The Ribbon: The very well designed “ribbon” that replaced the traditional drop down menus and dialog boxes, and caused quite a stir from Office 2007, has finally been introduced in all office programs. Previously, only a handful of programs completely implemented the ribbon (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Access). Finally, MS has introduced it into Visio, Outlook, and Project. More importantly, we now have control over what is in the ribbon. This should definitely bring a smile to users who originally despised the concept behind it. Here’s what it looks like:

The Office Button: Again in Office 2007, MS removed the traditional drop down “file” menu and replaced it with the notoriously round and shiny Office Button. Not a bad move, as it stuck to the new UI style of the suite, but it still seemed to be too much too fast for a lot of users. Realizing this, MS moved to a more tabular style button that now says “File” on it for those who hate change. Inside, you’ll find a lot of the same actions, such as Save, Save As, New, Open, etc. But you will also find a plethora of new ones, and a sense that this section is more than just a menu for one program but more of a “backdoor” connecting the entire Office Suite together.
…This leads me to my next point.

Collaboration and Interoperability: Microsoft has streamlined its overall communication between the Office programs. The File menu now includes all sorts of collaboration techniques and ways to “share” your documents. Now built into the suite is a live collaboration feature for documents that are very similar to those  given to Google Docs users. On top of that, you have options to publish Word documents directly to blogs, attach to emails, and change file types.
Outlook: Previously, Outlook only had the ribbon in its individual windows, but not its main window (i.e. On the New Message window, but not on the Inbox). In addition to the fact that Outlook now has the ribbon all over it, it has added a few features that have been long since overdue. One of the more notable features is the collapsible email strings. That’s right kiddies, no more long lists of emails with the irritating “RE:” attached to the subject. Now Outlook groups emails with the same subject heading into collapsible lists, to make email organization a little easier (Reminiscent of your Gmail box or the future Mozilla Raindrop perhaps?).
It seems as though Microsoft has fine tuned the live previews of attached documents and emails, and has also given us a customizable “quick list” where common, day to day, actions can be placed for all your emailing pleasures in a quick access location.
Photo/Video/Graphics Editing: Introduced into Word and PowerPoint is much more versatile picture editing functionality. You now have much more common editing options for photos, videos, and all graphics alike including filter effects similar to Photo-shop effects with thumbnail previews of the filter, 3D effects and border editing, and futuristic effects like shadows, lighting, reflections, etc.

Right Click: It seems as though Microsoft wanted to put much more usability right at your fingertips (literally). A user is greeted with a delightful array of options upon right clicking in all the applications, and they vary accordingly. Microsoft even expanded on a simple task such as copy and paste, where now you have much more versatility in pasting options. For example pasting a spreadsheet from Excel into Word, you now can past directly as an image, text, or the actual spreadsheet.

There are most likely a variety of other features I have missed, mainly because I simply don’t use or have a reason to use other programs and features in real world situations, but hopefully I have hit on most of what you are interested in. It seems as though Microsoft is actually heading in the right direction with their Office Suites. If you haven’t already, I suggest getting your hands on a copy. Give it a try and let us know what you think. It’s possible I may have missed a big feature that should be mentioned; maybe you hate Office all together. Let us know.