Josh at Windows Connected says he heard from Microsoft that it’s now OK to write about Office 12 Beta 1 client applications.
I checked in with Frank Shaw at Waggener-Edstrom, Microsoft’s PR agency, and he confirms that it’s true. Anyone on the Office 12 beta program is free to write about and publicly discuss any of the client applications in the suite. (Server components of Office 12 are still under NDA, however.)
This is great news. I’ve got a backlog of interesting stuff to write about and will start posting it tomorrow.
Ed Bott 
Well, it was about time…
An official MS post in the beta 1 newsgroups classified the above statement as rumor. The NDA has not been lifted. It is still in effect.
Patrick, see my follow-up here.
Good:here is Office 12 running under Vista 5270:
http://www.jwfisher.com/sec-vista/
Great job from the MS OFfice team on numerous new features in Office, OneNote, and FrontPage 12!!!
Now lets get another build out to everyone… we are all running a build form last October.
Patrick, this is ABSOLUTELY NOT TRUE. Please see an official Microsoft spokesperson, not an MVP lead. They don’t know the rules. Frank Shaw is president of Waggener Edstrom our PR department.
I’ve checked with several people inside the Office team and the NDA has been lifted for press (which includes bloggers).
Press are allowed to write about client apps – specifically Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher, Visio, Project, OneNote and InfoPath. Products still under NDA include Groove and all our server products.