8 Things to Know About the New Microsoft Office

Check out this rundown of all the new features you will find in Microsoft’s most ambitious Office upgrade to date.

courtesy of company

On Monday in San Francisco, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled the latest edition of Microsoft Office–the most ambitious release in the productivity software’s history, he said.

Indeed, you might not recognize Word, PowerPoint, and other applications in the Office suite. That’s because they were redesigned to make the most of the Windows 8 operating system, work with mobile devices such as the new Surface tablets Microsoft recently unveiled, and operate in the cloud so you can get access to your files and information regardless of where you are or what machine you’re using.

Ballmer talked about how the company’s flagship product is now focused first on being a service. While Microsoft will continue to provide Office as software you can install on your computer, the new Office was designed primarily as a service in which the applications and most of your files sit in the cloud.

While the company won’t admit it, experts say Microsoft’s next-generation version of Office is one of many moves it is making to fend off the inroads Google is making on the business-software market with Google Apps.

According to The Wall Street Journal, even though Microsoft Office still has more than 90% market share for business-productivity software and more than an 80% share of corporate email, research firm Gartner recently reported that Google is bringing into its fold one-third to half of new corporate users who are paying for Web-based software.

The competition is great for business users–the new Office looks like an ultramodern and massive improvement over the current version. Several things you’ll notice:

Touch modernizes Office apps.

Touch makes using Office apps on your tablet seem markedly more intuitive and simple. Kirk Koenigsbauer, a corporate VP for Microsoft Office, used a tablet to show how swiping, pinching, zooming, and tapping works with applications such as PowerPoint and Word.

No more paper note taking.

The topic of “inking” came up several times during Microsoft’s demo. The new Office lets you use a stylus to do things like handwrite emails and convert them to text, or as a laser pointer when presenting.

PowerPoint on the tablet rocks.

Koenigsbauer said the tablet’s screen is now a “cockpit,” so when you’re giving a PowerPoint presentation, not only can you use your digital pen to mark up slides on the fly, you can also see upcoming slides and notes, as well as a new clock and timer so you don’t go overtime.

Drag and drop makes consuming data and collaborating simple.

Koenigsbauer showed off OneNote and Lync–Windows 8 style applications for Office that are optimized for touch.

OneNote, a digital note-taking app, organizes information such as text, pictures, notes, Web content, lists, and more. You can use the tablet’s camera to snap a picture of a paper advertisement, for example, then crop part of it and drag and drop it into OneNote.

Lync is Microsoft’s unified communications platform integrated into Office, and it includes instant messaging, audio, video, Web conferencing, and location information so you can see where your contacts are. In a multiperson video chat using Lync, you can drag and drop someone from your contact list into the live meeting, drop a PowerPoint presentation onto the shared canvas, draw on the presentation with a touchscreen device, and share OneNote notebooks with others in the call, as well as take and display notes.

Cloud storage is the default.

Although your documents will still be available offline, the new Office saves documents to SkyDrive by default, so you can get at your content regardless of what computer or device you’re using. And once signed in to Office, your personal settings, most recently used files, templates, and custom dictionary show up on whatever machine you’re using.

Microsoft acquired Yammer last month for $1.2 billion, proving that the software giant is serious about social. While Koenigsbauer talked about how people can use Yammer and SharePoint for business social networking, the “People Card” looks particularly useful. For each of your contacts, this card shows you the person’s location, photos, and contact information, as well as status updates from Facebook and LinkedIn.

You can create awesome presentations.

Microsoft’s acquisition of Perceptive Pixel now makes it possible for you to use 82-inch touch- and stylus-enabled displays for meetings and presentations. Koenigsbauer stood in front of a huge screen and used his hand to swipe across tiles of apps that he could access during a presentation. As an example, he tapped on a weather app to pull off an “Al Roker” weatherman-like imitation with the large digital backdrop.

Reference:

http://www.inc.com/christina-desmarais/8-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-new-microsoft-office.html

Student Name: Viviana Loza

Some of the classmates’ posts had already pointed out the major new features of Microsoft 2013, here are a little more base on my research:

1. Touch And Stylus

Office 2013 ventures beyond the mouse and keyboard to embrace touch and pen input. While multi-touch laptops aren’t–and probably won’t be–a mainstream choice for business and home users anytime soon, touch is an essential component of smartphones and tablets, obviously. The pen may be making a comeback too, judging by the popularity of Samsung’s stylus-equipped Galaxy Note.

