There are a number of reasons why you should upgrade your software to its latest edition. An upgrade assures that you can benefit from new functions and features previously unavailable. Such is the case with Microsoft Office 2010. Since this highly popular productivity software is now offered in 64-bit version, asides from offering a better security, you can expect an improvement in its performance and stability. You can learn more of some of the new features below.

• Ribbon interface and Office button enhanced

If you have used Microsoft Office 2007, you know that the Ribbon interface has made the suite more intuitive to use. In the new version, the Ribbon and the Office button can be found as well on Outlook and OneNote. As for its functions, they have been significantly improved. You now have control over what items appear on its tabs. You can add tabs of your own and even put your favourite commands. Ultimately, the new Ribbon is highly customisable and will make working on documents faster and simpler.

• mprovement in Microsoft Outlook

If you use Microsoft Outlook as your main e-mail program, you’d be glad to know it is now even easier to manage your conversations and messages. When viewing the messages in Conversation view, you can simply right-click on the conversation title and select the actions that you wish to perform.

Another great function is the Quick Steps, where you can create shortcuts of tasks and summon them only with a single click. To illustrate, let’s say you want to forward a message to ABC. Usually you’ll have to first click "Forward message" and then type the e-mail address of ABC in the "To" box. With the shortcut, once you made one, you can easily click the "To ABC" link and the forwarded message will appear with the e-mail address already entered.

You can also use the new "Ignore" button to get rid of conversation threads that are of no interest to you. Asides from deleting current messages in the Inbox that belong to that conversation thread, all future messages pertaining to the thread will also be deleted.

• Multimedia files in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint

Microsoft has included much more sophisticated and advanced image-editing tools in its Office 2010 suite. Apart from the usual editing feature, you can now use the built-in image editor to apply artistic effects, such as those you find in third-party applications like Adobe Photoshop. The best thing about it is everything can be done within the Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps. Upon applying the effect, there’s a thumbnail to preview what the effect will look like.

The SmartArt feature has also been improved to include more designs.

• Simpler drag-and-drop in Word

There’s a new and simpler drag-and-drop navigation pane in Word 2010. Think of it as a document map, where you can view the headers, footers, graphics and other sections of your document. You can rearrange the order easily by performing a drag-and-drop within the navigation pane.

• Sparklines and slicers features for Excel

The two most impressive features in Excel are sparklines and slicers. The former are tiny editable charts that you can fit into a cell. The latter are objects that you can use to filter the data in pivot tables. You can then move them around or resize them on the screen. Changing the data in the pivot table will automatically update the slicer as well.

• Simultaneous editing

As the name suggests, it is now possible to edit a single document simultaneously. To illustrate, you can leave one document open locally and open the same document to work on it from a different computer. The status bar will indicate that there is somebody else currently editing the same document and notify you where the changes are being made. If you have to go offline, the changes made to the document will be automatically synchronized once you come back online.

These are just some of the new features of Microsoft Office 2010. If you are currently using an older version of Office, you can be sure that the new 2010 version offers greater functionalities and functions that warrant an upgrade.