I'm one of the biggest fans of Office - my entire career I have used the various components both as a user and developer and created some great results with relative ease. Excel might be the best piece of software ever written (Outlook is not) and scarily clever things have been written in Access that would otherwise require major development efforts. Put simply, very few offices anywhere survive without a copy of Office somewhere, it's simply so important.
That said, Office peaked in 2003 and 95% of the software in 2013 is functionally identical. I've never met anyone who likes the ribbon that was forced upon us in 2007, which reduced power users to tears and likely generated a serious amount of hate mail to Microsoft, and it continues to this day with no way to go back to toolbars. The color scheme - or lack of it - is really difficult to live with and merges everything together on the screen with no ability to delineate between the user data and the software functions. The menus are all in UPPERCASE and some of them take over the screen entirely when selected for no good reason whatsoever.
Office 2013 integrates with SkyDrive but who really cares if you save to Google Drive or DropBox. There are some additional cosmetic features in all the apps but nothing that's going to excite a regular user. It's very touchscreen focused which seems crazy since I doubt most corporate users will ever want to move from a mouse to a gesture. Compared with 2007, the applications are slower to launch though faster in processing larger amounts of data.
PowerPoint is the weakest application in the suite and looks very dated compared with KeyNote. I'm surprised how little this application has progressed from its early days. Access continues to not quite deliver the web-enabled experience it promises. But overall it seems that Microsoft has punished power desktop users with the Metro (now Modern) interface that's designed for tablets and they seem deaf to the requests of Office's decades-long loyal user base. If you're happy with your 2003/2007 version of Office, I honestly see very little reason to upgrade.Read more ›
Works on the following operating systems: Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Server 2012. It is NOT compatible with XP or Vista. You need .net 3.5 or better (Most computers have this anyway)
Office 2013 has a Windows 8 UI style appearance, but the functionality is almost like Office 2010. THe ribbon configuration is almost identical to Office 2010. I think the learning curve between Office 2010 and 2013 is very small.
The new stuff:
Use of Skydrive - you can save all your documents to the cloud and have them accessible to all your devices. Of course, you need a sky drive account. You don't have to be online to access your documents, only to sync them. (WHich means they are still taking up room on your hard drive...) You can also opt to use a cloud based fee based subscription service that gives you instant updates and allows you tap in to your social networking sites.
Improved AutoSave. After installing some new software, I had a couple unfortunate lock ups before I had everything working properly. THanks to the auto save, I lost very little.
I've used Word 2013 the most. It has some handy new features. I was stunned to find that I could edit PDFs. Very cool feature. Showing and hiding the ribbon takes some getting used to. If you want to hide the ribbon, click on the push pin in the lower right corner of the ribbon. To get it back, scroll over a menu item to display it and then click on the pushpin to lock it down.
WHen first opened (after taking awhile to start) Word (or any of the apps) displays a few of your most recent docs and some templates for new ones. So, if you want to create a new doc, you click on one of the templates. "Read Mode" is another new feature, it basically turns Word into an e-reader. WHile in read mode, the "pinch zoom" feature is in effect. You put two fingers on the touchscreen or mouse pad and pull them together or apart to change the zoom level. I've heard that "Draft Mode" is gone, but my copy has it.
Excel has also been enhanced. THere's more chart formatting options and they flow better. Excel 2013 also supports multiple monitors, very nice for power users.
The coolest new feature in Power Point 2013 is that a Bing search for web art has been added, and you can easily embed the art in your presentations. Watch out for copyright issues though. THere's also a handy "Compare" feature, works out great if you've saved multiple versions of the same file. The presentation capabilities have been amped up: during presentations, there's a grid that only the presenter sees and it can be used to show slides out of order or zoom in on aspects of a slide.
I didn't notice any big chances in Outlook.
Overall, the flat look of 2013 takes a little getting used to, but the functionality is close to 2010 so it's not a big leap to switch AND there's a lot of new features that make the upgrade worthwhile.
UPDATE - LONG OVERDUE UPDATE: I updated my developer's version to the full version, so now I have the Outlook updates as well. It has changed a lot. Now Outlook has the enhanced tool bar like Word and other MS apps. I like the improved file viewers. All of Office is great if I'm using my tablet.
