MICROSOFT has launched its “customer preview” version of Office 2013 and a revamped Office 365. The company’s next-generation office suite looks to be tightly focused on mobile devices, touchscreens, and the cloud. Office 3013 is the newest version of the company’s productivity suite, and they’re calling it “the biggest, most ambitious Office” to date. The new version of Office includes integration with Online services such as Facebook, Flickr, SkyDrive, and YouTube. Like Windows 8, which would be released to the public sometime this month, Office 2013 and its cloud-based cousin, Office 365, represent a significant departure from their predecessors. Microsoft has changed features and conventions, big and small, in the revamped suite, with the stated goal of streamlining productivity and embracing mobility.
As it has done in the past, Microsoft will offer consumers and businesses several disc versions of Office 2013 that can be installed locally on a computer. But Microsoft also plans to market its Office 365 subscription service to both consumers and businesses. Subscribers will be entitled to download and install Office 2013 on up to five devices, including PCs and Tablets running Windows 7 and Windows 8. The final version of Office 365 will also include Office for Mac.We know that Microsoft Office 2013 emphasizes cloud integration with new Office 365 subscriptions for home users, a greater focus on touchscreens, and Office on Demand virtualization. Microsoft intends to steer users of both versions toward its SkyDrive cloud-storage service by encouraging them to sign in with a Microsoft Live account. This will enable users to store their files in the cloud, where the files can sync with, and be opened from, virtually any platform that has Internet access.
The new offerings from Microsoft include Office 2013 and an updated version of Microsoft’s Web-based Office 365. Microsoft has also indicated that Windows RT tablets will come loaded with Office 2013 versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
Microsoft’s decision to abandon its tradition of maintaining almost perpetual backward compatibility — which it also did in the case of Internet Explorer 9 — continues: The new Office 2013 and Office 365 applications will work only with Windows 7 and Windows 8. So long, Windows XP!
Normally, when I fire up Word, it just opens a blank document, but with Word 2013, it takes you to a landing page. The page is similar to what you’d see in Word 2010 if you start a new document from a template: In a pane on the right, it hosts various thumbnail images illustrating the different templates; and in a smaller pane on the left, it lets you select from recent Word documents, or open other existing files.
The Word 2013 Start Screen lets you select from various templates. I’ve always liked the ribbon bar, and I’m glad to see Microsoft embracing it across virtually all of its products — but I realize that many users loathe it. Word 2013 adopts a hybrid approach that should work for both parties. The ribbon bar exists, but an arrow on the far right allows you to collapse it so that it appears to be a simple menu of links across the top. When you click a link, though, Word opens the associated ribbon interface instead of an old-school drop-down menu.Each component of the suite — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and the rest — has received new features.
Touch the Sky

Microsoft is pushing users strongly to work with the cloud. Windows 8 encourages users to login with a Microsoft ID, as opposed to a local Windows account; the ID connects you to yourassociated SkyDrive storage, and enables your Microsoft programs to sync settings and information. In Word 2013, you can choose to save files locally, or wherever you want, but SkyDrive is the default storage location.
Microsoft lets you know upfront what the consequences of saving a file in a particular location might be. As you choose different locations — SkyDrive, your local computer, or another device — to save a file, a bulleted list pops up at the bottom of the Save As display to let you know whether the file will be available offline or from other devices, and whether it can be shared with others from the chosen storage location.
The company is also opening its Office 365 Online-desktop subscription service to home users, If you sign up for Office 365 Home Premium, once it becomes available, you can install Office 2013 on up to five PCs, plus you get 60 minutes of Skype-calling minutes, and an extra 20GB of Online SkyDrive storage. The Office 365 Home Premium bundle includes Access, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, and Word 2013. Office 365 subscribers will also be able to use a feature called Office-on-Demand that can “stream” a virtualized version of Office to a PC; when you’re finished working, the program disappears from the computer, but your files remain wherever you saved them.
Microsoft is keeping quiet about several key issues, including pricing, official release dates, and whether the software giant will be including Android and iOS devices in its Office 2013 rollout. As for now, do enjoy your Office 2007 and 2010. I am.