Download Excel 2010 Beta today [Office 2010 Updates]

Finally the public beta of Office 2010 is out. Go to Office Beta site and download the installation today.

Make sure you select the “custom” installation option and choose to “keep the old versions”, otherwise the beta will upgrade your office installation. (Beta installation expires by October 2010)

Here is a brief list of new features in Excel 2010, most of them are pretty exciting.

• You can make sparklines and microcharts in Excel 2010
• Pivot tables are lot nicer and cooler to use – There is a free PowerPivot add-in from MS to help you make dashboard like pivot-tables instantly.
• You can make your own ribbons with the buttons you want, I am guessing this will be a huge productivity booster (compared to Excel 2007).
• The Office button is replaced with a “File” menu that opens the backstage, where you can do a ton of different file related things. Very clean and very easy to learn.
• Slicers feature using which you can easily filter pivot report data (or data from other connections)
• Conditional format improvements – like new incell charts, custom icons etc.
• Several usability enhancements to Excel Tables, Data Filters, Pivot Tables etc.
• While pasting data, you can preview various options (including paste-special options) and decide what to do.
• Overall, the interface feels lot lighter, smoother and faster – just like windows 7.

Go ahead and give it a try and let us know what you think of Excel 2010.