Hasta La Gadget!

You’ve known it was coming, and today the doors to Microsoft’s Office Store were flung wide open. In short, it’s a newfangled portal that enables avid Office and SharePoint users to search for, discover and install apps. Users will need a Microsoft account and the preview version of Office, SharePoint or Exchange in order to start diving in. Naturally, Microsoft has built a pretty stout control system for administrators, and it has also crafted an internal distribution mechanism in SharePoint called the App Catalog — a tool that “allows enterprises to build in-house apps or source them from partners and distribute them to employees within the organization.” Looking to see what it’s all around? Head over to the Store and click entirely too many of those “Try It” buttons.

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Microsoft’s Office Store now open for business, productivity-boosting apps just a click away originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 13:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This week Microsoft is making sure all is clear on what’s happening with the new version and subscription fees, not to mention the contents, of the Mac version of Office 365 Home Premium. This software will indeed be in a pack with the ability to acquire Office for Mac 2011 in the upcoming wave of availability for Apple lovers. This announcement comes after a mistaken quote reported across the web that Mac users would have to purchase Office for Mac 2011 separately from Office 365 Home Premium altogether.

This update also makes it clear that Microsoft intends on releasing several different packages for Mac users as well, with a note of theirs stating the following. “The final version of Office 365 Home Premium, when available, will include Office for Mac as an option of the 5 devices – Macs could be all five of the devices if the subscriber chooses, and at no additional cost.”

Microsoft recently previewed many features of the newest release of Office 365 as well as Office 2013 for release alongside Windows 8. Windows 8 will be shipping October 26th, 2012, while Office will likely be launched in each of its new iterations soon after that date. Office 365 for Mac will be including access to Office for Mac (2011) as part of its five per user device limit.

Unlike the Office for 2013 for Windows 8 edition of the software, it appears more likely that the Mac version of the software will be coming out early next year.

[via ComputerWorld]

Microsoft confirms Mac Office 365 subscription details is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you read our preview of Office 2013, you know we liked it. A lot. But if we had one reservation it’s that Office still isn’t that finger-friendly, even with the addition of a touch mode that widens the spacing between onscreen objects and flattens the menus so that you don’t have to tap quite as much. As if in response to critics like us (and readers too!) Microsoft has published a lengthy blog post detailing the thinking that went into the design of Office’s new touch-enabled features. Which is to say, it’s a more detailed recap of how the company’s engineers tweaked the desktop interface for touch, and designed some standalone apps that better match the Metro experience of Windows 8. At the very least, it’s a handy primer for folks who missed Steve Ballmer’s keynote and haven’t yet read up on radial menus or the Metro-styled OneNote MX app. Even if you have, though, it’s worth a read: Microsoft offers some interesting insight into the various scenarios where it imagined each touch-enabled app being used, and what kind of posture the user is likely to have, even. Whether that’s enough to prompt a change of heart is up to you, but it’s interesting nonetheless to get a little more color on how it all came together.

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Microsoft responds to critics, defends touch UI in Office 2013 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Jul 2012 15:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft may have told us a lot about Windows Phone 8 in June, but it left out much of what the Office component’s update would entail. Thankfully, Partner Group program lead John Jendrezak has voluntered to let us peek under the hood, including our first real glimpse of the new Office Hub. The app’s connection to Office 2013 is more than the skin deep looks you see here: Office documents will sync more seamlessly from desktop to phone, and it’s implied that the reading position sync from the desktop version will extend to the mobile realm as well. Many mysteries still remain as to what’s exactly different in the more pocketable version of Office. There’s more about the new work suite’s communion with the cloud at the source link, however, so dig in if an offline Office feels like a prison.

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Microsoft gives a tease of Office for Windows Phone 8, talks up Office 2013 integration originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Jul 2012 16:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been about three years since Microsoft unveiled a new version of Office, and particularly with Windows 8 just months away from dropping, the software has been well overdue for an upgrade. Today, Redmond unveiled the latest edition — Office 2013 (aka Office 15) — which the company will be showing in a preview stage until the final version goes on sale (hit up the source link if you want to download it for yourself).

Perhaps the biggest news isn’t any single feature Microsoft’s added to Word (hello, easy YouTube embeds!), but how and where you’ll access your files. With this version, the company is moving to a subscription-based model wherein your Office files are tied to your Microsoft ID. Once you sign up, you can download the various desktop apps to a certain number of devices and, as with Windows 8, your settings, SkyDrive files and even the place where you left off in a document will follow you from device to device. (It’s telling, we think, that files now save to the cloud by default.) As you’d expect, too, this version is also more tablet-friendly than editions past, with a touch mode that widens the spacing between onscreen objects and flattens menus. In Word and PowerPoint, you’ll also find a read-only mode that turns documents into full-screen editions, whose pages you can swipe through as you would an e-book or digital magazine.

Of course, Microsoft included plenty of granular updates like PDF editing and a behind-the-scenes Presenter View in PowerPoint. Fortunately for you, curious power users, we’ve been spending the better part of a week testing the software on a Samsung Series 7 Slate loaded up with Windows 8. So join us past the break where we’ll give you a detailed breakdown of what’s new, along with screenshots and detailed first impressions.

Continue reading Microsoft Office 2013 preview: details, screenshots and impressions

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Microsoft Office 2013 preview: details, screenshots and impressions originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Jul 2012 15:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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