Office 2013 Customer Preview Now Official, Available for Download

Today, Redmond-based software giant Microsoft unveiled to the world the new flavor of its popular productivity suite, Office.

Dubbed Office 2013, the new flavor of the application comes with a new, intuitive design, which has been developed to work great with touch, stylus, and mouse and keyboard. The new Office 2013 was announced with support for Microsoft’s Windows platform, and can be used on a variety of devices, including tablet PCs. Moreover, the application was conceived so that it would provide users with a great experience on touch devices that run under Windows 8. On top of that, the new Office 2013 was designed to be more social, and comes with support for new scenarios related to reading, note-taking, meetings and communications. Kept connected to cloud services at all times, the new application version comes with SkyDrive integration, saving files to this location by default, while also featuring Skype, providing users with 60 Skype world minutes each month. 

On devices running under Windows 8, the application can deliver the best experience possible, Microsoft notes. Some of the main features the new Office 2013 delivers on Windows 8 include:

Touch everywhere. Office responds to touch as naturally as it does to keyboard and mouse. Swipe your finger across the screen or pinch and zoom to read your documents and presentations. Author new content and access features with the touch of a finger.

Inking. Use a stylus to create content, take notes and access features. Handwrite email responses and convert them automatically to text. Use your stylus as a laser pointer when presenting. Color your content and erase your mistakes with ease. 

New Windows 8 applications. OneNote and Lync represent the first new Windows 8 style applications for Office. These applications are designed to deliver touch-first experiences on a tablet. A new radial menu in OneNote makes it easy to access features with your finger. 

Included in Windows RT. Office Home and Student 2013 RT, which contains new versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote applications, will be included on ARM-based Windows 8 devices, including Microsoft Surface.

These are only some of the capabilities the new flavor of Microsoft’s productivity suite has to offer. Those users interested in taking it for a spin will find it available as a Customer Preview on Microsoft’s official website.

Microsoft Office 2013
Image credits to Microsoft

Posted in: Preview, Software