Any Office 2015 news?

[Mazhar]

I am eagerly awaiting Office 2015, is there any news about it?

[The Evil Overlord]

Yes it'll include Word

:p

 

 

 

edit

 

Most of the rival sites claim it'll be released nearer to the end of this year, I haven't seen much else....

[nitins60]

Is it for me alone?

I believe, Office is already a decade advanced than Users usage and century advanced than competitors.

 

Let them take their own time to come up with new application to easy the professional work further more ;)

[Anibal P]

Wonder how long before the full suite is retired for Office 365 only, hell 90% of the people at work would be fine, guessing most users would be ok also, and they can make more money off subs 

[Atlanowl]

I wonder if there are any news about Office for Mac 2014

[Guest]

Well, one thing is sure, they won't be releasing InfoPath 2015/6. http://blogs.office.com/2014/01/31/update-on-infopath-and-sharepoint-forms/

 

I don't like how they abandon stuff. They could easily release that application for free if they don't plan on improving it in the future. :( Same story with Accounting.

[+Asmodai MVC]

Is it for me alone?

I believe, Office is already a decade advanced than Users usage and century advanced than competitors.

 

Let them take their own time to come up with new application to easy the professional work further more ;)

 

The consensus for us at work is that MS screwed up Office 2013 in trying to touch-enable it instead of just making a separate touch based version.  As a result my work at least (happily) continues to use Office 2010.  Now we'd probably continue to use Office 2010 as it isn't so much that we need feature X or Y that it lacks however standard support for Office 2010 ends in 2015 I believe so if we want to continue to get patches (specifically security ones) then we'll need to upgrade.

 

With MS having more time to produce touch-centric versions that are separate from the normal Desktop version (such as the release of Office for iPad) as well as the backtracking on touch-heavy Windows 8 to be more "desktop" (mouse/keyboard) friendly again the hope is that Office 2015 will once again offer a product we're happy to upgrade to.

[Argi]

The consensus for us at work is that MS screwed up Office 2013 in trying to touch-enable it instead of just making a separate touch based version.  As a result my work at least (happily) continues to use Office 2010.  Now we'd probably continue to use Office 2010 as it isn't so much that we need feature X or Y that it lacks however standard support for Office 2010 ends in 2015 I believe so if we want to continue to get patches (specifically security ones) then we'll need to upgrade.

 

With MS having more time to produce touch-centric versions that are separate from the normal Desktop version (such as the release of Office for iPad) as well as the backtracking on touch-heavy Windows 8 to be more "desktop" (mouse/keyboard) friendly again the hope is that Office 2015 will once again offer a product we're happy to upgrade to.

 

Interacting with the UI with a mouse hasn't changed between 2010 and 2013.  At least for nothing that I've used it for.  Unless you're talking about the menu bar?

[+Asmodai MVC]

Wonder how long before the full suite is retired for Office 365 only, hell 90% of the people at work would be fine, guessing most users would be ok also, and they can make more money off subs 

There is ZERO chance the company I work for would ever buy Office 365.  They'd never put their data on some other companies servers.  In fact, access to Office 365 and OneDrive are blocked at work so you can't even use them if you have a personal account.  They're building their own "cloud" where they own the servers but they're located in datacenters shared by the different locations instead of each location having it's own set of servers.  So they ARE adopting the "cloud" methology but they're doing it all internally, not outsourcing it to some other company that can look through the files on "their server".  I'd imagine the same is true for most large companies that make up a good portion of MS's Office income.  365 is great for students and small businesses who can't afford to build up their own datacenters but I don't think it's ever going to take off in large corporations.

[+Asmodai MVC]

Interacting with the UI with a mouse hasn't changed between 2010 and 2013.  At least for nothing that I've used it for.  Unless you're talking about the menu bar?

So what would we upgrade for?  The point is just that there is nothing really to compel an upgrade in 2013 as most of the dev effort was focused on adding touch friendly features that we don't care about.  I didn't mean to imply that it got much WORSE for non-touch just that there's nothing to merit spending on an upgrade (there may even be a few nice tweaks but Office isn't cheap to buy company-wide so it's not worth the upgrade).  There probably won't be anything in Office 2015 to merit spending on an upgrade either as far as features, we're quite happy with 2010.  Unfortunately standard support for 2010 ends in 2015 so we'll either have to pay for extended support or upgrade.  So in all likelihood we'll upgrade to 2015 just because that buys of 5 more years of standard support which is probably cheaper in the long run then paying for 5 more years of extended support for 2010.

