By Oliver Garnham
December 3, 2009

Microsoft Office 2010 will be released in June next year, according to several rumours online which appear to have been confirmed by Microsoft to tech site Betanews.

The suite includes updates to all of Microsoft’s major productivity apps – including Word 2010, Excel 2010, Outlook 2010, PowerPoint 2010, OneNote 2010, Access 2010, Publisher 2010, InfoPath 2010 – and will be available in 32bit and 64 bit versions.

A free Office 2010 beta is already available from Microsoft’s site. The company released a test version of Office Professional Plus 2010 last month, and has yet to reveal how long the free trial will last for.

The updated Office will be available in two separate formats: a traditional PC-based edition and a completely web-based version.

Office Web Apps includes lightweight versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint and will be made available to millions free of charge.
People who download the Office 2010 beta can try out the public preview of Office Web Apps by using a Windows Live account to create, edit, store and retrieve documents online.

Office Web Apps require Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) or later on Windows; Firefox 3.5 or later on Windows, Mac and Linux; or Safari 4.0 or later on the Mac.