Edunology - Saumya Aggarwal

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After have downloading Office 2013 for many months, I finally installed and tested it. Though there are not many new changes, however following are worth mentioning.

Much-improved interface

Office 2013 has got much improved interface, doing away with the sometimes-distracting 3D look of the Ribbon, and adding swaths of flat color. It's far easier on the eyes than earlier versions of Office.

The File tab (previously called Backstage) has been revamped, to great effect. For example, when you create a new document now, you get to see thumbnails of available templates. There's a lot more as well, including simple ways to make the Ribbon disappear and then come back when you need it.

Full editing of PDF files

How many times you have found PDF files very hard to work with since editing is just not on.

No longer. Word now opens PDF files, and gives you full editing capabilities. You can save the resulting files as PDFs or any file type that Word supports. This, by itself, is reason enough to upgrade.

Auto-created bookmarks

This new feature will prove to be a big productivity-booster for those who work with long Word files. Save a Word file and then open it at some later point, and you have the option of jumping to the location you were when you last were working on or viewing the file. No more scrolling and search -- you jump straight there.

In-Office image search

Finding images to insert into Office documents such as PowerPoint presentations has never been an easy experience. That changes with Office 2013. From right within Office, you can use Bing search (you were expecting maybe Google?) to find suitable images, and then pop them right into any Office document.

Excel's QuickAnalysis tool

If you're not a spreadsheet jockey, figuring out the best way to analyze and present data can be a puzzler. No longer. With Excel's Quick Analysis tool, just highlight the data, and Excel will offer suggestions on the best way to format it, analyze it, present it, and more. Even experienced Excel users will welcome this new feature.

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Microsoft Office is the most sophisticated productivity suite on the market and is designed to give your people the best productivity experience, help IT be more efficient, and add business value. By choosing Microsoft Office, you’re equipping your business with a dependable set of tools that will help add value to your business, enhance your IT strategy, and strategically support your business today and in the future.

Well now that Microsoft has announced the date of launch of its MSDN blog, the wait seems to be bit longer. Microsoft Office 2010 is certainly next big thing, taking directly on Google Docs as online office will be now available.

As per Microsoft, Openoffice.org doesn't stand upto new Office offerings, look at what they have to say:

"Don’t compromise.In comparison, OpenOffice.org offers a limited set of productivity tools that don’t deliver the full range of features your users need for the best productivity experience. In addition, OpenOffice.org lacks the required interoperability, infrastructure, tools, and architecture. So, you risk additional IT complexity that may lead to hidden costs that can negate any license savings."

I tested the beta and certainly feel that it is best Office available till now. Do share your views on the same.