Office 2013. Thoughts?

[zag]

I noticed Office 2013 is on MSDN so downloaded and installed.

 

So far I actually like it. The colour scheme takes some getting used to but I'm sure it will become normal after a few days use.

 

Some highlights for me so far:

 

- Smooth selection of text

- Editing PDF files

- Outlook bigger buttons for changing the mode

- Smooth animation when browsing the hierarchy of folders

- Auto Save to skydrive (would have been amazing if microsoft didnt just remove it from office 365!!)

 

So basically its working quite well. Much better job than windows 8.

[AngryTechnician]

Already posted my thoughts here a couple of weeks ago:

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/office-software/103374-2013-rtm-isos-available-technet-2.html#post889075

 

Only thing that has caught my eye since then is that when you reopen a Word document it will offer to scroll you automatically to the point you left off. Which is nice.

[Mr.Ben]

My only issue is that ITS A BIT SHOUTY! (In regards to the menus)

[zag]

I like the animation when you type text all over the place. Very smooth.

 

Also loving the inline replies in outlook 2013. So nice not to have to open new windows.

[SYNACK]

SORRY, WHAT WAS THAT, I COULD'T HEAR YOU OVER THE OFFICE 2013 MENU SYSTEM. YOU'LL HAVE TO SPEAK UP

[RabbieBurns]

I like the animation when you type text all over the place. Very smooth.

 

Also loving the inline replies in outlook 2013. So nice not to have to open new windows.

 

Yes this for me is great it also lets me see all the emails I have startted to reply to and got sidetracked with as it tags them with [DRAFT] rather than just dumping them into the drafts folder.

[bladedanny]

I like it so far. I like the image search function that can go straight to bing for image search.

 

I'm not so keen on the save as dialog, might take some getting used to. It currently defaults to skydrive which I'm sure you'd be able to change, maybe via GPO.

[cpjitservices]

Its not bad... I like the idea of when I open a document I get all the different types & templates to choose from!

 

Overall it's not bad, I'd rather use that than Windows 8.

 

I now have 59 days for my trial

[AngryTechnician]

I'm not so keen on the save as dialog, might take some getting used to. It currently defaults to skydrive which I'm sure you'd be able to change, maybe via GPO.

From my testing, it only seems to do that if you are already signed in to SkyDrive - if you aren't, it defaults to Computer.

 

You can also force it to save to Computer by default using this option:

 

 

This isn't in the Group Policy templates for Office 2013, because they only put useless cruft in the GPO templates instead of anything we might actually want to change. However, it is a simple per-user registry option:

 

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\General

REG_DWORD:PreferCloudSaveLocations

 

Set this to 0 to default to saving to the local computer, or 1 to default to SkyDrive (if signed in).

[bladedanny]

I presumed you'd be able to change it. I am signed into skydrive (through win8).

 

Thanks,

[Oaktech]

its just 2010 with a skin on it as far as I can tell. I don't dislike it particularly, but I think it looks a bit amateurish, and it's difficult to see on a older LCD monitor.

[aleach2]

PowerPoint is very good. I like how you can now have on your presenter screen what slide is coming next and any notes you have written for the slide you are on. It also allows you to open things up without having to exit your presentation. Much better than 2010. I am a little unsure about Outlook but may feel differently once I have been using it for a bit.

 

PowerPoint 2013 Preview - Presentation software and services

[CyberNerd]

can anyone answer this yet?

 

What I'd like to know more about wrt office is its reported ability to save in ODF 1.2 and OOXML strict.

Is OOXML strict the default? can you make strict the default ? what about old documents, does it save them in OOXML strict?

It has important implications given recent govt strategy:

http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/site...ples-FINAL.pdf

[AngryTechnician]

PowerPoint is very good. I like how you can now have on your presenter screen what slide is coming next and any notes you have written for the slide you are on.

I hate to break it to you, but that's been in Office for a decade. It's definitely had improvements, but it was in previous versions. (source)

 

can anyone answer this yet? (OOXML)

Strict is not the default, but you can set it to be. These are the options you can set as the default in Word (via Options > Save):

 

 

You can set any of these as the default by GPO. A similar list is available for Excel and PowerPoint.

