Following are the major changes in Office 2013 client when working with SharePoint servers.

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Below are the major changes in Office 2013 client when integrating with SharePoint 2013 servers. More or less, each version of Office has its own compatibility with SharePoint. These compatibilities are not lost with newer versions of SharePoint, but you can't make use of the new integration.

Having said that, you can still use Office 2010 clients with reduced functionality. As with all prior versions of the product, SharePoint 2013 integration works best with the same version of Office client which is Office 2013.

With regards to SharePoint 2013 integration with Exchange 2010, the eDiscovery and Site Mailbox feature cannot be used with Exchange 2010 and Outlook 2010.

 

Following are the major changes in Office 2013 client when working with SharePoint servers

Major people-oriented enhancements in Office 2013.

Just like in earlier versions of Office, name.dll contains NameCtrl ActiveX interfaces to:

· Show Instant Messenger availability.

· Launch a person card from SharePoint.

If Microsoft Lync is signed in, then this control retrieves user information directly from Lync in order to display presence information or contact details.

For Office 2013, enhancements were made especially for Internet Explorer (IE) 10 and for non-IE browsers.

Using Drag and Drop in Document Libraries in Office 2013 

In Office System 2010, the only possibilities to use drag and drop for files are:

· Multiple Upload dialog: It is only possible to drag files from the desktop into this window in order to upload files to the SharePoint library.

· Open the document library in Windows Explorer: This allows copy/move operations between Desktop and SharePoint Library.

While the Explorer View option is still fully valid, Office 2013 now directly integrates the Multiple Upload feature into document library views by adding a command text area on top of a document library:

This command text area combines two features from Office System 2010:

· The new document link will open the single file upload window just as the previous Add Document link.

· You can now directly use the command text area to drag and drop files into the document library. It is not necessary any more to first open a separate Multiple Upload Files window first.

Drag and Drop now allows the following scenarios:

· Drag file(s) from the user desktop into the browser window to upload files to SharePoint.

· Drag file(s) in the browser from the current folder into a sub folder to move files into that folder.

· Drag file(s) from the browser to the user desktop to download a copy.

· Drag file(s) from one library to another library (in the quick launch area).

Adding Documents in Office System 2013 

Drag and Drop will only work with IE with installed Office 2013 client ActiveX control or with Safari or Chrome with HTML5 code.

Users had a broad range of options how to add documents to a SharePoint library in the previous Office System. Some of these options were significantly changed with Office System 2013 to make the file upload procedure easier for users.

The following list describes the major changes compared to Office System 2010:

No Upload Multiple Documents command in the ribbon any more: The Documents ribbon for document libraries now only contains the Upload Document command for single file uploads. The Multiple Upload command in the ribbon does not exist anymore

The command to upload multiple files became obsolete as this feature is now directly integrated in the Document Library View itself as shown in the previous section.

· New Command Text area in document libraries: As described earlier, the Add Document link has been moved from the bottom to the top of a document list. Therefore, it is not necessary to scroll down a document library any more.

This link is now also replaced by a command text area that combines two main features directly within the document library view:

· The click to add link will open the Single File Upload window just as the previous Add Document link.

· You can now directly use the command text area in order to drag and drop files into the Document Library. It is not necessary any more to first open a separate Multiple Upload Files window first. This command text will display different text information for different use cases:

· Single File Upload Window: Clicking the Upload Document command in the document library ribbon or using the Click to add command text will open the single file upload dialog. Now it allows to directly upload files to a specific folder. Clicking the add link will open the following new Upload Document dialog:

· Adding new documents via Add Document Callout: In SharePoint 2010, the New Document command required a template for the document library or content types. If you are using a Word template for a document library then the New Document command will only provide the possibility to create new Word documents.

In SharePoint 2013, the clickable text new document will now open an add document callout window. It allows a user to quickly create a new Office document or browse their computer to add an existing document:

Following are Controls being used for multiple upload in office 2013

In Office 2007 we used an unmanaged ActiveX control STSUpld.UploadCtl in stsupld.dll to provide a multiple upload window for MOSS 2007 and SharePoint 2010. 

For Office 2010 we have re-written this same control as managed code. This however had some issues like:

· Performance decrease (we e.g. need to instantiate Framework first, also creating and managing a window turned out to consume ¼ of the overall runtime)

· Errors for files > 200 MB due to .Net limitations

· ActiveX cannot be used in 3^rd party browsers like in IE.

 

For Office 2013 for SharePoint 2013 we are now using two different approaches depending on the used browser on the client:

· For all versions of Internet Explorer we are still using an ActiveX Control inside stsupld.dll. This control is now written as windowless ATL ActiveX (non-managed code again) in order to increase performance.

· For IE10 in immersive mode (which doesn't allow ActiveX), FireFox and Chrome we are using HTML5.

Sharing

One new feature in Office System 2013 is the possibility to share documents or folders for others directly from the document callout.

SharePoint 2013 allows specifying an Everyone claim in Sharing options to quickly share documents with all users.

When clicking the document callout, SharePoint provides a short summary for the selected file/folder. You can also check with whom this resource is being shared.

Sharing Options on MySites

Only MySites will provide an additional sharing column in document libraries where share options could be directly accessed. The lock symbol for the first file indicates that the file is not yet shared. The second file is already shared as indicated by the people symbol in the Sharing column:

These sharing symbols provide the following user interaction:

· Hovering cursor over this symbol will show to whom this file is currently shared.

· Clicking on this symbol will open a Shared With dialog showing the same information in a separate window:

· Right-click this symbol will open the document callout (just like in normal content sites).

    
Office 2013 Plugins for Chrome and Firefox

As already noted we are still using the NameCtrl ActiveX control for presence information in Internet Explorer. For FireFox and Chrome Office2013 now contains a plugin for Firefox and Chrome browsers (npspwrap.dll in the Office binaries folder) to provide the same functionality for users as the corresponding ActiveX control for IE:

· User can see presence

· Hover card behavior is the same

· Full expanded person card behavior is the same

Please note that users will not be prompted for approval or additional downloads to use this plugin Firefox or Chrome.

Note:

This feature only works with Office 2013 client and SharePoint 2013 Servers.

 

New Trust Behavior in Office 2013

The Office 2010 version of name.dll only works if the host site is in the intranet or trusted zone. This does not work well for non-SSL external SharePoint sites like BPOS-L. This is because the external site is not in one of these trusted zones. But Office 2013 will still check if the site is not trusted from the Intranet and Trusted Zone checks. However if this fails, then name.dll will now also check the list of approved sites for this specific ActiveX control according to https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd433050(v=VS.85).aspx:

· It allows name.dll execution if the site URL is approved for the add-on.

· We will do this same check regardless of our host browser (IE, Firefox, or Chrome).

· If the URL is not approved, then we will not execute as in Office 2010.

 

Office 2013 provides co-authoring functionality

As with Office 2010, Office 2013 provides co-authoring functionality for Word 2013, PowerPoint 2013 and OneNote 2013. Office 2013 introduces co-authoring functionality for Visio 2013. If you are using SharePoint Online or have SharePoint 2013 configured to use Office Web Apps Server, users can also co-author documents in Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote Web Apps.

<https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff718249(v=office.15).aspx

 

Cheers!
SOURAV