Features

The redesign in the Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013 brings out not only some physical changes in the interface but some new and improved features within the Office applications itself. These include:

Visual Update and Redesign in Microsoft Word

The new version of Word in Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013 has a visual update making it a minimalist design with its flatter look. The colored and raised ribbon in later versions of Microsoft Word is not just separated with a horizontal rule from looking like an extended menu bar. The Tab headings are also capitalized, making them more noticeable.

The Word 2013 is now touchscreen-enabled which has a viewing mode that provides enough room between the ribbon icons. This makes it convenient for smaller screens. The Backstage view for Word is now with a much cleaner and less fussy menu. Also, the Open page now features SkyDrive for cloud users.

More Advanced Features in Microsoft Excel

New features are added into the Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013 version of Excel. It includes the Quick Analysis and the Flash Fill which can now appear as a pop-up icon from being hidden in the ribbon tab.

The Quick Analysis feature allows preview and adding charts to the spreadsheet more quickly. It also provides a much more rapid function for totals, averages as well as the other statistics. The Flash Fill feature of Excel 2013 allows much easier separation of data depending on the form of text or the date.

Collaboration is also made accessible in the Excel 2013 by saving worksheet in the cloud in SkyDrive. This is where you can share it as well as allowing others to access it simultaneously through the Web version of the Excel.

Improved Presentation Software

The Presenter View feature of the Microsoft PowerPoint was featured in the PowerPoint 2010. However, in the 2013 version of Professional Plus, it was redesigned. It now uses a black background with the presenter viewer. The viewer shows the next slide as well as the currently displaced slide.

Some new tools are also added in the PowerPoint 2013 which includes the laser pointer and the zoom. These tools can be used to highlight a particular area of the slide.

Collaboration is also made easier with the PowerPoint 2013. It now allows sharing of presentations in the default storage location in the SkyDrive cloud. It allows multiple access simultaneously where you can receive comments or replies within each slide.

Spare Design and a Streamlined Workflow

The Microsoft Outlook for Professional Plus 2013 includes a Business Contact Manager. It allows the integration of emails, schedules, contacts as well as to do lists.

The newer Outlook 2013 is also designed to cater for the touchscreen use in tablets. It has an added space in the ribbon making it convenient for smaller screens. Group working is also made easier with some new email features like sending emails across different account at once.

System Requirements

These are the system requirements to install Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013 successfully:

Computer and Processor: at least one gigahertz or faster x86 or a 64-bit processor with an SSE2 instruction set
Memory: at least 1 gigabyte RAM for the 32-bit edition; at least 2 gigabytes RAM for the 64-bit edition
Hard Disk Space: at least 3 gigabytes available disk space
Graphics Hardware: DirectX10 graphics card
Screen Resolution: 1366 x 768 or higher monitor resolution
Operating System: Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7, Windows Server 2012, Windows 8, or Windows 10,
Browser: Apple Safari 5, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, 9, or 10, Google Chrome 17.X,
Mozilla Firefox 10.x or a recent version .Net version: 3.5, 4.0, or 4.5
Any multi-touch functionality is needed for touch-enabled devices.