Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus+SP1

Office 2010's Backstage View

Office 2007 offered a well-designed equivalent of the old File Menu, with clear options for saving, printing, and sharing files. The only problem with this menu was that many users never figured out how to access it, because Microsoft decided to be really clever by removing the word "File" from the top-line menu and replacing it with a circular "pearl" decorated with the Office logo. Microsoft didn't highlight that the pearl wasn't merely an ornament, but was actually the same interface feature that every other productivity program on earth labels "File."

Office 2010 nixes the pearl in favor of the File tab and introduces a "Backstage" view that puts all the standard File menu functions and more on a spacious menu, complete with print preview. I spend a lot of time printing, managing, and sharing documents, and the new Backstage view makes me wonder how I managed without it for so many years.