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Microsoft Office 2013 review

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Verdict

Still the best office suite on the market and better value than ever, but it won't be for everyone

Review Date: 21 Mar 2013

Price when reviewed: From £110

Buy it now for: £318
(see more store prices)

Overall Rating

Features & Design
5 stars out of 6

Value for Money
4 stars out of 6

Ease of Use
5 stars out of 6

Microsoft has so much going on this year, it’s difficult to conceive how it could also deliver a new version of its office suite. Office is a vast behemoth. Each of its many applications are stuffed full of features, developed after years of constant upgrades; adding anything of note must be a near-impossible task.

Yet three years on from its last release, and 24 years on from its 1989 birth, Ballmer and co have managed to give it a new lease of life. Part of this makeover is enforced. Three years ago, the tablet market didn’t exist as it does today; we were still using laptops and desktop PCs, and touchscreens were for masochists and vertical markets.

A major part of Office 2013 is incorporating support for fingers and thumbs, and the brigade of tablets, sliders, hybrids and touchscreen laptops that are now beginning to swamp the market. Every app in the Microsoft Office stable now allows users to scroll, zoom and pan using gestures, and every one benefits from ribbon-hiding capabilities and touch mode, enlarging icons in the interface, and creating space between icons to make them easier to tap.

Navigation

Word 2013 review
Excel 2013 review
Outlook 2013 review
PowerPoint 2013 review
OneNote 2013 review
Office 2013: the verdict

With broadband continuing to increase in speed and availability, and falling in cost, Office 2013 also attempts to bring the cloud into its all-encompassing embrace. And we aren’t talking just about integration with Microsoft’s cloud storage service SkyDrive here, although there are many new features on that front. For the first time, Microsoft itself is offering its suite as a service for which you pay a yearly subscription, in addition to the traditional boxed copies.

There’s also a slew of new features, user interface tweaks and, inevitably, a handful of new frustrations; we’ve been testing the suite to find out what they are and how they work.

Is Office 2013 a triumph? Should you stick with what you have or consider upgrading? You’ll find our answer to those questions on the following pages.

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Comments

User comments

Hi
Be interested to know if Word now deals with contents better.
Previously, word (even with autoformat turned off) would have a habit of making an awful mess of 'insert contents' when you closed and reopened the document word would re-designate 'outline level'/TOC levels and all the contents. There seemed no easy way of making word accept the way I wanted a contents to look (even with autoformat turned off)
I know a workaround was to use outline view but I wanted to do that with contents and there have numerous posts across about this problem even in word 2010.
Do you know if this problem has been addressed with word 2013?

By simontompkins on 25 Jan 2013

Ribbon hiding...

That was in Office 2010, why is it suddenly such a big deal in 2013?

By davew80 on 25 Jan 2013

No Major New Features in Excel? Really!

How about having PowerPivot built in so that you can analyse hundreds of millions of rows of data incredibly quickly or Power View data visualisation including animated charts? Also the new timeline control. For data analysts this puts Excel miles ahead of it competitors. I can't believe these were omitted from your review!.

By Pedro on 25 Jan 2013

Office 2013 Face-plants out the door

What an abomination of a product. The Word application does not appear to use threading as the entire application locks up after clicking anything. A friendly message pops up at the bottom right saying "Office may appear unresponsive...We're streaming a few required files in the background. This shouldn't take long." Here we are 45 minutes later still locked. On one of Word's crashes, an error message popped up for Microsoft Outlook. Hope this software wasn't developed in Washington or Colorado.

By SteveH3032 on 26 Jan 2013

Error Messasge

Problem Event Name: AppHangXProcB1
Application Name: winword.exe
Application Version: 15.0.4454.1000
Application Timestamp: 509a4ea6
Hang Signature: 97e7
Hang Type: 128
Waiting on Application Name: integratedoffice.exe:FF_INTEGRATED_Pipeline
Waiting on Application Version: 0.0.0.0
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.274.10
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Hang Signature 1: 97e71dfe10bcaa68cbcbc86c377ab897
Additional Hang Signature 2: 12c7
Additional Hang Signature 3: 12c70a0ace46f3abf1453c74248047f9
Additional Hang Signature 4: 97e7
Additional Hang Signature 5: 97e71dfe10bcaa68cbcbc86c377ab897
Additional Hang Signature 6: 12c7
Additional Hang Signature 7: 12c70a0ace46f3abf1453c74248047f9

By SteveH3032 on 26 Jan 2013

@Pedro

> For data analysts this puts Excel miles ahead of it competitors.

Nobody sane does serious data analysis in Excel. For that you need a proper programming language. (R or python or MATLAB or SQL or SAS. VBA doesn't count. Because yuk.)

The important questions are, "do the numerical routines in Excel no longer suck?" (see http://www.jstatsoft.org/v34/i04/paper) and "can Excel draw useful charts yet?" (Try drawing a histogram with a log-scale x-axis or a box and whisker plot.)

By rupert_giles on 28 Jan 2013

Warnings

I think you have missed a few warnings that you should make people aware of....
The licensing is cheaper, but now is one user, one device and non transferable for things like Home and Business - where before it was one user / covered one desktop one laptop. (Effectively returning to OEM licensing).
And also, Outlook 2013 does not work with Exchange 2003.

However, Office 365 plans have also just announced their compatability with RDS.

Regards
Jules

By JulesWilko on 31 Jan 2013

Not the same price

Another misleading review of the new Office pricing. Office Home & Student is selling the single user edition only, and for close to the same price that the three-user edition of 2010 went for, at least in the States. Which means that those of us with a desktop and laptop are out of luck on this one. Strange that you didn't mention any of that.

By genegold on 31 Jan 2013

@simontompkins

I've been using Word since 2.0 and I've never experienced the problem you mention.

Could it be something to do with the styles you've set up or a problem with the .dot or .dotx behind the documents? I know I've had a couple of corrupted .dot files over the years, which have caused havoc.

By big_D on 31 Jan 2013

Way too expensive

I think most of the private users won't need half of the applications when they choose subscription - most of them will only need Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.

If they decide to buy Office 2013, they pay a lot of money for just one license which btw. is tied to the hardware:

http://office-watch.com/t/n.aspx?a=1782

For the majority of users much cheaper (or even free) alternatives would be pretty sufficient.

As Microsoft Office formats are a standard, I would suggest to check out SoftMaker Office Professional, because this is the only Office I found to handle all Microsoft formats brillantly, without any loss or problems. You get word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software, and mail client for a very reasonable price which includes three licenses.

I tested several alternatives of Microsoft Office and find this the best one, I miss no single feature.

By Todd_J on 7 Feb 2013

No major new features for Excel?

Simply opening sheets in independent windows, so I can scatter them across my screen and look at them side by side is enough to make me want to upgrade.
It should have been there years ago, and I'm glad it arrived this time around

By hminney on 12 Feb 2013

Office 2013 pro

i have purchased office 2013 and am using outlook 2013 but cannot receive mails since i have loaded the softwaare. I have windows mail on another PC and can receive emails without any problem. Is there a problem with outlook 2013 software!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By varsani on 30 Mar 2013

Worth the upgrade

Boasting a host of new features, most notably within Excel and PowerPoint, I'd say it's definitely worth the upgrade.

Recommended charts, sparklines and more in Excel are a great new way to visualise your data. Plus in PowerPoint, I just love the new presenter view. It really is a great way to save embarrassment.

For a full list of what's in and what's out in Office 2013, this infographic is pretty spot on:

http://www.microsofttraining.net/sharing/3-whats-i
n-and-whats-out-in-office-2013.html

By TerenceNoah on 13 May 2013