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MS Office 2013 US$9.95 Corporate/Enterprise Home Use Program - Mini-Review
IainB:
Actually, a lot of the features that he's talking about from Word 2013 were in Word 2010. I tried it for a while, then after trying it, tried to fix the fact that I didn't want the huge monolithic document and give back my corkboard which I missed by utilizing writing outliner (excellent tool, BTW if you're going with this). But in the end, I'm back to Scrivener.
-wraith808 (January 28, 2014, 05:27 PM)
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Good point. I had no practical knowledge of what v2010 was like.
The WritingOutliner you referred to has always looked like a useful writing add-in/tool for Word, but I have never used it. I have used (trialled) Pathagoras though, for evaluation purposes on behalf of corporate clients - and ended up recommending it as a powerful document management tool. However, it is really designed for managing a document repository and automating multiple document assembly/maintenance tasks, rather than writing a book. The creator of Pathagoras was always very helpful and kept extending the trial licence without any objection when asked.
IainB:
I just read the post (copied below) from MS Outlook Info, and checked the version number of my MS Office install, and it was an old version. The updates seemed to have stopped at about 6 versions previously, and the Service Pack 1 version (15.0.4569.1507) evidently had not been installed.
So I went to About Microsoft Office 2013 Click-to-Run Updates and simply followed the steps where they say:
If updates are enabled and you are still at an older version, you can retry the update check by disabling and then re-enabling updates.
* 1. Open any Office application
* 2. Click on the File tab
* 3. Click on Account (Office Account in Outlook)
* 4. Click on Update Options
* 5. Click on Disable Updates
* 6. Click on Update Options again
* 7. Finally, click on Enable Updates_____________________________
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It worked a treat.
The MS Outlook Info post is copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images - so you probably need to read the actual post for best comprehension.
How to check the Service Pack level in Office 2013
Now that Service Pak 1 for Office 2013 has become available, how do I check if I actually have it installed?
Does this Service Pack also apply to my Office 365 Home Premium installation?
Office 2013 doesn’t really like to show off that it is running at Service Pack 1 level. Instead, you have to recognize it via the MSO version number.
Finding the MSO version number
To see the MSO version number, go to File-> Office Account in Outlook (or another Office 2013 application) and press the “About Outlook” button.
At the top, you’ll see 2 build numbers numbers; 1 for Outlook and 1 for MSO.
About Microsoft Outlook - Service Pack 1 MSO version number
The good old About dialog is still there but no longer reveals SP-level information.
When the number behind MSO is 15.0.4569.1506 or higher, then you have successfully installed Service Pack 1 for Office 2013.
For Office 365 subscription based installations of Office 2013, you’ll see the version number directly in the Office Account section as well. In that case, the version number for Service Pack 1 is: 15.0.4569.1507.
Office 365 Service Pack 1 version number
Forcing Office 365 to check for updates
Update Now button for Office 365When you are using Office 2013 as part of an Office 365 subscription, then the Service Pack update isn’t offered via Windows Update nor can you use the standalone installer.
Instead, the update will be installed automatically after a few days, or you can force the update detection by temporarily disabling Automatic Updates and then directly enable it again.
You can do this via:
File-> Office Account-> Update Options
A few seconds after you’ve re-enabled Updates, Office will show a notification that an update is available and will begin to download it. After it has been downloaded confirm that you want to start the installation or simply close any Office applications when being prompted.
Office 365 - Updates for this product are ready to install.
When the update has already been downloaded for you but you haven’t applied it yet, then you can start the installation of it via the Apply Updates command in the list that shows up when you click on the Update Options button.
Note: Service Pack 1 introduced an “Update Now” command to the Update Options button so in the future, manually checking for updates is much more intuitive.
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dr_andus:
Anyway, now that I do qualify, I'm still wondering about the value of upgrading from MS Office 2010 Pro to 2013 Pro.-dr_andus (January 19, 2014, 03:58 PM)
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Well, the value of getting the latest and greatest versions of Microsoft's flagship suite for $9.95 should count for something! :)
-Innuendo (January 19, 2014, 05:23 PM)
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Finally I got around to installing it today. It was painless enough. I've only tried out Word 2013 so far, but the first experience was disappointing vis-a-vis Word 2010. I must be one of the unlucky ones, but I ran into the infamous font rendering problem. It just looks awful, all pixelated and washed out. Apparently this is a side-effect of making the OS tablet-friendly.
I tried the solutions suggested by Microsoft, but none of them worked. So I'm back to Word 2010 for now, until there is some kind of a fix for this.
IainB:
^^ I don't have any problems except that I don't like the glary screens of Office 2013 on my laptops.
Did you try this too?:
why the fonts in word 2013 are blurry? - Microsoft Community
In reply to Doug Robbins - Word MVPs post on February 7, 2013:
Check under File>Options>Advanced>Display and check the box for "Use subpixel positioning to smooth fonts on screen" and also try changing the setting for "Disable hardware graphics acceleration"
___________--
OUTSTANDING!!!! Doug, Your The Man!!! BY GOD IT WORKS NOW. Can you tell I'm Happy? I can get out of the Doghouse now with my wife. As you suggested: checked the Display: the "Use subpixel positioning..." was already checked on (presuming it is the Default). Then I found the "Disable hardware graphics acceleration" box Unchecked. I checked the box and exited. Immediately the document on the screen (and Word menus) were clear. I next went to the Font menu box and scrolled up and down the listed Fonts. Instant change for the selected area (I had selected the whole doc) per the highlighted Fonts. Really Impressive to see such changes occur real-time. Next, loaded Excel and a file with text, numbers and graphics. Clear as a bell. I am going to send the Microsoft tech rep who `helped' me last and tell him YOU found the answer to their ****-a-Mamie new feature. Three Cheers for Doug! Hip-Hip-Hooray, Hip-Hip-Hooray,Hip-Hip-Hooray!
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dr_andus:
Thanks, I did try that. Elsewhere it's been suggested that there is no solution to this yet.
I'm on Win7 64-bit, and I installed the 32-bit version of MS Office 2013.
RolandOH replied on
The cause for Office, Modern UI and IE10 to look so bad is that they use a new graphics rendering API offered in Windows 8 (and with updates on Windows 7, too).
The new font rendering engine offered by this new API simply doesn't have Clear Type implemented. So unless Microsoft patches this new API to support Clear Type, no program using this API will ever be able to do so.
The reason why Firefox (and Chrome, to an extend) are able to use Clear Type is because they still rely on the old Windows font-rendering API.
This is a bad decision by Microsoft, but their reasoning behind that (from what i think) is also quite clear: It is based on the assumption that their future will be in the tablet market. Since ClearType only works in one direction (horizontally, that is), it is totally useless if you rotate the tablet. The other thing is animation: if you animate a Clear Type anti-aliased font, its boundaries will start to flicker. And since Modern UI is a lot about animations and transitions, this would offer a bad experience.
Last thing is the much higher ppi (pixels per inch) offered by tablet screens (>200ppi) in respect to computer monitors (mostly <=120ppi), where grayscale-anti aliasing is totally sufficient for crisp fonts.
And the worst thing: the Surface has a display with only 148ppi! So fonts look crappy on their reference design tablet.
The bad thing is: no one can help you with the font rendering problem. You're on your own, as a consumer. For me that meant to downgrade back to Office 2010, ignoring Modern UI and all apps completely and ditching IE 10 (but hey, that's a no-brainer, isn't it?).
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