What kind of touch features does Office 2013 have? The same ones you’ve grown accustomed to using on your phone and tablet: Swipe a finger across the screen to turn a page; pinch and zoom to read documents; and write with a finger or stylus. And when you write an email by hand, Office 2013 automatically converts it to text.

2. A Social Suite

Office 2013’s strong social networking component appears to be targeted mostly at Microsoft’s huge installed base of enterprise users. In addition to Skype, Office now includes Yammer, a secure and private social network for businesses that Microsoft tentatively acquired just last month. Yammer integrates with SharePoint, Redmond’s Web application platform, and Microsoft Dynamics, the company’s line of CRM and enterprise resource planning apps.

Office 2013’s People Card tool provides detailed information about your contacts, including their status updates from Facebook and LinkedIn. Now you’ll know what your clients had for lunch–and perhaps whether they had lunch with your competitors.

3. Big Screen Bonanza

Huge touchscreen displays aren’t necessarily a feature of Office 2013, but the suite’s stylus- and multi-touch-oriented UI enables it to work quite well with enormous LCD panels, such as Perceptive Pixel’s 82-inch monster. PowerPoint presentations, particularly ones with embedded video, are a natural for large touch panels.

Educators may find large touchscreens useful too. A professor, for instance, could use OneNote in the classroom, jotting lecture notes and diagrams directly on a gigantic touchscreen; students could later access the notes via SkyDrive.

Reference:

http://www.informationweek.com/software/productivity-applications/microsoft-office-2013-10-best-features/240003864?pgno=11

Yuting Peng

Land Onto The Future

Instead of opening a blank spreadsheet to set the field for extensive number crunching, Excel 2013 welcomes you with a unique landing page that allows you to grasp the relevance of this application in organizing every matter of your life, ranging from financial reports to personal budgeting, movie lists, trend analysis and more. These are laid out in front of you in a tiled format. Don’t forget to click the ‘Welcome to Excel’ template, to quickly understand the basics of this version. In addition, the search bar offers a powerful synchronization with the revamped online Office templates library. You can quickly open frequently used and last used documents from the Recent sidebar.

Time To Manage The Account & Services

As you may know, Excel 2013, like other tools in the Office suite, uses Live ID or Microsoft SkyDrive account to store content online for better accessibility, document sharing and collaboration. Therefore, the new Account tab presents the user information coupled with connected services organized into three sections: Images & Video (Flickr, YouTube), Storage (SharePoint, SkyDrive) and Sharing. Moreover, theProduct Information for the overall suite is presented on the right, with emphasis on subscription and update details. The new interface can be customized using the Office Background themes.

Documents Everywhere

In an attempt to make documents relevant on the go, the Open window of Excel 2010 has been replaced with an entire page covering both online and offline storage places. You can either open files from your system or your personal SkyDrive. Furthermore, the Add a place option allows you to specify other SkyDrive and SharePoint location, so that documents are accessible from anywhere you like. As evident, the features of the previous Recent tab in Excel 2010 has been merged with the new Open page.

Privacy Guaranteed

The new Excel values the sensitivity of your data, especially due to the vulnerabilities resulting from cloud-based storage. These are overcome by user-defined settings like the Check Out function, which prevents others from viewing any changes or editing the document unless you give them the editing rights. Moreover, the sharing options further protect your data in obedience to your requirements.

The Journey From Saving To Sharing

In Excel 2010, the Save & Send menu was so rich with options that it blurred the view of novice users forcing them to stick to a few buttons for safety. Now, you can access these options in a much organized, user-friendly manner with the Share, Save As and Export tabs. The importance of teamwork and collaborations must never be ignored, especially when dealing with spreadsheets that are known to encompass a range of inputs from various sources. Sometimes, compatibility and rights issues present a hurdle in working on a document, together. For example, a co-worker may not be able to view the Excel document in its full zeal due to an old version of Microsoft Excel. You may not want others to edit the final document while the contrary should hold true for your supervisor. With these problems in mind, Excel 2013 presents multiple sharing options.