[Guest]

There is ZERO chance the company I work for would ever buy Office 365.  They'd never put their data on some other companies servers.  In fact, access to Office 365 and OneDrive are blocked at work so you can't even use them if you have a personal account.  They're building their own "cloud" where they own the servers but they're located in datacenters shared by the different locations instead of each location having it's own set of servers.  So they ARE adopting the "cloud" methology but they're doing it all internally, not outsourcing it to some other company that can look through the files on "their server".  I'd imagine the same is true for most large companies that make up a good portion of MS's Office income.  365 is great for students and small businesses who can't afford to build up their own datacenters but I don't think it's ever going to take off in large corporations.

 

You do realise what you just described is possible with Office 365 and Azure on-the-premise, right?

[Argi]

So what would we upgrade for?  The point is just that there is nothing really to compel an upgrade in 2013 as most of the dev effort was focused on adding touch friendly features that we don't care about.  I didn't mean to imply that it got much WORSE for non-touch just that there's nothing to merit spending on an upgrade (there may even be a few nice tweaks but Office isn't cheap to buy company-wide so it's not worth the upgrade).  There probably won't be anything in Office 2015 to merit spending on an upgrade either as far as features, we're quite happy with 2010.  Unfortunately standard support for 2010 ends in 2015 so we'll either have to pay for extended support or upgrade.  So in all likelihood we'll upgrade to 2015 just because that buys of 5 more years of standard support which is probably cheaper in the long run then paying for 5 more years of extended support for 2010.

 

 

You do realise what you just described is possible with Office 365 and Azure on-the-premise, right?

 

Yeah, sounds like O365 is the way to go.  

[Harrison H.]

There is ZERO chance the company I work for would ever buy Office 365.  They'd never put their data on some other companies servers.  In fact, access to Office 365 and OneDrive are blocked at work so you can't even use them if you have a personal account.  They're building their own "cloud" where they own the servers but they're located in datacenters shared by the different locations instead of each location having it's own set of servers.  So they ARE adopting the "cloud" methology but they're doing it all internally, not outsourcing it to some other company that can look through the files on "their server".  I'd imagine the same is true for most large companies that make up a good portion of MS's Office income.  365 is great for students and small businesses who can't afford to build up their own datacenters but I don't think it's ever going to take off in large corporations.

Small companies... Yep, that must be why large companies and governments with 10's of thousands of users are switching over to Office 365.

[+Asmodai MVC]

You do realise what you just described is possible with Office 365 and Azure on-the-premise, right?

 

What does that matter?  I wasn't saying it wasn't possible.  I'm not trying to even say anything good or bad about Office 365 or even Azure (which I personally think is excellent btw).  The fact is my company isn't even looking at Office 365, not even considering the possibility.  Now maybe that's dumb of them, I don't know, I don't even care, it's irrelevant.  I'm pretty sure my company isn't the only one with this sort of thinking (right or wrong).  The point being is these companies WANT to buy stand alone Office products.  They have LOTS of money and are willing to PAY for stand alone Office products... even upgrade every 5 years to keep standard support.  So it would be a very poor business decision for MS to just stop selling stand alone Office to these companies.  There is a good chance that the ill will created by trying to force them to go to 365 by retiring support for old versions without releasing a new stand alone version would force an "anything but MS" solution instead.  Maybe MS will eventually get companies like mine to come around with things like Azure on-the-premises... who knows what's going to happen 2 or 3 cycles (10 or 15 years) down the road but I can tell you that trying to force them almost certainly wouldn't work so at least for the next cycle 2015-2020 I don't think it's going to happen.

[rfirth]

What does that matter?  I wasn't saying it wasn't possible.

 

You just ranted about how large companies won't switch to Office 365 because they don't want to put their data on some other companies servers.

 

When you were told that it wasn't true, that you could use Office 365 with internal servers owned by your company... you say it doesn't matter?

 

Over 60% of Fortune 500 companies use Office 365. Your argument that it's not for large businesses, only small businesses and students, is wrong.

[Mr. Dee]

Why are you eagerly awaiting a new release? Typing a Word document is no different in Word 2013 vs Word 95. You sound like a enthusiast who craves seeing a splash screen with a new year than actually harnessing any actual value from the products features.

[COKid]

The OP may be inflicted with the dreaded FOMO. As a recovering FOMO addict myself, I can tell you, it is beatable.

