Giving Feedback on Publisher 2010

The Office 2010 Technical Preview invitations have been sent out now, and we're looking forward to getting as much feedback as possible. We have a few tools to get feedback in the technical preview, and we want to make sure you know how to access them.

For the majority of our users, those who are not receiving invitations to the technical preview, you still have an opportunity to give us feedback.  There is lots of information coming out over the next few weeks, and lots of places are disseminating this info, so everyone will have a chance to "see" the beta even if you aren't downloading the bits to play with.  We invite you to post comments to this blog, to either this topic or any other, for any thoughts you have on what you are seeing in the media, on our blog, or on any other Office sites that talk about what's new and cool in Office 2010.  See the end of this post for several links to more info on Office 2010.

For our users who have received the very limited number of technical preview invitations that were available, the first and most important way to give feedback is to submit it on Connect. Those who were invited were given a personalized link to get the bits. If you have any feedback for us (good or bad) you can submit it by logging back into the Connect site and choosing 'Feedback'. The site will guide you through with step-by-step directions.

One of the other ways to interact with Connect is through the newsgroups. In the newsgroups you can meet other users of the technical preview, and share your experiences. The newsgroups work much like web forums, and they're a great way to find solutions if you're having trouble with the new software.

Outside of the Connect website, there are also a few other ways to make sure we hear your feedback. The Send a Smile tool is one of the quickest and easiest ways to let us know how you're feeling. When you install the technical preview, we put a yellow smiley face and a red frown in your system tray. When something happens in Office, you can click on whichever face represents your interaction. You'll be offered a dialog where you can include a screenshot, your contact information, and a comment about the experience. You can include as much or as little information as you'd like.  Most information on Send a Smile can be found on today's post to the main Office 2010 blog.

There are a few other, easy ways you can help us make a great version of Office. When you install Office, please leave the Customer Experience Improvement Program enabled. Also, in the unfortunate event that the software crashes, please choose to send the error report -- this information really helps us fix problems.  This is true whether you are running the beta or a released version of Publisher.

Thanks you to those of you participating in the Technical Preview program, and continued thanks to all our users who continue to provide us with great information on how Publisher does and does not work well for them. We really appreciate any and all feedback you provide to us.

Here are a few interesting links with more useful information:

· An introduction to Office 2010: https://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/

· Office 2010, the movie: https://www.office2010themovie.com/

· More information about Publisher: https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/publisher/default.aspx

· The main Office 2010 blog: The Office 2010 Engineering blog

Michelle Lisse, on behalf of the whole Publisher team 

About the contributor: Michelle Lisse is a Program Manager and has worked on the Publisher team for about 11 months, after previously completing an internship with the team. She really likes the color pink, and is easily distracted by shiny objects. Like Publisher 2010.