After signing in to your SkyDrive account, you can Invite People by specifying their names and email addresses for sharing purposes. You can further configure the interface by enable or disable sign-in process. Moreover, you can also generate unique sharing links that can be entered into your browser for complete document access independent of the Excel version installed at the other end. Sharing Links are categorized in the form of View Link (for general access) and Edit Link (for administrator access allowing modification rights). Public links can also be generated by activating the relevant option.

To specify intricate details regarding what the shared viewer should see in his/her browser, you can use the new Browser View Options in the Export tab. This allows you to customize the workbook for a relevant viewing experience, online.

The power of social media has been incorporated into Excel 2013 by allowing you to post to Social Networks in a much similar way as elaborated above. You can post view links or edit links on platforms like Facebook to generate interest in your worksheets.

Charting Your Way Out

The most impressive addition to Microsoft Excel is the new and interactive way of dealing with charts. The importance of Excel 2013 lies in its analytical and data organization capabilities. As soon as you select a chart, the chart elements button pop-ups on the top right corner. All you need to do now, is to select the elements that can add more value to the chart such as Data Table, Error Bars, Timeline, Titles and more.

Another useful button that pop-ups with the chart is the Chart Styles that equip you with new layout and colors. These styles and colors are bound to make your graphs, figures and charts more attractive to the viewer.

Another impressive feature is the Chart Filters option that lays out all variables (series) and categories for an interactive view. Just move your cursor over each item and the relevant content in the illustration will get highlighted. Now, you can focus on important data sets laid out over time for a more refined analysis.

Analyze Data In Real-Time Using Quick Analysis

When dealing with tables, the Quick Analysis button allows you to analyze data from a powerful set of formatting, charts, totals, tables and Sparklines tools that instantly show results over your table for instant analysis. Adding value to your table columns had never been this simple.

Follow The Excel Recommendations

The Insert tab is rich with new features from Recommended PivotTables to Recommended Charts, Excel 2013 aims at letting you achieve the most in the minimum possible time. For the best outcome, use these recommendations to identify and benefit from PivotTables (data summarization tool) and Charts that best suit your data overlay in the worksheet.

Search & Insert Online Pictures

Instead of searching images online using search engines, Excel 2013 offers you the option to achieve this while remaining relevant to the worksheet under progress. The royalty-free photo library, Bing Image Search, SkyDrive and Flickr accounts can be used to search, preview and insert relevant images into your workspace.

Office Apps: Reach To The Horizon

Just when you thought that you’ve got the hang of Excel 2013, Office Apps would take you one step ahead. With useful featured Apps and an extensive resource library in the Office Store, you can insert exciting features into your worksheet. Hence, it is not necessary to do everything yourself, just let the Office Apps take you beyond the horizon.

Comprehensive Data Sources

In comparison with Excel 2010, the new version offers an extensive list of data sources that multiplies the impact of your data relevance. Excel 2013 offers the option to import data as a Table or PivotTable Report from Windows Azure Marketplace and ODATA Data Feed. With comprehensive data sources, you can easily keep track of latest data relevant to your worksheets.

Get To The Bottom-Line With Power View

The Power View add-in allows you to define visually attractive summaries of your worksheet with special emphasis on the variables that truly matter for you. With a separate tab, you have the option to view data in the way that best suits you. After defining the relevant power fields, Power View extracts the information from the selected worksheet to give you a complete overview with respect to the viewing filters specified. Moreover, you can choose a new theme, background, transparency, pictures and other content with the freedom to insert, modify, arrange and analyze relationships, effectively.

Flash Fill: Intelligently Organize Your Data

An exciting new feature that promises to save your time and effort is Flash Fill. Excel 2013 intelligently follows data patterns and trends interpreting the relevant meaning, in order to assist you in carrying out the task. For example, after filling in email addresses with full names, you start entering the first names in a new column and before you know it, Excel 2013 auto-fills the entire column. Now, you can surely fill the worksheet in a flash!

Verdict

All in all, Microsoft Excel 2013 has improved the user experience by focusing on flash-filling, quick-analyzing and intelligent charts. Your data is, now, in a much better position to convince and convey meaning to the relevant avenues both offline and online. Raw data can now be converted using recommended data analysis and organization tools, effectively.

reference: http://www.addictivetips.com/microsoft-office/microsoft-excel-2013-new-features/

Keng(Janice) Yu