 

There do not appear to be any options regarding strict mode when you modify existing documents.

Edited November 20, 2012 by AngryTechnician

[CyberNerd]

Thanks, that should make interoperability a bit smoother.

 

There do not appear to be any options regarding strict mode when you modify existing documents.

 

 

I guess thats their get-out clause.

Edited November 20, 2012 by CyberNerd

[zag]

Is there any way to make the theme go darker?

 

I've been using outlook 2013 a day now and I'm literally blinded by the whiteness of it all. Its actually giving me a headache!

 

EDIT: Found it! under Options >> General >> Dark Grey Theme

 

Thank god for that. Its not that much better though

Edited November 20, 2012 by zag

[RabbieBurns]

Is there any way to make the theme go darker?

 

I've been using outlook 2013 a day now and I'm literally blinded by the whiteness of it all. Its actually giving me a headache!

 

EDIT: Found it! under Options >> General >> Dark Grey Theme

 

Thank god for that. Its not that much better though

 

you can change the background as well. I now have octopus and fish all over my word and excel. It looks very business like and professional.

[CyberNerd]

you can change the background as well. I now have octopus and fish all over my word and excel. It looks very business like and professional.

 

Feck. it sounds as bad as the kids google mail

[SYNACK]

Feck. it sounds as bad as the kids google mail

 

Worse, at least Gmail doesn't shout at you.

 

I don't find the white too bad but I guess it depends on your screen and how its setup.

[sparkeh]

Been having a play and keep getting pop auth boxes for various related MS servers for online services along the lines of "Connecting to proxy server office15client.microsoft.com. Please enter your credentials". Clicking cancel a few times gets rid of it and can use the programs but stuff is missing like templates from Word, which it appears to need to connect to the Internet to download.

Haven't really looked into it yet but guess its down to interaction with our proxy server?

Any ideas before I hit Google?

[sparkeh]

Ok going through an authenticating proxy screws it up here :/

Edit: Ok read this post: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/internet-related-filtering-firewall/103905-office-2013-displays-lot-credential-prompts-smoothwall-ntlm.html - we are using NTLM auth so guess this is the issue.

Edited November 21, 2012 by sparkeh

[AngryTechnician]

Yep, that's it exactly. Switching to Kerberos worked for us, but it's not something you can just change over to and it instantly works. Key gotchas are:

 

• Once you set up Kerberos on the Smoothwall (i.e. when you link to your AD usaing the new, non-legacy method), all users must log off and back on before their Kerberos token will be recognised by Smoothwall. Any users logged on before you link to AD will fail to auth.
  
• Any user-specific policies will need to be edited to reflect that the username will be reported as [email protected] instead of just user
  
• The current Kerberos implementation on the Smoothwall does not correctly process usernames with spaces in. I beleive this has been raised for a future patch, but for now, the only workaround at present is to rename user accounts so tey have no space (luckily we only had 22 affected accounts).
  
• Local users on the workstation (such as the local admin account) will not be able to authenticate at all using Kerberos, and will have to use different proxy settings if you need access.
  

[gshaw]

Been using it for a week and a bit now and I really like it, some of the little touches like the alignment boxes that come up in PowerPoint, Word etc are very useful.

 

Almost getting to the point where the shouty menus don't bother me as much, think I'm beginning to filter them out of my line of vision like adverts in webpages

[chazzy2501]

The PDF handling is poor, it doesn't let you edit PDFs, it will however very slowly automatically convert a PDF for you into something editable. It's a shame that the sibling love childs result is so hideously dissimilar from the original.

[zag]

The PDF handling is poor, it doesn't let you edit PDFs, it will however very slowly automatically convert a PDF for you into something editable. It's a shame that the sibling love childs result is so hideously dissimilar from the original.

 

I used it yesterday to convert a PDF into an excel file through the word importer. It actually worked really well. First time I've been able to do that so quite a cool feature.