After years of teasing, Microsoft has today released beta versions of their touch interface Office applications.
These are proper touch interface versions of Office programs, not the lame ‘touch’ button in Office 2013 which merely makes the ribbon spacing larger.
For Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, there’s now beta versions released of the software that will be released later this year
Update: After a rocky start, the three apps are now available from the Windows 10 Store. We found them quickly by searching for ‘Word Preview’ ‘Excel Preview’ and PowerPoint Preview’.
There a special requirement if you want to try the apps out:
Windows 10. The apps will only work with the Technical Preview of Windows 10. That’s currently at build 9926 and you’d be a brave geek indeed to run it on any computer you rely upon. The current Windows 10 release isn’t stable enough for that (there’s a long way to go). Microsoft talks about trying it on a desktop or laptop computer, but most will be running it in a virtual machine instead.
The arrival of these apps has been greeted with the usual hype. Gushing praise appears in comments and social media from the moment of release. The only question is whether Microsoft pays for it or the uncritical hype is from Redmond fanboys eager to jump on the latest bandwagon.
Office Watch will reserve judgement until we’ve actually tried the apps properly, but here’s a few quick thoughts.
- These apps are far from being replacements for the ‘full’ Office for Windows or even Office for Mac. They are a subset of the full array of Office power, more like the Office Web Apps in scope.
- Some commentators are saying Office for Windows 10 has a ‘cleaner’ interface than Office 2013. That’s a polite way of saying that Office for Windows 10 has LESS features than Outlook for Windows/Mac.
- Windows 10 apps work in a re-sizable window, not just full screen (as in Windows 8). It’s possible to use these Office apps in windows on a traditional desktop.
- You can only edit one document at a time! We can see no way to open multiple documents or worksheets, which people commonly do. If so, this is a severe limitation, a deal-breaker for many people.
- Word for Windows 10 supports DOCX, DOCM, DOC and ODT file formats only. No RTF support.
Universal Apps
These apps are called ‘Universal’ by Microsoft. That means they are a single program that will run on any device with a compatible operating system. In this case the Office apps will run on any computer, laptop, tablet to smartphone which runs the Windows 10 preview.
That’s different from the current situation where there’s different programs (with different features and behaviors) for desktop/laptop Windows, the (few) people with Windows RT and yet another set of programs for Windows Phone.
Here’s Microsoft’s example of OneNote as both a full screen app and the same program on a smartphone (bottom right). All the images in this article are from Microsoft (due to their troubles delivering the apps).
Outlook Calendar and Mail
Still don’t like this. The ‘Outlook’ app for Windows 10 is only Calendar and Mail with Contacts ignored (much like the preview Outlook app for iOS and Android). Is Contacts coming later? Will we be expected to use the in-built Window 10 People app (yuck)?
Word for Windows 10
There’s only 6 tabs in the preview (File, Home, Insert, Layout, Review, View) with Design, References, Mailings and Developer missing compared to Word 2013.
Excel for Windows 10
Similarly, the Excel preview has File, Home, Insert, Formulas, Review and View tabs only.
PowerPoint for Windows 10
