Microsoft Office 2013 RTM (Released To Manufacturers) Announced, Free Upgrade Offer For Office 2010 Customers

Microsoft announced that Office team has signed off on Office 2013 RTM (Release to Manufacturing) build. Reaching RTM milestone means that Microsoft has completed its testing phase.

According to Microsoft, general availability of Office 2013 is planned for the first quarter of 2013. If a consumer purchases Office 2010 from local retailers or re-sellers, starting October 19, they will receive the new Office for free upon release. In addition, a preview release of the new Office will be available on Windows RT devices after Windows 8 launches on October 26.

office-2013-rtm

About the release, Microsoft says, “this is the most ambitious release of Office we’ve ever done. It spans the full family of Office applications, servers and cloud services. The new Office has a fresh, touch friendly design that works beautifully on Windows 8 and unlocks modern scenarios in social, reading, note-taking, meetings and communications. We are proud to achieve this milestone and are eager to deliver this exciting release to our customers.”

The following is planned for enterprise and business customers with early access:

  • We will begin rolling out new capabilities to Office 365 Enterprise customers in our next service update, starting in November through general availability.
  • Volume Licensing customers with Software Assurance will be able to download the Office 2013 applications as well as other Office products including SharePoint 2013, Lync 2013 and Exchange 2013 through the Volume Licensing Service Center by mid-November. These products will be available on the Volume Licensing price list on December 1.
  • IT professionals and developers will be able to download the final version via their TechNet or MSDN subscriptions by mid-November.

In the coming days, Microsoft is expected to announce more specifics on the general availability dates of Office 2013. In the meantime, you can give Office 2013 pre-release version a try to see what you can expect from the modern Office.

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