The New Web Apps
By signing up for a Windows Live account, users of the new Office 2010 will also get access to scaled down web-enabled versions of the Office programs called Web Apps. Web Apps will be available for Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote (OneNote was not quite ready as this was written but beta versions of the other programs are available).
For example, Excel has a version with two Ribbon tabs; you can create your spreadsheet directly online in a web browser or upload a file and work from there (see Figure 5).
Figure 5 Excel’s web app lets you work directly online.
When you open a web app file on your desktop, which is an option under the File tab, you actually save your changes back to the online file so that various users with permission can all work on the same document.
You can also save a copy of the web app document to continue to work your file(s) locally.