office 2013 Office 2013: Annoying things

[Ambroos]

Hello!

I was just trying out Office 2013, been playing with it for a while. Aside the fact that it seems to be (much) slower than Office 2010 everything seems about okay. One thing that annoys me slightly is the cursor animation, it makes me feel like I'm a slow typist even though I'm absolutely not.

One huge thing I absolutely hate right now is the inability to choose another color for the user interface. The white is WAY too bright, especially when it fills your entire display. It's extremely uncomfortable to work with and it makes your page drown in the user interface - especially on bigger displays. I don't have it installed anymore, but the black theme in 2010 was really comfortable to work in, putting the focus completely on your content. But now everything is white, and there is no way to change it.

[.Neo]

They should add more colour to them, white is too bland. They should have the option of themes like in previous versions, or colourise it by the app colour.

1987 called; they want their interface back.

[Noir Angel]

I also noticed that for some unknown reason that it leaves behind a lot of .bak files like outlook.exe.bak, same filesize as the original EXE's (about 260 MB worth in total, seems to make a backup of every EXE and DLL in the main folder). I tried deleting them and it seems to have had no ill effects so I can't quite work out what their purpose is.

[Charisma Veteran]

1987 called; they want their interface back.

80's style is starting to come back in fashion ;)

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

1987 called; they want their interface back.

Ah, Windows 2.x. Ugliest default colour scheme ever.

[grayscale]

The glide animation is ok I guess but I seem to have experiencing the same problem (delayed movement of the cursor) on Powerpoint. It's smooth as silk on Word (and it looks great and I love it) even on large documents but on Powerpoint, the gliding seems a bit clunky when typing.

[Quppa]

Another thing I don't like is the text rendering. It seems to be much less crisp than it used to be in 2007/2010. I really need to compare it properly (and I might tomorrow), but it looks like they ditched subpixel rendering and went with something else, probably DirectWrite (hence the Windows 7 requirement). While it makes big (huge) font sizes look better, fonts at a normal text size (the vast majority of what you'll be doing in Word) look quite bad.

ClearType sub-pixel anti-aliasing is missing for most of the interface in this preview. I wrote about it here and highlighted the parts of the Word 2013 UI that still respect the system setting: http://blog.quppa.net/2012/07/17/office-2013-further-evidence-of-the-demise-of-cleartype/

Outlook 2013 has half its text rendered with ClearType and half with greyscale anti-aliasing, and OneNote 2013 is mostly ClearType with the exception of the ribbon. I'm hoping this will be fixed by RTM, but I won't hold my breath.

[Ian S.]

Some Annoying Stuff

I'm confused why do I get 5 downloads of Office?

Also The My Office Buttons stream to my PC where is the online only (beta) web apps?

Will I be able to get an office version with only Word Powerpoint Excel and Onenote?

The Stark White Blinds me how about some themeing such as the blue black silver wood metal etc?

Hard to differentiate the document from the program background

Takes up lots of memory..

[neufuse Veteran]

Simply don't maximize the window on a screen that big then.

lame excuse, it huts my eyes when its not maxamized, problem is there is too much white... remember back in the old days they use to use dark blue backgrounds just to soften the strain on your eyes in text editors?...

I've been messing with Office 2013 since yesterday and my eyes do hurt when working with it, you need more color to break up the brightness, evne the ribbon icons are too "wireframe" esc and feel too dull / bright / too washed out

the design littearly reminds me of the late 1980's and early 1990's when color was a precious resource and you had to pallet swap to get more colors......

[neufuse Veteran]

80's style is starting to come back in fashion ;)

80's style came back in fashion 10 years ago, did you miss that? the faded t-shirts and the atari esc logos... care bears, smurfs, cabbage patch kids, etc.... we are just now leaving that phase going back to the early 90's styles again....

[shockz]

Simply don't maximize the window on a screen that big then.

Holy ****, really? I'm so sick of metro fanboi's saying don't use it this way or don't do this. You sound almost as bad as jobs saying you're holding it wrong.

Why should such a simple thing like having the window maximized (and in word this is great since you can set the thing to show more than one page while it's maximized). How about MS actually listen to the majority for once and give us some better UI options and incentives. Simply don't maximize the window then? Why not take away the maximize button then. Give me a break.

[Ice_Blue]

It only streams the applications in the background until the files have completed downloading, then it reverts to running off your local drives.

With the advantage that it allows you to keep your existing 2010 installation. The full download says you have to uninstall any previous versions.

[+Gary7 Subscriber²]

The world does not need a new MS Office suite every other year. There is nothing wrong with Office 2010.

[Harrison H.]

