The latest announcement from Microsoft is that Office 13 will be ready to ship to Windows RT (tablet) users by November. A blogpost form the Office Team mentions that Windows RT will contain a preview , that is beta versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote for Office 2013. I have been using this for a few months now and so far I really like what I have seen.
The post also states that updates to the final version will roll out via Windows Update in early November, which will continue through January.
A release date for the PC version of Office has not et been announced, although an early 2013 is a safe bet.
The Office Team explained that there will be some feature differences in between the RT (table) and PC versions. I am hoping for the best here as having differences between the two will surely confuse some users. For example Microsoft has already stated that Office on Windows RT (tablets) will not include macro support or any additions that rely on ActiveX controls, such as embedded Flash.
You can also say goodbye to old PowerPoint files since they won't work at all. This could be a hurdle but I am sure there will be some sort of "workaround". PowerPoint won't support recording narrations. Excel will also lose some of its data handling capabilities. Microsoft also said that certain email features will not be supported as Windows RT (tablet) does not have support for an Office RT (tablet) version of Outlook.
Microsoft says its Office 2013 RT (tablet) edition has been designed for touch support and longer battery life. "Office applications are enabled for "touch mode" by default, so the touch experience is better out of the box," the blog said.
All of this aside I must say I am really excited to finally have Microsoft Office available on a tablet device. For those of us on the go access to these documents will make working on the road easier then ever.
Microsoft will publish a specific update schedule on its blog on October 26.
No comments:
Post a Comment