Upgrading to Office 2013

[bschulze]

Apologies first, not sure where this should be posted too. I've searched around but have only found answers from 2013, I need to know if the issue has changed.

I'm finally going to pull the trigger, I'm still on Office 2007 and would like to go directly to Office 2013 (skipping 2010). One of the main reasons for upgrading is the BI advances in 2013 (jumping to 2013 because 2010 and 2013 are not fully compatible). I do not want to pay a monthly/annual licensing fee, would much rather purchase a standalone version. My current understanding of the issue below, can someone let me know if/what has changed and perhaps other alternatives I may not be aware of.

- Power Pivot is only offered in Office 365 E3/E4, through VL, and in the standalone Excel

Purchase Options:
1) License through 365 (nooooooo!!!!)
2) Obtain volume licensing, purchase 1 version of Office Professional, purchase 4 copies of another cheap software
3) Purchase Office Professional (stand alone) and well as Excel (stand alone)


Is my understanding correct? Has anyone gone through this exercise recently (I've not compared pricing yet), which option comes out cheaper?


Thanks in advance, cant believe MS has made it this challenging...The day I'm forced to license is the day I look into all available open source options.

 

[bschulze]

Thanks Scott, I’m not as sold on this being a completely thought out offering as I was a few days ago, not sure what direction I will go now. I want the capability of performing high volume data analysis and providing a read only dashboard for clients of mine to review and make informed decisions. A secure space without the email and/or file share (dropbox, sharefile, hightail, etc…) versioning and size issues, at first glance this offering appears to provide a solution. To be honest, I'm really tired of developing DB's and hodgepodging a solutions together between Access and Excel. As it turns out, MS does not currently offer a read only view into the Power BI/SharePoint. All users must have a full license (full cost) as well as the exact versions that I have. This was clearly developed as an internal tool, with little to no thought of outside influence. It has the potential to be a huge boon for outside consultants, but in its current state MS has made it exceedingly difficult.

Compatibility:
https://support.office.com/en-sg/ar...cel-2013-188f44fd-3cfd-4aa7-b4e6-a9402653cbf3

It’s not backwards compatible, but 2010 can be converted to 2013. There was a site I saw that displayed the different modules and where they resided in each version, but I can’t find that now.


Thanks to all for your help, much more thought is needed to determine what direction to move in.

 

[scottsen]

I think there are a few ways to get what you want, it may be easier to have a quick phone chat. Happy to do that Wed or Fri this week, I'm PST time and can do from 9am-9pm. Just drop me an email.

Two things of note:
1) It's early (very), but moving forward PowerBI.com becomes "the youtube of reports". It's just the place you go to view reports on the web. I really believe that.
2) I'm less clear on the requirements of (the v1 / original) O365+PowerBI... but certainly sharepoint supports read-only. I work with other on-prem hosting companies, and can hook you up w/ a trial there. But certainly if you were publishing to an on-prem site in SharePoint, users can get at that via the web... w/o requiring Excel (let alone addins) to view their dashboards.

Good luck on your journey! let me know if I can help fill info gaps for you.