System requirements for Office 2013
Applies to: Office 2013, Office 365 ProPlus
Summary: Provides information about the standard system requirements for Office 2013 and the additional requirements of some Office 2013 applications.
Audience: IT Professionals
This article outlines the system requirements for all versions of Office 2013, whether on-premises, Microsoft cloud hosted, or a hybrid of the two. If you are upgrading from earlier versions of Microsoft Office to Microsoft 2010, refer to the article System Requirements for Office 2010.
You may have to upgrade your hardware or operating system, or both, before you can use Office 2013. This article will help you determine whether you do have to do that before purchasing Office for your organization.
Office 2013 is built for the desktop, but your business can extend the Office experience to employees who are using iPads or mobile devices.
Note
Office 2013 is supported for both 32-bit (recommended) and 64-bit client applications. For more information, see 64-bit editions of Office 2013. You may also want to read Choose the 32- or 64-bit version of Microsoft Office, which will help you decide which version of Office to install.
We recommend that you install Silverlight together with Office 2013 to improve the online experience.
Important
MSI and Click-to-Run installations of Office 2013 require that Task Scheduler be enabled on the client computers. If you have set up Group Policy to disable Task Scheduler, or if a single client computer has Task Scheduler disabled, attempts to install Office 2013 will fail.
In this article:
Office 2013 for personal computers – standard system requirements
Office 2013 applications – specific requirements
Office 2013 for personal computers – standard system requirements
Refer to the following table for a snapshot of the overall system requirements for Office 2013. The following suites are included:
Office Home and Student 2013
Office Professional Plus 2013
Office Standard 2013
Office Home and Business 2013
Office 365
Office 365 ProPlus
Office 365 Home
Office 365 University
The information that follows this table outlines any additional requirements for specific components of Office 2013, including add-ons and tools.
When you choose a product suite or individual program to deploy, evaluate the computers before you deploy any software to make sure that they meet the minimum operating system requirements.
Standard system requirements for Office 2013
Component | Office 2013 requirements |
---|---|
Computer and processor |
1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster x86- or x64-bit processor with SSE2 instruction set |
Memory (RAM) |
1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit); 2 gigabytes (GB) RAM (64-bit) |
Hard Disk |
3.0 gigabytes (GB) available |
Display |
Graphics hardware acceleration requires a DirectX10 graphics card and a 1024 x 576 or higher resolution monitor |
Operating System |
Office 2013 runs on 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows operating systems. When you run Office 2013 32-bit on a 64-bit version of a Windows operating system, the program runs in the 32-bit layer of the Windows operating system. For more information, see 64-bit editions of Office 2013. Here are supported Windows operating systems on which you can run Office 2013 32-bit and 64-bit programs. Office 2013 32-bit products are supported on the following Windows operating systems:
Office 2013 64-bit products are only supported on the following Windows operating systems:
*Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2008 R2 are available only in 64-bit architecture. Note No support is provided for side-by-side installations of 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Office. For example, there is no support for side-by-side installations of Office 2010 32-bit with Office 2013 64-bit, or for Excel 2010 64-bit and Visio 2013 32-bit. |
Browser |
Internet Explorer 8, 9, 10, or 11; Mozilla Firefox 10.x or a later version; Apple Safari 5; or Google Chrome 17.x. |
.NET version |
3.5, 4.0, or 4.5 |
Multi-touch |
A touch-enabled device is required to use any multi-touch functionality. But, all features and functionality are always available by using a keyboard, mouse, or other standard or accessible input device. Note that new touch features are optimized for use with Windows 8. |
Additional requirements and considerations |
Some functionality may vary, based on the system configuration. Some features may require additional or advanced hardware or server connectivity. |
Note
System requirements are rounded up to the nearest 0.5 GB, to be conservative. For example, if we measure an application’s required hard disk space to be 1.99 GB, we recommend 2.5 GB of disk space. Our hard disk system requirements are intentionally larger than the actual disk space usage of the software.
A graphics processor helps increase the performance of certain features, such as drawing tables in Excel 2013 or transitions, animations, and video integration in PowerPoint 2013. Use of a graphics processor with Office 2013 requires a Microsoft DirectX 10-compliant graphics processor that has 64 MB of video memory. These processors were widely available in 2007. Most computers that are available today include a graphics processor that meets or exceeds this standard. But, if you or your users do not have a graphics processor, you can still run Office 2013.
Office 2013 applications – specific requirements
The standard Office 2013 system requirements that are listed in the Office 2013 for Personal Computers--standard system requirements table apply to each Office 2013 application. The following Office 2013 programs have some additional requirements:
Microsoft Access 2013
Microsoft Excel 2013
Microsoft InfoPath 2013
Microsoft Lync Client 2013
Microsoft Lync Web App 2013
Microsoft Office Solution Management (Office Telemetry Dashboard) 2013
Microsoft OneNote 2013
Microsoft Outlook 2013
Microsoft Project Professional 2013
Microsoft Word 2013
If you’re looking for information about Visio or SharePoint system requirements, those are covered in separate articles.
Access 2013
The information in this table outlines additional requirements for specific components of Access 2013.
Specific Access 2013 requirements
Component | Requirement |
---|---|
Internet |
|
Database Compare |
To use Database Compare, you must have both Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 (or greater) and Microsoft Report Viewer 2008 Redistributable/Runtime (or greater) installed. The Report Viewer is available from the Microsoft Download Center. |
Excel 2013
The information in this table outlines additional requirements for specific components of Excel 2013.
