Office 15 to Be Office 2013 – Logo and Screenshots Leak

Redmond-based software giant Microsoft is gearing up for the release of a new flavor of its popular Microsoft Office productivity suite, one that has been officially presented so far as Office 15.

The software company has already confirmed the work on this version of the suite, and it even released it in a Technical Preview flavor back in January this year. There are not too many official details available on the suite, but reports on it being optimized for use on touch-enabled devices did emerge. Moreover, the suite was said to arrive with a range of enhancements for individual applications, including Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word. We already had the chance to have a look at some of the changes in these apps, and more of them are now available for your viewing pleasure, courtesy of Chinese website Cnbeta.

They managed to grab some allegedly leaked screenshots of the upcoming software version, which is supposedly called Office 2013. It is expected to sport a new logo, which can be seen to the left. Office 2013 will bring along a variety of UI changes, mostly aimed at enabling easy use on devices running under Windows 8, just as previously expected. Moreover, it appears that Microsoft will apply the same treatment to Office Web Apps, which are part of SkyDrive and Hotmail, at least this is what screenshots that emerged over at LiveSide.net show.

Among the changes that Office Web Apps users will bump into, we can count the presence of the Metro-style UI, with flatter menu buttons and spacing, the same as Office 2013 apps will feature. Moreover, users will be able to view comments in Reading mode or to access options such as increase/decrease font size, justify paragraphs, and adjust paragraph spacing in the Editing mode. There is also a new “Page Layout” menu in the ribbon in Editing mode. Microsoft is expected to make the beta flavor of Office 2013 available for the public sometime in June, yet no official info on when that might happen has been provided so far.

Posted in: Preview, Software