Office Web Apps on Skydrive updated–New Features in the cloud

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Several months ago I wrote about the new Office Web Apps that were made available on both SharePoint 2010 as well as the Windows Live Skydrive property which in the case of Skydrive are FREE to all users who have a Live ID.  Office Web Apps on Skydrive has just received a feature update which is worth mentioning.

For an overview on Office Web Apps and many of the features in the web-based versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, feel free to check out the post here.  The post covering the Cloud Computing Firestarter Slide decks where I have a full presentation on Office Web Apps is located here.

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This suite of applications was launched in 2010 and the development team has been busy on a number of fronts.  First off, post the initial release of Office Web Apps in North America, the Office Web Apps team went through a global rollout where you can now use Office Web Apps in over 190 countries.  Next, the team went back to the development of the apps and have started to add features to this suite.  So what’s been added?  Well first off, AutoSum in Excel Web App. 

Other new features in Excel Web app include the ability to insert new sheets, as well as the ability to rename and delete these sheets.  Another great new feature is a Formula Assistance pop-up which works much like the native Formula tool in a locally installed copy of Excel to help you pick the right kind of formula.  Nice.

What else?  Well, now that we’ve got more number crunching features on Excel Web app to add power to this suite, we’ve added the ability to make things look a bit prettier too when putting things into PowerPoint Web App.  PowerPoint Web app now has 45 different design themes to use as the template for your presentation.  Just choose the “Change Theme” button and pick your favorite!

The Office Web Apps team did a blog post showing these features off, feel free to take a look at them here.

Enjoy!