The interface is terrible and can't be changed. Every application in the suite locks up/crashes nearly constantly on any machine it is used on. The activation process is terrible and wastes hours of any support/IT dept's time. From a 'privacy standpoint', the software is seemingly criminally intrusive. It is clearly a product that should never have been released and is so far from functional that it can't be repaired by any 'service pack', 'hotfix', or 'patch'. It needs to be completely scrapped.
The only 'redeeming quality' of this software is that the guy who was in charge of creating it is gone from Microsoft. (Unfortunately, he is now President Obama's appointee for running the attempt at repairing the 'healthcare.gov' website...
out of the frying pan... )
When the software is installed using one profile (domain or machine account) and a different profile tries to use the software, it requires 're-activation' - which often fails because the software believes it has been installed multiple times. (This is particularly frustrating because it has to be installed by an administrative user, but most of the time, the person who 'uses' the software is not the 'administrator' - so it is almost always being 'installed' using one profile and 'used' using another profile).
The necessary intrusion into privacy created by the requirement of a "Microsoft Account" to use the software is seemingly criminal.
The tracking of, and installation of licenses is absolutely ridiculous.
An example:
Many of my clients have many users and many computers (up to 75 or so).
I could create a "Microsoft User Account" for each 'user', but these machines get moved between users, and the software license is tied to the 'machine' and not to the 'user' so as soon as that happens, the licenses and the users are no longer in line and become impossible to track.
I could create a "Microsoft User Account" for each 'computer'... and I can't even count the ways this would be a nightmare to try to track.
I actually did that up front for one client, and created Exchange email boxes for each computer so that "prove you are really you" emails from Microsoft could be received managed, and responded to, and passed out second usernames and passwords to all of the users so they could "log-in" to their Office 2013 software, and created a database of the 'computer usernames and passwords' so I could track this... unfortunately, this confused the users (as it rightfully should) so they would change the passwords for their computer's 'Microsoft User Account' thus locking me out and invalidating my database, ... and... CLUSTERF#%K!!!
As a 'best - worst case', I have had to create a single 'Microsoft User Account" for each of my clients' businesses so I can install and activate Office 2013 products. This is a whole new set of "Awesome Stupidity".
Now, I can put a new computer into a client's office and install their new license key for their oem Office 2013, and it shows up in the 'business's Microsoft User Account'. Then when I give the machine to the user, I get to 're-activate' the software (hoping that it doesn't tell me to piss-off - which happens about 40% of the time. This is a process that can only be described as a "feat of engineering created by a group of monkeys whose former jobs included 'janitor at MAD magazine headquarters' or 'beer-pong referee').
It starts with two hours of pressing phone buttons and ultimately talking to someone who tells me "yeah, nothin' I can do about that I'm just here for product activation" (which, incidentally, is done by machine until you pass through MS's ridiculous labyrinth of repetitious keystroking until the machine is convinced you are just too stupid to punch in the right numbers and allows you to talk to a person... who then asks you for the exact same set of numbers and repeats back the exact same responding set of numbers and acts dumbfounded when it still doesn't work - since it didn't work the first six times you punched or said it into the phone) followed by "I need to send you to the support group... but because it's 6:30 pm (in a process you started at 3:00pm) they are gone for the day and you'll have to call back on Monday morning"
At some point in the process, you get to log into the "Microsoft user account" and 'roll the roulette wheel of stupidity' by trying to activate the right software from a list of 40 different lines that all say "Microsoft Office 2013 Home and Business oem", but none give any indicator or differentiating factor like for instance: license key, date installed, license key last 4 digits, mother's maiden name, phase of moon when software was first activated, color or type of blood of the user's paperboy's dog's previous owner... NOTHING... RANDOM FREAKING STAB IN THE DARK - pick one, any one, hope its the license you are trying to install onto this machine, 'cause if not, you very well may kill the product on some other machine.
