My name is Derek and I recently joined the beta to have greater access to my documents when I am away from home. I work, study, blog and collaborate in the creation of music, stories and art with partners across the world I have been looking for a way to share our documents without losing the ability to edit them using the standard office tool set. Your invitation to beta couldn't have come at a better time. In addition to my own personal use I plan on using Office Workspace to teach my daughter about Office and networking and also as a brainstorming idea for business and play.

So far I have found the interface easy to use and understand, and I hope to make good use  of your product in the future.

 

The headaches associated with tracking multiple file versions while writing technical reports can often be extreme and difficult to remedy. Throw in the many transfers between different work locations and the problems are compounded. Accidentally deleting the wrong file from a flash drive can negate days worth of work and this has happened to me in the past so, when I received the MS email about Office Live Workspace beta, it sounded too good to be true!

I found most aspects of the service to be intuitive and easy to grasp. And hey, the interface even looks good. Over the past week I managed to finish a 25 page draft which saw repeated migration between 3 machines (work and home desktops and laptop while on the road). All edits were chronologically listed at every log in to keep things straight and having my many required source files (Excel and Word) stored on the same space really made my work efficient. Sit down, log in and the tools to do the job are set out right in front of me.

My report is now being peer reviewed, revisions will be carried out on my Office Live Workspace and the "real time" editing feature sounds just too cool not to try! This will be a novel experience and may greatly reduce the length of time put in constructing and rereading email trains.

Overall more than satisfied and can't wait to see what's next...
 

 

Yea, im about to turn 16, and im always doing papers for high school and i cant access my workspace everywhere because i have to sign into my account and my school is so uptight that it blocked access to any email except the schools email so in short i cant use it at school.....

I'm Alberto and I've been using Office Live Workspace as a tool for school work mainly.. I found it really useful and fast cause it allows to share with who you want whenever you need & also you always have what you need just a click away..

I believe that the final version of the Workspace will be even better and I m glad to have signed up for it..

I absolutely love Workspaces. It's not quite as simple and elegant as Google Docs & Spreadsheets in some ways, but it's much more powerful, I think. I've started moving away from using the local My Documents folder altogether. I use Workspaces mainly for myself, to access my work from anywhere, but occasionally use it to share with others.

 

It's one of the best examples of Microsoft taking advantage of the breadth of their influence to make a great web service. Software + Services and all, haha.

I volunteer IT support for a small charity that has 6 different locations and about 10 employees.  Each location has a minimum computer technology of Windows XP, Office 2007, Internet Explorer 7, and a high-speed internet connection.  All users will soon have Windows Live IDs.  Most of the computers are old, donated machines that don't have much storage or processing power.  Integration of server technology is currently out of the picture due to cost and IT support issues.  I am trying to implement some functionality using Office Live Workspaces to see how much can be achieved before investing in the servers, software, hosting, etc., that a larger company could justify.

One problem the charity has is getting their business forms to remain standardized and then distributing them to the users at these different sites.  I established a shared Forms workspace for that purpose.  By accessing the workspace through the client Office 2007 application, standardization and distribution were easy.  There is still some user confusion about where a document resides, saving copies of forms templates vs. filled-out forms, and storing the forms on the local computer vs in "the cloud."  However, user satisfaction seems to be increasing.

I would like to explore implementing some basic business processes and workflows in Live Workspace.  For example, notifying the right users when a new transaction occures, including approval steps, etc.

So far, Live Workspace has been easy to use to design a basic forms distribution process.

I have been using the site primarily for scheduling purposes for my company.  Everyone that uses it is on the road 2 or 3 days a week and this allows each of to check and see what's happening without having to download, ck e-mail etc.  Very useful so far.  We will be trying to expand our use in the future.

 

Great Product!  No major issues and ease of use.

I am a college student and Office Live is awesome for keeping my files on for easy access from any public computer with internet access. Being and English major, I really look forward to putting together a portfolio of my written works there and using its share functions to collaborate with others on works. Thanks for making it available.

I'm a high school student, I've been using Office Live because I was tired of carrying 3 flash drives around at all times.  But then I found out how useful it is for writting stories, so I switched from Google Docs to Office Live, literally, overnight.  I have three stories stored on Office Live, and I've started colaborating with a few other writers using share...  Who knows, I may publish one of my stories one day...

I have been using google for long time also, but was finding that the integration wth it's products on windows wasn't brilliant. I had tried Windows Live before back when it was MSN and found it had no integration and all seemed a bit dated. But when I recently switched to using it recently they had clearly put a lot of attention to it and it was much improved. When I saw Office Live and all the features I wanted I knew it would prove very useful in finishing my IT coursework. I knew that I could use it at home and access and edit work at school no worrying about versions as it was just one version updated everywhere. When I was using it my school had put so many locks on accessing MSN services that it was difficult to use, but it just about managed to work. No I have used it, I want to do more projects with Word, Excel and Powerpoint. I just love using all the functions and hope that it keeps improving before we see a final release.

Hi,

Basically i find that Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta comes in really handy for numerous things!  I give a lot of PC advice on security to friends and family and if i forget my usb stick no problem.  I upload what docs i want to use elsewhere, whether it be holiday price list done in Excel, or a price list for a family member for the latest laptops whatever.  Also i write a lot of advice using Microsoft word 2007 and i try at least to give clear concise advice of how to use their Vista PC's.  I use Microsoft OneNote a lot and i'm always taking snippets off the Internet for Windows Vista tips and tricks etc.  All round a great tool and i like and use the Office live add in and the "save as pdf or xps" plug in!  Very handy indeed, if i'm unsure that a recipient does not have any office suite on their computer i just create a document, save as pdf done!  Then i just upload them and access them anywhere, and it gets me out of a jam!!!  

I am a teacher for adults in computer apllications.  I started trying out Live Workspace for my course MS Word.

I intend to give my pupils webaccess to the exercices. Would be nice if I can use Live Workspaces for it.

 

I would love to use this software, but every time I try to log in from home I get a message that the service is not available.  Google's version is much more user friendly.

Hi Rickstir,

You may want to post in one of the other folders.  Perhaps someone can help you work out the problem with logging in from home.