The world does not need a new MS Office suite every other year. There is nothing wrong with Office 2010.

We don't need a lot of things. However to progress new versions must be released. You can easily stay with 2010 if you want.

[AJerman]

Bahaha, this looks so bad. Microsoft is going to shoot themselves in the foot with all these ugly new themes they have.

[Ice_Blue]

If you sign in using the link at the top right corner of Excel, Word etc., (next to the smiley) you can change the theme.

Don't expect much, though.

Your Windows 8 account picture also appears here after you sign in.

[Noir Angel]

If you sign in using the link at the top right corner of Excel, Word etc., (next to the smiley) you can change the theme.

Don't expect much, though.

Your Windows 8 account picture also appears here after you sign in.

Tried that, didn't give me the option to change the theme.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

If you sign in using the link at the top right corner of Excel, Word etc., (next to the smiley) you can change the theme.

Don't expect much, though.

Your Windows 8 account picture also appears here after you sign in.

You can change the graphic used on the ribbon background. As for the actual window chrome, your options are: White, white or.. white.

[Ice_Blue]

Tried that, didn't give me the option to change the theme.

You have to go into FILE|OPTIONS, then check where it says "Personalize your copy of..."

You have to at least open a blank document first.

[Noir Angel]

You have to go into FILE|OPTIONS, then check where it says "Personalize your copy of..."

You have to at least open a blank document first.

Well it certainly looks better without those irritating circles and stripes, shame you can't change the background colour though. Thanks for the tip!

[Ice_Blue]

Well it certainly looks better without those irritating circles and stripes, shame you can't change the background colour though. Thanks for the tip!

No Prob.

Edit: And yes. I would like very much to be able to change the bg colour.

[Mockingbird]

I have been typing my report on Word 2013 and the most obvious thing I've noticed is that the interface is so white and so bright, it hurts my eyes.

[Ambroos]

ClearType sub-pixel anti-aliasing is missing for most of the interface in this preview. I wrote about it here and highlighted the parts of the Word 2013 UI that still respect the system setting: http://blog.quppa.ne...e-of-cleartype/

Outlook 2013 has half its text rendered with ClearType and half with greyscale anti-aliasing, and OneNote 2013 is mostly ClearType with the exception of the ribbon. I'm hoping this will be fixed by RTM, but I won't hold my breath.

This for me is the most annoying thing. Subpixel AA is a great thing, it's a shame Microsoft is axing another great feature just to make things possibly look better on tablets with mixed orientation support. It sucks. Microsoft needs to realize that Office users are productive users who will be using a mouse and keyboard, not a touch interface. Make Metro viewer applications with annotation support and all that, but a touch-focused version of Office makes no sense.

[PGHammer]

Some Annoying Stuff

I'm confused why do I get 5 downloads of Office?

Also The My Office Buttons stream to my PC where is the online only (beta) web apps?

Will I be able to get an office version with only Word Powerpoint Excel and Onenote?

The Stark White Blinds me how about some themeing such as the blue black silver wood metal etc?

Hard to differentiate the document from the program background

Takes up lots of memory..

Multiple PCs, VMs, etc. (Why 5 downloads)

Also, if anything, I find it uses *less* memory compared to the 2010 versions - all the more shocking in the case of Word 2013's ability to edit PDFs directly, and as a native file type. (You can compare the memory usage with Task Manager.)

[Denis W. Veteran]

Figured out the solution to the Reading Mode being stuck on... though at first it makes no sense at all.

How I got myself stuck in Reading Mode: View > Read Mode.

How I thought to get out of it: View > Edit document. But doing that will make all future documents open in Read Mode.

How you're supposed to get yourself back in Printing Mode: click the toolbar button at the bottom. Wait, what? :pinch:

... on the brighter side, in addition to the neat animations I also like how they lightened up the wording in the applications to appear more friendly to users.

Examples: in protected view, Word 2010 reads "This file originated from an Internet location and might be unsafe. Click for more details." In Word 2013 it reads "Be careful - files from the Internet can contain viruses. Unless you need to edit, it's safer to stay in Protected View."

Or the Ribbon button: "Show only the tab names on the Ribbon" versus "Feeling cluttered? Put the ribbon away so that only the tabs show."

Part of me thinks MIcrosoft is really trying to appear hip and trendy in this user-friendliness move, but either way it does seem nicer to see less 'boring' text :p

[Dan~]

I used it yesterday, it was only in Word where the whiteness was a bit too much in your face. Everything else was fine I found.

I do believe it needs a color wheel or something so I can pick my own background or, as Word is blue have a shade of blue around the document etc.

If it gets added excellent, if not I'd still use it :)