— IMPORTANT UPDATE (9:30pm GMT): In order to get the invite, the uploaded document (see below) must be a Word 2007 document with a file extension of .docx ! —
Microsoft has announced that it will ship an online version of its Office 2010 Productivity Suite at one point next year. The product will be similar to applications such as Google Docs – allowing users to create and edit MS Office documents.
Get Access to Office 2010 Web Apps in 2 minutes!
Even though it has been reported that Microsoft no longer accepts signups for private testers, there is a simple hack that allows everybody to try out the brand new web suite. Just follow these directions and you’re ready to go in less than 2 minutes:
1. Visit Microsoft’s web storage application http://skydrive.live.com/.
2. Log in using your Windows Live ID (or register yourself if you don’t have on yet).
3. Click on “Add files” and upload any Microsoft Word document from your computer (it can easily be an empty document).
4. You will notice that the text “Join our preview program to create, edit, view, and share Office documents online! Learn more” will appear. Click on it, accept the licence terms and you’re ready to go!
Currently, it is only possible to create and edit Excel workbooks and Powerpoint presentations – the Web version of Microsoft Word is yet to be launched.
NB! If you liked the hack, please let us know your about your experience with Office Web Apps through Comments.
Excel 2010 Online
Thanks for the tip! About to try it out now but first impression is pretty good. Seems that re functionality there’s still a long way to go (excel doesn’t support charts, etc.)
hm, do you have to be a new skydrive user to get this to work? i did everything as said in the article but didn’t get the invite
Works for me. Not a lot of functionality yet but the interface looks nice and it seems to be pretty fast as well. Everything seemed to work even in Chrome.
WOW awesome stuff. I wonder when will M$ discover this bug tho ……
hmm is it still possible to signup???
The Web Apps link didn’t appear for me – it looks like Microsoft has corrected the bug.