When you click File on the menu in a Microsoft Office 2010 application, such as Excel, Word, Outlook or PowerPoint, you will be greeted with the new Backstage view. The view is consistent across these applications which helps greatly – Outlook has different key due to the difference in its functional purpose.

Actually, Backstage view is more of a consolidation of existing items than something completely new, and yet it is another nice productivity feature that has received little fanfare thus far.

The first thing you may notice in Backstage view is the thumbnail showing the document area of the current document which offers a useful indication and reminder of the document you are about to affect.

Beneath the thumbnail preview are a number of key property fields for the document, many of which can also be edited, showing document size, title, tags, categories, authors, last printed date and time (handy), creation date and time and last modified information.

On the left hand side are three buttons leading to Permissions, Sharing, and Version control.

Permissions allows you to see the current document permissions and protect the workbook (or unprotect it) with settings including Mark as Final (which makes it read-only), Encrypt with Password, Workbook and Sheet protection (decide what other people can change), Restrict Permissions by Individual, and Add a Digital Signature.

Prepare for Sharing tells you important information that may also be shared with this document (such as Author) and also advises any accessibility issues. You can also check compatibility with earlier versions of the program with this option as well as inspect the document.

Versions tells you about previous versions of the document, allows you delete all draft versions of the document, or recover draft versions of the document.

The navigation bar on the far left hand side allows access to typically expected features such as saving, opening, closing, listing recent documents, create a new document, print the document, and share the document.

The Print option has also been extended to include a print preview which should save a good amount of paper, and many settings can be changed  whilst viewing the print preview without resorting to page setup options.