FG_AUTHORS: Robert Boland

Posted on Windows 7 News & Tips

Microsoft are hard at work getting their next version of Microsoft Office ready. The next generation of Office has been codenamed “Office 15″ and has just reached “Technical Preview” status but we can expect to see a public beta over the summer. In a blog post over on the Office blog, PJ Hough talks a bit more about Office 15.

Now that Office 15 has reached the technical preview stage, it means that it’s released to a very small number of carefully selected consumers who are bound to non disclosure acts. They test it out and give feedback, but aren’t allowed to share anything with the rest of the world. This keeps us in the dark and prevents competitors finding out what Microsoft is currently working on.

In the blog post, Hough mentions that this is Microsoft’s most ambitious project for Office to date.

At this early point in our development cycle, I’m not able to share too much about Office 15, but I can tell you Office 15 is the most ambitious undertaking yet for the Office Division. With Office 15, for the first time ever, we will simultaneously update our cloud services, servers, and mobile and PC clients for Office, Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, Project, and Visio. Quite simply, Office 15 will help people work, collaborate, and communicate smarter and faster than ever before.

Also Office 15 is just a codename for the project at the moment, it’s expected that the final release will be called either Office 2012 or 2013, depending on when it’s released.

That brings us onto another question, will Office 15 be ready in time for Windows 8?

Windows 8 will probably hit the market around the end of this year, and I’m sure Microsoft will want to have a good selection of word editing tools to go with it. But judging by how late this technical preview is, we could be waiting a while. Office 15 will more than likely feature improvements which will make it more tablet friendly, they may even make a slightly metro themed version of Office, we don’t know as of yet.

But Microsoft are probably dying to get it ready in time for Windows 8, but it will be a very tight release schedule for them if they want to get it out in time.

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