MICROSOFT OFFICE 2013: All you need to know by David Hutton 7th February 2014
The ease with which Microsoft Office enables us to perform various tasks has almost made it indispensable at work and home. The Microsoft Office suite has now become even more powerful than before, with the release of the latest Microsoft Office 2013.
Finding your Way around Microsoft Office 2013
Microsoft has gone out of its way to ensure that the transition to the new edition is made as simple as possible. Here are some of the main reasons why you might want to get your hands on a copy of Microsoft Office 2013
- The interface, with improved animations and other improvements give it the facelift it badly needed
- There are new tools that ease the process of understanding the data that you see on-screen, such as finding out the most important or relevant data on your Excel sheet or adding videos to your Word document.
- Tracking changes in documents is much easier to manage, especially for users of touch-screen computers
- Microsoft Outlook also has some interesting changes with the in-place replies improving the concept of tracking email-trails
- Even the comments on your Microsoft Word document will be more organised than before
- Power Point really gets a facelift with major interface changes and a new presenter tool
- Microsoft Office 2013 is designed to work with MS SkyDrive offering 7GB of free online storage. This allows you to save files in their cloud service making them accessible from multiple devices and anywhere as long as you have an internet connection
Microsoft do offer a free web based option of the Office suit for editing documents but this has limited functionality available as found in the full Office 2013 package.
Other considerations with Office 2013
A drawback is that Microsoft Office 2013 does not support Windows XP at all. It was designed with Windows 8 in mind. Windows XP is one of the most popular operating systems to come from Microsoft and many still prefer it over Windows 8 or even Windows 7.
With older versions of Office you were able to purchase a physical DVD to install the software. Now with 2013 you are required to download the software to install it and receive only the activation code on purchase.
Microsoft Office 365 – A subscription service of Microsoft Office 2013 which is linked to a cloud based service. With this you’ll always be using the latest Office releases. Pricing is varies and based on an annual fee targeted at either a home user, small to medium sized business or enterprise environment. The software you receive is equivalent to Office 2013 professional
The thing about Microsoft Office 2013 is that it has been designed to make you feel that there isn’t anything new or radically different about it, even though there is. Experts have tried and tested the new software in order to review the new version. User support and advice is also available from companies like Simmway, where the software has been tested and used extensively.