Microsoft next week will release the first widely available beta of InfoPath, a new application for organizing and sharing data that will be included in Office 11, but analysts say the learning curve will be steep. The Redmond, Wash.-based company is positioning the product, in part, as a tool to let data migrate from one application in Office to another through Extensible Markup Language (XML). With InfoPath, a sales manager could create a form where team members submit numerical data from Excel and notes from Word. The two applications would work harmoniously on the same page and allow for automatic updates.
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