Microsoft unveiled the latest and arguably-greatest version of Microsoft Office yesterday at a premiere event in San Francisco. It's called Office 2013, and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called it "biggest, most ambitious Office" update yet.
He always says things like that, so don't just take him at his word. Go ahead and try it out yourself -- you can download Office 2013 for free, and get a fully-functional version that will work for five days.
You can download Microsoft Office 2013 for free athttp://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/
This begs the question -- what in the heck is a Windows Live account? Windows Live is a service that integrates Hotmail, MS Messenger, SkyDrive, and other Microsoft services and software. It's a great way for Microsoft to package some of their outdated and lame services with their exciting, dynamic, and new services.
The registration page will ask for your phone number -- you do not have to provide it. You are required to provide your email, though, plus some name and birthdate information that you may or may not choose to provide in accurate fashion.
Once installed, you'll have to endure an irritating animation that explains cloud-based document storage -- something you've probably understood pretty well for at least two years now. But the cloud is indeed the great advantage of Microsoft 2013. Microsoft's cloud is called SkyDrive, and it allows you to store documents virtually and access them from any computer, laptop, or mobile device.
Actual cash money purchasers of buyers of Office 2013 will get 20 GB of free SkyDrive storage. Make no mistake, Dropbox, they're gunning for you here.
Oh, and the SkyDrive interface on Windows 8 is beautiful. No more of that "file folder heirarchy" design -- SkyDrive document storage (on the not-yet available Windows 8) has a "colored box" interface that is simple, striking, and very easy to comprehend. You can personalize the colors and the preview images for each box.
Your free, sneak preview of Office 2013 comes with the new, updated versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, plus the niche applications OneNote and Publisher. These are fully functional versions of the applications -- you can create, edit, and save any document. You can even save your documents to the SkyDrive cloud -- though this requires a lot of signing back into your Windows Live account. There is no "Remember Me" checkbox.
The updates to your favorite Office applications are primarily cosmetic. When you start a new file, you get a ton of template options. As a person who just straight-up wants to use the standard template every single time, I find this unneccessary. But if you want to do lots of artsy things like calendars and business cards and such, you might love this feature.
All the programs still have the "ribbon" interface, and the interface does not look too different than Office 2010. It's nice that you can personalize some pretty patterns above the menu commands. Most importantly, this is probably the least "commands inexplicably moved to different menus and locations" update to Office yet.
I gotta say that overall, I found Office 2013 to be a pretty fabulous update. It looks good. It's massively easy to figure out on the first try. Yes, Microsoft is awfully late to the game on cloud storage -- but to have cloud storage options built right into the file menus of these ubiquitous business and productivity applications is a long overdue and magnificent thing. Google Docs are great -- but I don't know one single person who prefers Google Doc spreadsheet and document interfaces to those of Office.
I only played with it for an hour or so, and that's not a very exhaustive analysis. So go ahead and download the new Microsoft Office, and I'd love to hear your feedback in the comments. You'll probably give it more real-world testing than I did, and more opinions are better. Have at it, people.
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