Office 2013: Heading for the clouds

In the Cloud office services, Google has Google Docs and Google Drive perfect integration, Apple also has icloud and iwork services, but Microsoft in this regard is still delayed. Beijing time in early Tuesday, Microsoft released the latest version of the Office suite of star Products--office 2013 and Office 365. The new office has finally introduced cloud technology and optimized the tablet operation to pave the Windows 8 for the coming.

The Office suite has contributed 22.2 billion of billions of dollars to Microsoft in 2011, surpassing windows and becoming the biggest source of profit for all Microsoft products. With the increasingly fierce competition in the Office software market, more and more similar products are eroding office market share through price advantage. Now the trend of office software to cloud development is becoming more and more obvious, Microsoft's dominance is facing unprecedented challenge. In this case, the latest release of the two office can be said to the Microsoft supporters injected a dose of a strong heart pin.

Office 2013 and Office 365

OFFICE365 is a network version of the Office suite, unlike current Office 365, the new Office 365 Cloud Office suite allows users to order Office 2013 desktop apps at the same time, for general consumer Office The 365 Home Premium Edition allows users to download office 2013 clients to five computers, while a buyout user can only install the software onto a single computer. In addition to a buyout fee, Microsoft also offers a monthly subscription to the new Office 365. It is worth mentioning that the Office suite will also introduce a free upgrade for subscribers. "The new office will no longer rely on a computer, it is now going with the customer." ”

Chris Pratley, Office design general manager, said in an interview with the Wired website, "The user simply logs on to the Windows Live account and his files are Chris Pletrey." Whether the user is using a mobile phone or a computer, or other electronic devices, as long as there is a network connection, the synchronization of files will not be affected. "With Office 2013 Open, you can find a login interface in the upper-right corner of the home page." After landing, the software will be used to sync the files to the SkyDrive server, users can be cross-platform across the platform synchronization office.

With mobile phones and tablet computers becoming increasingly important today, Microsoft's cloud-Sync office concept is evolving with the times. In the future, Office files will easily flow through different devices with the help of cloud storage, eliminating the hassle of offline data transmission. Microsoft also highlighted the compatibility of Office 365 cloud services with Windows Phone phones, which they also wanted to increase the market's acceptance of Windows Phone handsets.

Microsoft has yet to disclose specific data about the price of Office 2013 and Office 365. But Google Drive and icloud have created a "free lunch" precedent, and if Microsoft wants to gain a foothold in the market, it must give consumers enough discounts on prices.

The new look of Metro

New versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook have redesigned the appearance in metro style. Although they have a new look for Metro, they are still running on a traditional Windows desktop (as well as on a tablet computer). The Windows 8 Metro launch screen displays the icons for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, but the system automatically switches to the traditional desktop after the user clicks on it.

System switching sounds annoying, but the new office interface does have a noticeable boost. Word was a bit messy on the page layout, and the new word became more concise and fresher. To better match the overall style of the Metro page, the Office suite removes the task window at the bottom. Pletrey's explanation for this is: "We are tying the design concept and Metro style firmly together, trying to create the most concise, most suitable for touch screen control of the Office interface." So we removed the usual bottom task window from the traditional window page. ”

Office 2013 also provides a gadget called "Touch Mode". When the tool is activated, all of the menu bars and toolbars on office become larger, making it easy for the user to manipulate the touch. The size of the change is not very exaggerated, will not push some content outside the screen, it will not significantly reduce the area of the document area, but greatly facilitate the user precise click Target.

Third-party applications

New office will fully support Third-party applications, along with Microsoft's corporate information sharing platform SharePoint, which is supporting third party applications. As with other Third-party applications in Windows 8, users need to purchase downloads in the application store before they can be used.

The capabilities of Office will be expanded and enhanced through third-party applications. "We are looking for cooperation with third parties, and as long as we can make office more powerful, you are our partner." "Pletrey said. Users are now able to use Bing Maps within Outlook to label specific addresses in their messages, or they can use Third-party software to display their computer's task items in a message.

Integrate social functions

As social networking becomes a necessity for many people today, office will also be a part of the entire social network. Social functions are embedded in the new Office suite, and users can easily upload files to social networking sites, sharing and collaborating. For example, if you are using Excel tabulation, you can click the "share" key to share any content in the chart with friends or co-workers. LINKEDLN, Facebook, or Twitter are all fine. Even if the other person does not use Office, he will still receive a link address, open the link will be able to download the shared files, Microsoft has shown a considerable tolerance in this respect.

Word

A new "full Screen reading" feature has been added to Word 2013 and is beginning to support gesture scaling to meet the needs of tablet users. The new word also supports inserting images and videos on the Web directly into your files, such as Flickr and Facebook photos or videos on YouTube. When a file that contains network information is shared, the recipient can browse through the pictures and videos from the network directly in Word.

In addition, Word adds the view Comments feature for shared support for new office. A small icon will appear on the right side of the shared file, where the user can click to expand the comment and respond to the comment within the window. It is worth mentioning that the new version of Word began to support the direct opening of the PDF file, and can be edited and saved at will.

Excel

Excel has new automatic recognition function, can detect to some extent the user is working on the tabulation work content, automatically gives the consummation auxiliary. Suppose you have a lot of English names you need to make three columns of Excel form by last name, first name, and initials. Once you've finished the last name, two columns, and then you enter the first few items in the initials column, Excel can recognize what this is all about and automatically help you with the rest.

The new Excel also provides quick data analysis tools. The tool will provide some suggestions after the user enters data to better analyze, comb and render the data. This feature not only provides a primer for users who are not familiar with Excel, but also a lot of convenience for experienced Excel users. At the same time, Excel also implanted many commonly used forms including family expense table, inventory table and so on. Combined with fast data analysis tools, users can easily turn a bunch of numbers into a simple and beautiful, data-clear report file.

Powerpoint

PowerPoint now employs a lot of visual design, Eyedropper allows users to more intuitively choose the colors they want to use, and there are a lot of similar changes. The most admirable is the Presenter view feature, when a user connects a computer to a projector, presenter view allows the projector to play a slide show, and the computer displays the user's notes on the slide, which, without a doubt, will make the speaker significantly less stressed.

Market reaction

All aspects of Office 2013 and Office 365 are delightful, the page is more beautiful, the function is more powerful, currently Microsoft has opened the Customer Preview version of the download, you can click here to first experience the new version of Office. With the long-standing user base of the Office suite and the touch Improvement for Windows 8, Microsoft is believed to be the leader in the field with its new office. Of course, the intensity of market competition will not be reduced by the good performance of any one side, Microsoft must be in the software launched when the key factor of pricing. Office 2013 will be able to hand over a report card, but also wait for time to give us the answer.