[MorganX]

They have LOTS of money and are willing to PAY for stand alone Office products...

For people like you (us), Office 365 is just a licensing model. Microsoft will make it unattractive to license it any other way. They're taking a hardball posture, which is scary enough depending on your compliance in many different areas that MS can choose to enforce.

You can install locally and activate in the cloud of you have a volume license or EA.

Why are you eagerly awaiting a new release? Typing a Word document is no different in Word 2013 vs Word 95. You sound like a enthusiast who craves seeing a splash screen with a new year than actually harnessing any actual value from the products features.

I'd say close to no difference 2010 to 2013, not major difference but more connectivity and SharePoint integration. 95 is going a little too far back, but in general you're right. That's why MS is pushing hard to make Office SaaS, sooner rather than later.

[Guest]

What does that matter?  I wasn't saying it wasn't possible.  I'm not trying to even say anything good or bad about Office 365 or even Azure (which I personally think is excellent btw).  The fact is my company isn't even looking at Office 365, not even considering the possibility.  Now maybe that's dumb of them, I don't know, I don't even care, it's irrelevant.  I'm pretty sure my company isn't the only one with this sort of thinking (right or wrong).  The point being is these companies WANT to buy stand alone Office products.  They have LOTS of money and are willing to PAY for stand alone Office products... even upgrade every 5 years to keep standard support.  So it would be a very poor business decision for MS to just stop selling stand alone Office to these companies.  There is a good chance that the ill will created by trying to force them to go to 365 by retiring support for old versions without releasing a new stand alone version would force an "anything but MS" solution instead.  Maybe MS will eventually get companies like mine to come around with things like Azure on-the-premises... who knows what's going to happen 2 or 3 cycles (10 or 15 years) down the road but I can tell you that trying to force them almost certainly wouldn't work so at least for the next cycle 2015-2020 I don't think it's going to happen.

 

That's different then. You were talking about cloud stuff mostly, which Office 365 doesn't necessarily translate to. It is just a licensing model, you can still use the offline apps and keep all of your data locally.

[+Asmodai MVC]

You just ranted about how large companies won't switch to Office 365 because they don't want to put their data on some other companies servers.

That's an awfully defensive interpretation you have there. What I was saying is that not ALL companies would be willing to switch to Office 365. I gave my company as an example and I stated that I suspect there are other large companies in the same boat. Now maybe I shouldn't have said "most large companies" because I have no research on that, nor do I care to do any because I really don't care that much. I DID preface that part with "I imagine" however so I didn't try to come off as an expert or any sort of authoritative source on that particular point. That is in no way a "Rant" so I don't know why people feel the need to jump to Office 365's defense as if I insulted or degraded it in some way. I think it's a fine product, I made no judgement on it's quality at all in my post.

When you were told that it wasn't true, that you could use Office 365 with internal servers owned by your company... you say it doesn't matter?

I at no point said MS didn't offer a product that would do what I described. Therefore pointing out that they do as if I did is irrelevant. There are companies out there (such as mine) that aren't looking to buy any such product from anyone but are more than happy to buy stand alone office every 5 years. It's ok, calm down, I wasn't attacking MS or Office 365, you don't have to come to their defense.

If it helps let's assume my company is just a bunch of Luddites who fear the advance of technology and cower in the corner at every mention of the word "cloud". I'm sure they're not the only one, again maybe I was wrong about the "most large companies" part I don't really care enough to research or debate it. It was an off the top of my head remark based on my experience with my company and lets just say, to move beyond it, I stand correct on that point. That wasn't the overall point of my comment though nor does disproving it invalidate my overall point (which is why I said it's irrelevant). The overall point is there are these "luddite" companies out there with a lot of money who are not only willing but WANT to buy stand alone Office. For MS to take that away and try to "force" them to 365 would be a mistake in my opinion. Now maybe in time more and more (even my company) would come around but I still think there is a very profitable business to be made in selling stand alone versions of Office. Maybe you disagree, that's fine, neither of use can really PROVE that point because the only way to prove it would to be have MS do it and see what happens. I was just expressing my opinions, as is often done in forums, based off my personal experience. Again I wasn't attacking or ranting about anything.

[+Asmodai MVC]

Why are you eagerly awaiting a new release? Typing a Word document is no different in Word 2013 vs Word 95. You sound like a enthusiast who craves seeing a splash screen with a new year than actually harnessing any actual value from the products features.