So through the process, the lucky support staff person gets' to waste roughly an hour and a half on average for every Microsoft Office 2013 installation. I have actually had to start telling my clients that they are going to likely have to pay an extra $100 or so per machine in order to get their new Microsoft Office software which comes on their new computer activated - that number tends to work out roughly accurately - except that it is a terrible way of trying to 'please a client'.
Oh,... and did I mention... "THE SOFTWARE CONSISTANTLY FAILS"!?!
A client tries to open a document that they have been using for 8 years and Excel doesn't say "Hey, I don't know how to deal with some element of the file that you put in here using Excel 2003, or Office 2010 (both products, by the way, which worked great) - no... instead,... it crashes. Doesn't really do any damage to the file it choked on, but the work you'd been doing on three other files which you also had open,... yeah,... that work is gone.
Yeah,.... over time, I have developed a pretty consistent spiel for client's needing new computers that goes over how absolutely terrible Office 2013 is, and explains that our options are further limited by Microsoft's yanking of all Office 2010 or previous products from market availability, and explaining the merits of both LibreOffice and OpenOffice, as well as their drawbacks. I also have a strangely static response explaining how "larger companies are not burdened by these issues because they are able to use MOPL which allows them to downgrade their productivity software to Office 2010 so they can continue to function happily, but this is really not a cost effective solution for smaller companies who primarily buy oem Office products with their replacement computers".
Unfortunately, many clients still decide they want to go with Office 2013 because they apparently believe "it really can't be that bad". The value in my 'presale descriptions' are only really realized when they come back to me a week, two weeks, or up to a month after the new machine is in place and say "wow,... you were right". The place I am left open for any further problems is when I don't impress upon them beforehand just HOW BAD OFFICE 2013 REALLY IS. In that case, they still come back to me as though I have done something wrong foe selling them this piece of $#!% software and I have to remind them of our previous discussions.
Strangely, far too few heed the warnings and buy the software anyway - but the discussion has saved many clients the costs of Microsoft Project, because the discussion of LibreOffice and OpenOffice nearly always leads to at least a small philosophical conversation about 'Open Source Software' in general, and my absolute favorite descriptive analogy in that discussion is to compare Microsoft Project at $600 v. ProjectLibre at $0 - and then further describe the costs of licensing and implementing the associated back-end server solutions, etc.
This is a saving grace for me, because even though the client has been saddled with Office 2013, they have also saved substantially on Project and it is a rare (but granted, not absolutely absent) occasion that ProjectLibre is lacking some feature or function that they actually need or want to use - and on those occasions, finding out has cost them absolutely nothing in software purchases.
Its not surprising, I suppose, that clients have grown to accept Office as a required 'cost', but still choke heavily on the price-tag of Project every time they have to buy it. The interesting thing to watch over the coming couple of years will be 'how many businesses stop accepting MS Office as a 'required cost' due to the failing of the software itself and the fact that most are being burned, at least once, by purchasing the software "against technical advice" and are learning, merely by virtue of HOW BAD Office is, that there are other options out there that both cost less and work better... I mean,... LOTS BETTER.
How many businesses that are used to accepting the cost of Microsoft Office as a cost of doing business will be moved over to open source options and satisfied by them by the time Microsoft releases its next version - which will, presumably work - such that they will no longer justify the cost of Microsoft's offering even if it is 'superior' to the open source offerings because the open source offerings are plenty sufficient and include a price tag of $0 and an installation/implementation time that is much, much shorter than Microsoft's offering.
If Microsoft doesn't make some dramatic reparations, and do it soon, I expect their market share will be reduced in this area by a very significant margin.
I am suggesting either a 'Complete Recall' of Office 2013 including an 'uninstall 2013/install 2010' process driven by the automatic update engine, or at the very least, a free and easy downgrade rights offering for anybody who has already purchased 2013 and anyone who purchases it between now and the time the next "functional product" is released.