Office 2010 - Thanks Microsoft!

PowerPoint
The Animation Painter button is WONDERFUL, and the Insert Screenshot button is equally superb. On balance, a lot of good new features.
1. Save as WMV: Check.
2. Find and Replace: No go.
3. Consistency and Professionalism: No go.
4. OK, I asked for more templates. The new templates are a HELL of a lot better than previous versions, so there is some improvement on this point. Between that and the Color Schemes introduced in 2007, we're getting there.
5. Navigation Menu Wizard and navigation buttons – Nothing. That's a real black eye, considering how many good shapes there are.
6. A better slide sorter – Still nothing. The ability to run the slideshow in one monitor and then edit in the other window is nice, but not a real improvement.
7. More stock photos, less clip art in the Gallery, both online and installed. Clip art plain SUCKS.
8. Still no color picker, but I suppose I could save custom color schemes as part of a theme. OK, I could live with that.
9. VBA – Doth mine eyes deceive me?! The "Record Macro" button is gone?!?

So how'd we do? I'll say we went 2 for 10, or 20%. PowerPoint had a pretty poor showing. D+ on my wishes, but the overall "how much better is it" is a solid B.

Microsoft Access
Access has many ways that it now integrates with SharePoint. Can't really fault Microsoft for wanting to do that, but I'll still wish for a more platform agnostic ASP.

1. Data Access Pages: Yeah, sort of. You can publish a database to a SharePoint server running Access Services, so that's moving in the right direction.
2. Parameter Query Wizard? No go.
3. Macro Wizard: HOME RUN! They really nailed it on this one! The ability to create steps and procedures in macros in Access 2010 is really fantastic.
4. RegEx, they get a pass on this one. If it's not in Office, it's not in Access.
5. Better and more updated form/report templates, and a greater flexibility to customize those templates: It's getting there.

I'd say on the Microsoft Access front, they went 3 for 5 at worst, and 4 for 5 at best. I'll give it a B.

Microsoft Word
I'm alone in the world on my belief Word needs slimming, apparently. No sense condemning Microsoft for catering to the majority.
1. Regular expressions, like Access, gets a pass.
2. Improved macro recording: I still can't use the mouse to select text, or click anywhere. Yippee.
3. Version control is going backward, not forward. Still no true "versions" feature, outside of SharePoint.
4. The Track Changes feature is better when the document is downloaded from SharePoint, and then version controlled using its native functionality. That's par for the course, I suppose.
5. Mail Merge: It HAS gotten better; now, my merge fields are on a pull-down menu, so I don't need to have that window open. Nice.

Hardly the finest hour for Word, but it's going in the right direction. I'll give it a B.

Outlook
Nice to see the Ribbon. The Actions buttons are really slick.
1. Hotmail? Same problem.
2. Haven't seen a Premium Live option.
3. Nothing on forms.
4. This is coming in October 2011, so we'll call it happy.
5. Duplicate Contacts – still nothing.
1 for 5 on the Outlook list, so that's an F. Upgrade it to a B- for the other features they did add.

Excel
The overall look and feel of Excel 2010 is just right, and a few of the new features THRILL me.
1. Still no Custom List Wizard.
2. PivotTables – WOO HOO! The Slicer has addressed this problem in SPADES! Nice work!
3. Show Report Filter Pages still does what it used to.
4. I may have to write my requested functions, see how I do. Bummer. But, again, as I mentioned, this is because I'm in the minority.
5. Still no love for Conditional Formatting in PivotTables. Strike two.

I'll give them an B+ on this one, just because the Slicer is SO COOL, and some of the other stuff I'm asking for is understandably esoteric. The ability to truly copy Report Filter pages is the next big step I see needing to happen, though.

Overall
On balance, it looks like Office 2010 is moving in the right direction. I don't know if the more esoteric features I'm asking for (like Regular Expressions) are worth pursuing. If I can write my own custom functions, I'm good there. But some of the other functionality, I feel like Microsoft needs to acknowledge that we live in a multimedia world, and we should respond accordingly.