 

I can't speak for the OP but I know in my case my company would be more than happy to continue using Office 2010 if MS were to continue standard support of it indefinately.  That would be bad business for MS though because then lots of people would never upgrade and the flow of money would cease.  It is therefore reasonable for MS to support a given product for a set amount of time.  In MS's case this is typically 5 years which is typically considered pretty reasonable.  Which means every 5 years you should upgrade if you like the product so MS has income to continue developing (and supporting) it.  In our case since we have Office 2010 we need to upgrade in 2015 (or pay for extended support) so if you are pretty sure you're going to get something new there's naturally some excitement about what new things it may contain.  That's why I'm excited about hearing what's in Office 2015.

[Michael Scrip]

There is ZERO chance the company I work for would ever buy Office 365.  They'd never put their data on some other companies servers. 

Office365 is the name of Microsoft's Office subscription plan. It also includes cloud storage on Microsoft's servers.

 

But you can still save your documents locally onto hard drives and local servers, right?

[derviskemal]

All of this is about, but all of this is NDA..

[Mr. Dee]

Office has pretty much reached a point of feature saturation. Yes, there may be other opportunities on the developer site with Store add ons the fill any gaps missing with creative third party functionality, but this remains a unique niche. The core functionality of what makes Office, 'Office' has already been cemented as far back as Office 2007. I will admit, 2013 certainly makes Cloud integration a first class citizen, seamlessly saving and editing documents and having Office available anywhere, any device. What I am saying, many users still don't find these as significantly interesting to make Office upgrades a worth while cause to upgrade every new release. Microsoft realizes that, which gives reason for the subscription model. I suspect by either by Office 16 or 17, this will be the only way to acquire and use Office.

 

Taking into consideration Office 2007 seems to be holding up well in this age of cloud computing, the if ain't broke, good enough crowd are having less of a reason to upgrade to newer releases. Someone said, the difference between Word 2013 and Word 95 is taking it too far. No, its not, the fact is, the core behavior of working in Word 1.0 (GUI) vs Word 15.0 is practically the same. Yes, dressing up a document (formatting) is certainly an overwhelming different experience. Office 2007 I think has pretty much met most of the needs of what persons need an Office productivity suite for. Again, I know that Office is more than the suite these days. What an Enterprise user needs vs a consumer is completely different. Microsoft has made Office tightly integrated with the Office Servers since 2003 version. If you are deploying Office on a large scale, it just makes sense upgrading the Servers to go with it: SharePoint, Lync, Exchange to really get the most value.

[blerk]

I have a few specific niggles with Office 13. The first is that the interface is still not 100% consistent. I'd rather stay out of the little "Settings" dialogue boxes that you can activate in the bottom right corner of most ribbon tab sections.

Formatting tables in Office can also be a right royal pain - I find that formatting the often breaks things like alignment.

Another small annoyance I have is that I have a fair few fonts installed. Navigating the large dropdown for fonts can be annoying especially as it can be a bit slow. Perhaps a more Word:Mac like navigation would be better where not every single font gets it's own entry - they are rather grouped. Calibri for instance includes calibri light, rather than the latter being a completely different font. 

 

As silly as it sounds, the other features I want to see in Office (Word specifically) are features that are somewhat outside of what a Word processing program is about - i.e. I'd like to see better PDF capabilities and for Word to take on more of Publisher's capabilities. 

 

Also, I'd like them to fix page numbers in multi-section documents. Now there is a feature that is completely and utterly broken. The minute I insert more than two sections, Word forgets how to count and I get all sorts of strange and wonderful page numbers. 

[Max Norris]

Why are you eagerly awaiting a new release? Typing a Word document is no different in Word 2013 vs Word 95.

Office is quite a lot more than just Word.. for example, personally I think Outlook added some nice new features but took a few steps backwards in a few places.. Pasting RTF text into OneNote is.. problematic. Still. (And damnit let me add proper tabs without having to resort to silly autocorrect tricks...) On the plus side the cloud integration is a very nice addition, got them all talking with OneDrive and DropBox seamlessly. But still, lots of little places where things can be improved. Sitting back and stagnating isn't a great thing for a suite to do either.

 

The first is that the interface is still not 100% consistent.

True.. but still, it's miles ahead of 2007 though.. some programs used the ribbon, some were ye olde 95 interface with a nasty blue coat of paint, etc.. a few more refinements and it should be pretty close to perfect. Well, maybe add a "STOP YELLING AT ME" setting like they did with Visual Studio.