Some things I don't like about Outlook 2013 are: - it combines all of my message with matching subject lines into a single message, it looks like you can handle them individually, but if you try to forward just part of it, it forwards the entire message. Get around this by renaming the message every time. - no good way to manage groups - if you BCC (blind copy) a group, you cannot see who you BCCd once you send it. To work around this, go online, log on to your account, view sent mail, right click on message and select and select "View Message Source". Press CTRL+F and search resulting page for "bcc". Most of the time, the bcc'd list is there. Good luck!Read more ›
I decided to try the Office 2013 Preview, since I had upgraded to Windows 8 on my home PC. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I expected it to be similar to Office 2010, with some minor enhancements and improvements. Instead, what I got was a massive upgrade to an already great system.
Evolution
Office 2007 - Introduced the ribbon interface, which, once you get used to it, isn't as bad as many would have you believe and can be quite handy, if configured to suit your needs.
Office 2010 - More polished version of the ribbon interface, more intuitive, much faster, and more stable version of 2007.
Office 2013...
I don't know that the performance increase from 2010 to 2013 is as drastic as what I noticed in 2007 to 2010, but it is certainly there. That aside, I do like the interface, and I've found it to be very intuitive across all of the included applications. They have moved towards a more web-like interface, in many aspects, which simplifies the interface in many ways. It is also designed in such a way that many inputs were considered. I use a mouse and keyboard, but it is clearly also ready for a touch or stylus input, much like Windows 8 is supportive of both input types.
The integration with SkyDrive and other web features is also a welcomed improvement. I didn't have any major issues with this in the past, but it was certainly an area in which Microsoft Office was lacking. This is no longer the case, and it really does take away one of the main selling point of an entirely web-based competitor that starts with a G. From someone who has used both Google Apps and OpenOffice.org extensively, I can honestly say that, while the other two have their place (even if OpenOffice.org's future is very much in question right now), Microsoft Office just feels more polished and offers more features than the others do. For business, I honestly believe there is no competition. For personal use, it's certainly possible that Google Apps is the way to go, as it certainly would be better from a strictly financial perspective. If you trust storing all of your documents on Google's servers, by all means, go that route. If you prefer a native desktop application to work with that offers all of the web-centric features as well, Microsoft Office may be the way to go for you, even as a home user.
Now, the thing to keep in mind is that, yes, Office 2013 does function slightly different than previous iterations. Granted, the change is not as dramatic as Windows 8 compared to Windows 7 or Vista (people tend to very much exaggerate the degree of change as a way of bashing Windows 8. It isn't nearly as bad as people would have you believe, I promise). Regardless, anything new takes getting used to. The learning curve here is minimal, unless you delve into the new features of the product, in which case, there will be some learning time required, which you should be expecting anyway, since this is the case with all new products or new functionality within a product. It doesn't change the core functionality, in that creating Word documents or Excel spreadsheets is still a breeze, and Outlook 2013 is also quite nice.
The final thing that I believe is worth pointing out is this. If you even think you might be purchasing a Microsoft Surface tablet or any Windows 8 tablet, for that matter, Office 2013 will be able to run on that device as well. This will make for a much more seemless integration across devices than using another product on one or the other. Combine Office 2013 with SkyDrive, and you've got quite a productive duo, with plenty of power to handle your home, home office, small business (SMB), or large enterprise needs.
Don't want to take my word for it? Head over to the Microsoft site, download the Office 2013 Preview, and try it out for yourself, for free. What have you got to lose? Those who own a Microsoft Surface tablet running Windows RT have already had the chance to experience the Preview edition, which will be upgraded to the full version upon release. I've been using the Preview for about 3 months, and I have yet to find anything that makes me want to go back to 2010, which is what I was running before I upgraded my PC to Windows 8. Should you upgrade? Yes. I believe 2010 was and is a great product, but Office 2013 is the first step in a direction that will drive Office for numerous versions to come, just as Windows 8 is for Windows. I believe that now is the time to upgrade both, and that it is well worth the investment to do so. Like I said, try the Preview version, and see for yourself.Read more ›