Does anyone really want to use Microsoft Office ? Of course not . It ’s a work tool . It ’s a public-service corporation . But does it have to be so useful ? So bleak ? No — not any longer . The new Office is the well Office .
post 2013 , unveiled today as a “ Consumer Preview ” for the coming Windows 8 , is in a hard position . Office has sucked for quite a while now — bloated , beset with features like barnacles , and nightmarishly plan . Microsoft ’s attempt to streamline everything with a “ ribbon ” UI only confused most the great unwashed , spreading the mess into new piling rather than actually tidying anything up . This is good for nobody .
But affair are changing at Microsoft , right ? Without monition , the party is make beautiful , advanced software program , radically different from anything it ’s done before . Windows Phone ! Windows 8 ! Metro ! It ’s all very exciting and pleasing to the eye , which is never the way of life we ’d describe word C.P.U. and spreadsheets . So how does Microsoft bring this new tone of pixel respect to Office without alienate everyone who considers it a tool and nothing more ? People do n’t like their routines molested — if you ’ve been using the same screwdriver for 15 geezerhood and suddenly it take care and feel solely different , you might be thrust .
And so Microsoft has train a subtle , chic route to pulling Office out of the 20th century . It agnise we ’re going to be using it on pad as well as desktop — or perhaps even desktops we can have-to doe with . It clear we ’ll be using a new Office alongside a profoundly new Metro Start Menu . It realise the great unwashed only have a tolerance for so much ugly — that our day-after-day workplace software should n’t have the same psychological effect as staring at a fluorescent tube .
So here ’s the newest endeavor to make Office tolerable , but furthermore , to make it feel like part of Microsoft ’s aesthetic renaissance . Does it work ? Kind of .
Office is still Office , through and through . Word is a creature for authorship , Excel is a instrument for spreadsheeting , and PowerPoint is a tool for boring everyone with presentment . None of them have been altogether overtake — you’ll still be in warm , familiar waters when you load part of Office up — but each has been at least partly redesigned . It sounds trivial because it is , but each app at least resemble Metro , though come down scant of sucking up any of its sweeping Modern functionality . Again , this is plausibly a beneficial thing that ’ll keep bureau users from clawing their faces off in jar , but it ’s a little unsatisfying to see a lack of imagination here when the same company has been so brave with the quietus of its software . The brave head that decided Windows 8 are n’t present here — Office still hold on to way too much of its past , and should just sting the heater and start rip off iWork ’s ease . bureau gives you too many pick , mistaking multifariousness for dazzle . Templates . Ugh .
That does n’t stop Office from being the best version you ’ve ever used , in spite of its turgid legacy . Those ghastly ribbons are minimized , and arrange boxes can be veil entirely with a click ( or bug ! ) . Yes , tap . With a touch - enable system , you ’ll witness yourself not only able-bodied but willing and aroused to touch your work in tandem with a black eye ( or with fingers alone ) , largely thanks to a menu button that trade each program into a “ touch modality , ” with plump UI pieces and wider menus that are easy to strike — though the software keyboard present an ever - popping pain in the ass , and ironically , the touch modal value clit is quite minor and arduous to touch .
Sometimes it just feels better to caress the projection screen . Sometimes it ’s super - working , as is the case with the new PowerPoint , in which you could pinch and spread out to zoom in and out of a slide overview , rather than make to hammer the arrow keys to get where you want to go . It ’s a pocket-sized alteration , but pocket-size changes like these abound . Word makes placing image within text a delight ( either via pinch or mouse ) now edits PDFs , and offer super - simple reading modes and chat - enable track changes ; Excel is whip smart , motorcar - fill cells in new and apt ways ; and PowerPoint does its damndest to keep you from get a multimedia nightmare . rather , the novel PowerPoint focuses on make your slides easier to navigate and narrate , rather than lard with laser sound effects and melt slice .
But even if you end up using Office 15 on a traditional desktop and never once smudge its monitor , this is still even subtly , the best way to do news processing ( and the rest ) on a PC . Its interface is tuned more tightly than ever before , it ’s jacked straight in to Microsoft ’s SkyDrive — so all of your study will be safely plunk for up , forever , softly , mechanically — and Microsoft ’s single file formats are still the universal measure . And if you do take Office 15 on the road , you ’ll have a damn good shot at in reality getting serious body of work done on a tablet — a rare call .
All of this is really otiose . A humungous swath of you are going to be using Office no matter what , simply because you do n’t have a choice , or because it ’s just leisurely than trying something new . But today ’s new release works out well for that swath , since the obligated or indifferent will cease up using the best version of the take - for - granted workplace screwdriver they ’ve ever seen . Even if if they do n’t really realise it . [ Microsoft Office ]
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