On January 30, 2012, Microsoft released a technical preview of Office 15, build 3612.1010, to a selected group of testers bound by non-disclosure agreements.

[21] On July 16, 2012, Microsoft held a press conference to showcase Office 2013 and to release the Consumer Preview.

[22] The Office 2013 Consumer Preview is a free, fully functional version but will expire 60 days after the final product's release.

[28] Office 2013 introduces Click-To-Run 2.0 installation technology for all editions based on Microsoft App-V Version 5.

Microsoft Word can also insert video and audio from online sources as well as the capability to broadcast documents on the Web.

[52] Digitally downloaded copies of Office were also said to be permanently locked to that PC's hardware, preventing it from being transferred to any other computing device.

[53] However, many commentators saw this change as an effort to forcibly move its customers towards the subscription-based business model used by the Office 365 service.

As with previous versions, Office 2013 is made available in several distinct editions aimed towards different markets.

All traditional editions of Microsoft Office 2013 contain at least Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote and are licensed for use on one computer.

[62] These new subscription offerings were positioned as a new option for consumers wanting a cost-effective way to purchase and use Office on multiple computers in their household.

The edition, whilst visually indistinguishable from normal versions of Office 2013, contains special optimizations for ARM-based devices, such as changes to reduce battery usage (including, for example, freezing the animation of the blinking cursor for text editing during periods of inactivity), enabling touch mode by default to improve usability on tablets, and using the graphics portion of a device's SoC for hardware acceleration.

[66] On June 5, 2013, Microsoft announced that Windows RT 8.1 would add Outlook to the suite in response to public demand.

To save disk space; templates, clip art, and language packs are downloaded online rather than stored locally.

Other excluded features include the removal of support for third-party code such as macros/VBA/ActiveX controls, the removal of support for older media formats and narration in PowerPoint, editing of equations generated with the legacy Equation Editor, data models in Excel (PivotCharts, PivotTables, and QueryTables are unaffected), searching embedded media files in OneNote, along with data loss prevention, Group Policy support, and creating e-mails with information rights management in Outlook.

[69] Alongside Office RT, free versions of OneNote and the Lync client were made available as Windows Store apps.

[71] The OneNote app has since received several major updates, including camera integration, printing abilities, and multiple inking options.

[77][78] These, along with their smartphone equivalents, have been made free for personal use, though certain premium features have been paywalled and require Office 365, which includes licensing of the apps for business use.

[92] In addition to these, graphics hardware acceleration requires a screen resolution of 1024×576 pixels or larger and a DirectX 10-compliant GPU with at least 64 MB of video memory (in case of absence of the required hardware, however, Office 2013 applications can still run without graphics acceleration.