First Look: Microsoft Office 2013 369
snydeq writes "Ever since the first beta editions of Windows 8 appeared, rumors have circulated over how Microsoft would revamp its other flagship consumer product, Office, to be all the more useful in the new OS. Would Office become touch-oriented and Metro-centric, to the exclusion of plain old Windows users? A first look at Office 2013 provides the short answer: No. 'Office 2013 has clearly been revised to work that much better in Windows 8 and on touch-centric devices, but the vast majority of its functionality remains in place. The changes made are mostly cosmetic — a way to bring the Metro look to Office for users of versions of Windows other than 8. Further, Office 2013 has been designed to integrate more closely with online storage and services (mainly Microsoft's), although those are thankfully optional and not mandatory.'"
For a more detailed look (Score:5, Informative)
Arstechnica has a more comprehensive review [arstechnica.com].
Also they were kind enough to divide the new features by individual product. Word is here [arstechnica.com], so is excel [arstechnica.com], outlook [arstechnica.com], as well as powerpoint [arstechnica.com].
I just briefly went through them but the general improvements is that you can share documents with your coworkers with its cloud add ons as well as import and export your work documents with integrated skydrive from your work/home pcs. For individual programs, Excel has a new intellisense that works in cells so you can select commonly used names and formulas with a transparent window that wont obstruct your data. MS calls this ghosting. Outlook has Bing and map integration for directions and travel data as well as having a multiview pane so you do not have to close the calendar to view your todo list for example. Word, well I didn't see anything worthwhile except for some extra formatting options for brochures and other material and a souped up track it list where you can even do text messages in them for things like "Bob redo these figures - boss". Does this mean they are axing MS Publisher? They seem to be covering the same functionality. There is some other stuff that I will read later because it is detailed.
What is clear is this is surprisingly strongly aimed at corporations. MS is getting back to its strength as a groupware product that ties to corporate infrastructure.
The ones who still are holding on to IE 6/8, XP, and Office 2k3. College students or home users will not see that much improvement. Also Neowin mentioned MS is killing both Vista and XP support [neowin.net] with Office 2013. This office suite is aimed to get those corporations dragging their feet with Windows 7.
Re:The more I read... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The more I read... (Score:4, Informative)
You're shilling, but you're not completely full of shit.*
my Microsoft email client tells me who is sitting at their desk right now
I find that useful, but at my job it appears to be tied to Lync. Co-workers who don't use Lync appear offline. But perhaps other installs of Exchange provide the same functionality.
has one click-desktop sharing, conferencing, file sharing, tasks, goals, sales tasks, decisions, votes, and still works when i have little or no internet.
OK, this sounds like bullshit. How do I with one-click do any of those things? And how do I share my desktop when I have not internet?
It is a cockpit for daily work and efficiency.
Maybe, but meh. So I use my inbox to as a to-do list, big whoop.
When my laptop gets toasted, I have zero data loss and I get it all back as it was with 1-click,
Really? How? Office doesn't force me to save on the network, or even on SharePoint**. And I'm not aware of any Office backup solution that has one click restore. Where is this feature.
and while windows is being reinstalled I still have access to almost everything over any browser/smartphone.
I can't edit word docs or spreadsheets effectively on a smartphone. I use Office 2010, not Google Docs, so I can't access my files through a browser.
Did I mention that all my Russian, Greek, Arabic and Chinese mails all render properly?
This may be true. I know it handles all the accents in French well enough. I don't read any of those other languages, so not a big selling point for me at least.
Sure I can install 15 pieces of software to do that, but not throughout the entire organisation. MS-Office is installed & enterprise-licensed in 1 click, and with another click synchronized from the server.
Again with the one-click claim. Now, the intranet-based upgrade from 2007 to 2010 was one click I believe, but every time I've installed MS software (and most other software) there's always been multiple clicks. And this is how it should be. Not everyone person should have exactly the same install.
*I take it back. You are full of shit. Only the first thing you mention is useful and mostly true, and (at least in my experience) comes from a non-Office product.
**Don't get me started on SP. IT was supposed to upgrade our site to 2010 and none of the files or permissions came over. Perhaps not a flaw of SP, but I have my suspicions.
Re:Open! (Score:4, Informative)
You could start by not using an ActiveX object. Also, how is being able to embed executable code into a document a good thing?
Embedding an ActiveX object into a Word document does not embed any executable code. Rather, it embeds the data as an opaque blob (more or less; look up "OLE compound storage" for more), along with information about what app has created it, so that the editing service offered by that app can be embedded within Word editor. This is how Excel spreadsheets embedded into Word work, for example. You can embed other stuff, too - e.g. Adobe Reader offers a similar service for PDF, so you could have a PDF embedded into a Word file, and displayed in an embedded viewer within Word (though god knows why you'd want to).
Re:Open! (Score:4, Informative)
Do you also hate KDE when it does that kind of thing? KParts allows all that, same as ActiveX (though arguably somewhat better designed from a technical perspective).
Why? (Score:5, Informative)