Microsoft has announced a preview of the next release of Office - Office 2013 - that you'll be able to try out officially.

The Office 15 Technical Preview includes desktop versions of Access, Excel, InfoPath, Lync, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher and Word, with Metro-style interfaces - collectively they're all part of the Office 2013 suite.

One major difference with Office 2013 is that there's a new way of buying it. Although boxed copies and online downloads are still available, you can also get an Office 365 subscription that gets you all Office core apps for all the platforms you use (there are Home, Small Business, ProPlus and Enterprise plans to choose from). Instead of having to pay again for Mac Office or the iPhone OneNote app, you just get them all.

• Read our Hands on: Office 2013 review

Office 2013 release date and price

Microsoft isn't yet talking about price, or when we'll see these new Office apps. We do know that the Windows RT version of Office will be included when the Surface tablet ships, which Microsoft said would be when Windows 8 is generally available (so sometime between July and October according to our predictions) – but those could be preview versions of the apps, and the expectation is that Office 2013 itself may not be launching until (as the name suggests) early 2013.

Office 2013 is on demand

"You're buying Office for yourself, not for a device," Office general manager Chris Pratley told TechRadar. No news on whether that includes new Office apps for iPad, but if it does, you won't pay any extra for them.

And on Windows at least you don't have to install the apps the traditional way; when you open a document, the application streams down automatically from the Internet and installs itself - starting with the code to open the document and then adding the features you're most likely to use first, until you have the whole program.

The plan is for this to be fast enough that it works on a PC you use at a friend's house or in a hotel business centre; you'll get your Office apps 'on demand', with your settings - and your recent documents, synced courtesy of SkyDrive (whether they're online or on a computer, as long as it has the SkyDrive app on). Those show up in a new 'welcome' view, along with templates for new documents and links to jump back to the page you were on when you last edited a document.

Office 2013 Metro and desktop apps

However you buy it, Office 2013 will include both Metro and desktop applications. In this release, the only Metro apps are OneNote and Lync - which will be available at the same time as the desktop apps - but it's "just a matter of time" for the other Office apps Christ Pratley told us.

OneNote really shines in Metro, taking advantage of touchscreens to make it easy to navigate between pages and notebooks or to have the whole page for taking notes on. Even if you don't use a pen to take notes, touch comes in handy for editing; when you select text with your finger a radial menu opens with contextual tools for formatting text, undoing edits, applying tags or snapping pictures with the camera on your tablet.

Office 2013 Lync in Metro

The Metro Lync client bears some similarities to the People app, showing a list of frequent contacts and recent conversations, as well as showing details of any upcoming online meetings. You can combine video and IM conversations, sliding the video to the side if you want to have more room for text chat. And you can have HD video calls with more than one person at once.

The familiar desktop Office apps have had a Metro makeover; not just taking away interface chrome like shadows and bevelled edges and adding a touch mode that puts more space between buttons and key tools on the right side of the screen where your thumb will be, but also simplifying the layout of elements and getting rid of windows that pop up and hide what you're doing. So when you hit Reply in Outlook, the new message opens in the same place.

You can also switch between all, unread and flagged mail the way you can in the Windows Phone mail client and you can 'peek' at contacts and calendar appointments right from the main Outlook screen. There's better social network integration, with a feed from multiple social networks and links to start video and VOIP calls directly.

Office 2013 interface tweaks

Word's reviewing and track changes features get the Metro-style simplification and you can finally reply to comments. You can also open PDFs and turn them into Word documents you can copy data from. You can embed videos in Word documents; they show up well in the new two-page reading view (which has a white-one-black view for reading at night and works nicely in portrait mode on a tablet). And layout is generally easier, with DTP-style guides to help you snap elements into place so they're precisely positioned.

Office 2013 smart fill and layouts

Excel is smarter about filling in repeated information like lists; if you start retyping parts of a messy table you've pasted from a Web site (like a credit card statement), it will extract the data neatly and fill it in for you. And the new Quick Analysis lens suggests the best chart to use and automatically creates pivot tables to help you analyse data.

PowerPoint shares features like layout guides. It also has a new presenter view with great touch features for swiping through slides or using pinch zoom to see your whole presentation so you can jump directly to a slide.

Don't forget to read our Hands on: Office 2013 review