Specific Excel 2013 requirements
Component | Requirement |
---|---|
Internet |
|
PowerPivot |
To use Power Pivot, you must have .NET 3.5 or .NET 4.0 and at least 2 gigabytes (GB) of RAM. |
PowerView add-in |
To use Excel 2013 with the PowerView add-in, you must have Silverlight 5.0 installed and at least 2 gigabytes (GB) of RAM. |
Inquire add-in |
To use Excel 2013 with the Inquire add-in, you must have Microsoft .NET 4.0 or 4.5 installed. |
Spreadsheet Compare |
To use Excel 2013 with Spreadsheet Compare, you must have Microsoft .NET 4.0 (or greater) installed. |
InfoPath 2013
The information in this table outlines additional requirements for specific components of InfoPath 2013.
Specific InfoPath 2013 requirements
Component | Requirement |
---|---|
Internet |
|
Programmability |
Programmability scenarios require .NET 4.0. |
Lync 2013
Lync 2013 has different hardware requirements from those that are listed in the system requirements Standard system requirements for Office 2013 table above. Refer to the following table for personal computer system requirements or recommendations that are specific to Lync 2013.
Specific Lync 2013 requirements
Component | Requirement |
---|---|
Computer/ processor |
Intel Pentium 4, AMD Athlon 64, or equivalent |
Memory (RAM) |
2 gigabytes (GB) RAM |
Operating System |
Windows 7 or Windows 8 |
Data and voice |
Minimum 1.6 gigahertz (GHz) or faster processor. We recommend 2.0 gigahertz (32-bit or 64-bit). |
Video |
For VGA: Dual core 1.9 gigahertz (GHz) processor, or faster For High Definition: Qual core 2.0 gigahertz (GHz) processor, or faster Display resolution: 1024 x 768 |
Conferencing |
|
Graphics Hardware |
|
Telephony |
Microphone and speakers, headset with microphone, or equivalent device(s). Recommended devices:
|
Video source |
USB 2.0 video camera or Polycom CX5000 HD device (Microsoft RoundTable) |
Lync Server 2013
The information in this table outlines additional requirements for specific components of Lync Server 2013.
Specific Lync Server 2013 requirements
Component | Requirement |
---|---|
Computer/ processor |
Intel Pentium 4, AMD Athlon 64, or equivalent |
Memory (RAM) |
32 gigabytes (GB) RAM |
Operating System |
Lync Server 2013 is available only in a 64-bit edition, which requires 64-bit hardware and a 64-bit edition of the Windows Server operating system. A 32-bit edition of Lync Server 2013 isn't available with this release. Supports 64-bit editions of the following operating systems:
Does not support the following:
|
Video |
Display with 1024 x 768 resolution |
Graphics Hardware |
|
Office Solution Management (Telemetry Dashboard)
Telemetry Dashboard is installed with Office Professional Plus 2013 and Office 365 ProPlus editions of Office 2013. The information in this table outlines additional requirements for specific components of Office Solution Management Telemetry Dashboard server.
Specific requirements for Telemetry Dashboard
Component | Telemetry Dashboard Server Requirement |
---|---|
Database |
SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, or SQL Server 2012 |
Shared folders |
For every 10,000+ users, 11 gigabytes of disk space to act as a temporary store for telemetry data. |
OneNote 2013
The information in this table outlines additional requirements for specific components of OneNote 2013.
Specific requirements for OneNote 2013
Component | Requirement |
---|---|
Internet |
|
Outlook 2013
The information in this table outlines additional requirements for specific components of Outlook 2013.
Specific requirements for Outlook 2013
Component | Requirement |
---|---|
Internet |
|
For integration with Exchange |
Be sure to connect Outlook 2013 to the supported versions of Exchange: Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010, or Exchange Server 2013. Outlook 2013 is not supported on Exchange 2003. |
For integration with Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 and Lync Server 2013 (optional) |
Some features require Exchange Server 2013 and Lync Server 2013. For a list of some new Outlook 2013 features that are enabled with Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 see What's new in Outlook 2013. |
For integration with Microsoft Lync (optional) |
Office Communicator 2007 R2, Microsoft Lync 2010 and Lync 2013 are supported with Outlook 2013. Office Communicator 2005 and Office Communicator 2007 are not supported. |
Inking features |
Certain inking features require Windows 7 or Windows 8. |
Speech recognition |
Speech recognition functionality requires a close-talk microphone and audio output device |
IRM |
Information Rights Management features require access to a computer that runs Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows Server 2012 and Windows Rights Management Services. |
Dynamic Calendars |
Dynamic calendars require server connectivity. |
Advanced |
Certain advanced functionality requires connectivity to Exchange Server 2010 or Exchange Server 2007, SharePoint Server 2007, SharePoint Server 2010, or Windows Server 2003 with SP1 running Windows SharePoint Services. |
Microsoft ID |
Certain features require a Microsoft ID (Microsoft ID). |
Project Professional 2013
The information in this table outlines additional requirements for specific components of Project Professional 2013.
Specific requirements for Project Professional 2013
Component | Requirement |
---|---|
Visual Reports |
To use the Visual Reports feature one of the following versions of Excel must be installed on the computer:
and one of the following versions of Microsoft Office Visio:
|
Import Outlook Tasks feature |
To use the Import Outlook Tasks feature, one of the following versions of Outlook must be installed on the computer:
|
OneDrive integration |
Users must have a Microsoft ID. |
Project Professional in an Enterprise |
|
Word 2013
The information in this table outlines additional requirements for specific components of Word 2013.
Specific requirements for Word 2013
Component | Requirement |
---|---|
Co-authoring |
Co-authoring requires SharePoint Foundation 2013 and a Microsoft ID account for OneDrive. It might also require more memory than the amount listed in the Standard system requirements for Office 2013 table above. |