of Windows Live?
We all use a lot of different services online – e-mail, social networks, photo sites, video sites, and so on. In many cases, we use more than one service for very similar purposes, using Facebook, MySpace , StudiVZ, Mixi or many others for social networking; Hotmail, Yahoo!, or Gmail for e-mail; Flickr, SkyDrive, FotoLog, or Photobucket for sharing photos.
That said, there are certain things we really just want one of. I really just want one place for storing contact info, one personal calendar I can share with my family, one primary mail service that also allows me to check all of my e-mail accounts, one place to get updates from all of my social networks, and one place to store, share, and manage my massive and ever-growing collection of photos, documents, music, and videos.
I can get all of that at Windows Live. And now, with the addition of Office Web Apps, I’ll soon be able to go to Windows Live to create, edit, share, and collaborate on Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, OneNote digital notebooks, and Excel spreadsheets –all online regardless of which PC I’m using and whether that PC has Office on it.
I’m super excited about today’s release and the future of Office Web Apps. Over time, we’ll add the OneNote Web App to this experience as well as expand both the functionality and the number of people who get to try out the services.
Today’s a great start on terrific things to come.
If you weren’t one of the folks that received an invitation today, sign up here and we will let you know when you can try it out too. Note that if you are already a part of the technical preview, this link will generate an error.
Stay tuned.
Brian Hall
Windows Live team blog archive 
اهلا بكم واتمنا ان اكون معكم بكل جديد اخوكم أ . محمد أسعد
The prior 5 comments are : 4 strange advertising things and one arabic statement that works for people who read arabic. I wanted to say as a comment to "I really just want one place for storing contact info, one personal calendar I can share with my family, one primary mail service that also allows me to check all of my e-mail accounts, one place to get updates from all of my social networks, and one place to store, share, and manage my massive and ever-growing collection of photos, documents, music, and videos. " I say that yes, it is nice to have just one place for your stuff, but given the inevitable downtime, crashes, unavailability, etc.it is really good to have your stuff in more than one place, especially if it is business & tax related. Another observation: As the list of things that will absolutely have to work, so that I can work, it becomes more andmore likely that one of those things that have to work, will not work. Simply put: – In the olden days – Paper, pencil, calculator & a brain that\’s turned on were absolute necessities.In the newer days – Electricity must be on, the phone or cable service must be onthe computer must be on, the software must load correctly, the internet connection must be on, the firewall and virussoftware must be on and up to datethe license to do or see something must be there (wherever that is), the computer networks must be on and datacenters where my data is must be onplus my brain must be on tooThe more that must be on, the more likely that one of the things won\’t be.
Tenho Nome graças a DEUS, estou logado Windows Live ID. (Pergunta) PORQUE A MICROSOFT NÃO TEM UM CANAL DE COMUNICAÇÃO DIRETO COM, USUARIOS, PESSOAS QUE ESTÃO INSCRITAS WINDOWS LIVE ID, OU HOTMAIL, A FINAL DE CONTAS SOMOS ALEM DE TUDO CLIENTES DA MICROSOFT, POIS ADQUIRIMOS SOFTWARES,SERÁ QUE ESTOU EXIGINDO MUITO ? AH MEU NOME É JOÃO(VIDE MINHA ID)Praia Grande -São Paulo, Brasil( TERRA ADORADA )
Desculpas, por favor não sei falar (linguage) em [ English ], tenho muito orgulho de falar Portugues(PT) Brasil, sempre tive que trabalhar(iniciei no trabalho com 12 anos de idade,trabalhava de dia e estudava anoite), para poder sustentar, inicialmente minha MÃE, depois minha GRANDE MULHER, e dois MARAVINHOSOS filhos, minha vitoria é ver que minha filha graças a DEUS, tem nivel superior, é meu filho esta junto de DEUS !!!
WOW THAT IS LONG!
bnj,je ne retrouve plus mon mot de passe sur " skydrive " j\’ai 2 comptes,1 sur hotmail,l\’autre skydrive,il me disent si je veux récupéré mon passe,mettre mon adresse,mais si je met mon adresse,mon passe ira sur mon adresse de skydrive,donc impossible comment faire? si quelqu\’un peut m\’orienter,ce serais sympa,merci a tous