Microsoft Office 2010 is the definitive word processing software application for use in home or business and is a continuation of a suite of products going back to almost the beginning of the home computer era. New features have been added over the years, and the look and feel of the product has evolved with the times, but the software suite continues a tradition of combining functionality with ease-of-use for today’s marketplace.

The Microsoft Era

Microsoft Office 2010 is a suite of office-related products bundled together and integrated into the Microsoft Windows Operating System. Microsoft Office was announced by Bill Gates in 1988 and released for the first time in 1990. Since then it has set the gold standard for word processing, spreadsheets, flat-file databases and much more. Microsoft Office now has over one billion users and is a mainstay in virtually every office, home, and school. Microsoft Excel was created as Office’s spreadsheet application, whereas Word was created as its word processor. With the inclusion of other products like Access (databases), Powerpoint (slideshows) and many others over the years, Microsoft has continued to improve how we do business.

Windows XP

With the advent of the venerable Windows XP Operating System, Microsoft released Microsoft Office 2010 and with it a host of changes, improvements, and updates. Included in the updates are the ability to launch in Safe Mode, allowing it to start when it might otherwise fail as well as Smart Tag Technology that allowed the software to monitor for typing errors among other things. It also began to introduce handwriting technology and was the first version to incorporate Product Activation to prevent software piracy.

End of Life

Office 2010 went end-of-life on October 13th 2015, but Microsoft has extended support until October 13th 2020. This will allow users, businesses, and schools to begin transitioning to newer, improved, supported versions of both Microsoft Windows and Office. At the end of its life it will have been in service for over 18 years and was used by over a billion users. Office 2010 would prove to be a simple to use yet robust suit of office software that provides many users their first foray into the use of business applications. As more and more products, including newer versions of Microsoft Office move to hosted solutions, cloud based offerings, or Software-as-a-Service, Microsoft Office 2010 might be the last in a long line of stand-alone business applications.