Microsoft has released the first new version of Office for Windows in three years, adding a series of new features designed to bring the stalwart productivity apps into the cloud computing era.
Office 2016 allows several people to work together on documents and incorporates a “Groups” section into its software that makes it easier for people to collaborate on projects.
It also adds a “Tell Me” tool to Word, Excel and others that allows users to quickly search for functions instead of navigating Office’s labyrinth of menus, makes improvements to Outlook that prioritise important emails, and deeply incorporates Skype, the internet chat and video call service.
New features in Windows 10 such as Cortana also integrate with the software, allowing the personal assistant to read and search your files to improve features such as the calendar.
The new features in part mark a response to new and growing internet-based services such as Slack and Google Docs that have challenged Microsoft’s grip on the workplace. Group chat functions have cut down on email in many workplaces, and employees are increasingly working on documents stored in the cloud.
Microsoft introduced many of these features into the web based version of Office with its latest big update in 2013, but the 2016 version brings it into the desktop apps – those used by the majority of users.
"The way people work has changed dramatically, and that’s why Microsoft is focused on reinventing productivity and business processes for the mobile-first, cloud-first world,” Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, said.
“These latest innovations take another big step forward in transforming Office from familiar set of individual productivity apps to a connected set of apps and service designed for modern working, collaboration and teamwork."
Office 2016, which also adds new security features such as two-step authentication, will become available for those who use Office 365, its subscription service, from Tuesday. Non-subscribers will also be able to purchase it, although Microsoft has not announced a price.
Key features
Collaboration
Rather than switching between programs to edit documents and communicate with each other, Microsoft hopes you’ll do this all within its software.
If you share documents among different people, they can “co-author” them as well as chatting between each other within Word and talking over Skype, which is integrated with Office.
Microsoft has also ported the “Groups” feature of Office 365 into Outlook. This allows group chats and file sharing for custom groups of individuals, so that everyone in a certain team or project can see and edit them.
"People often start and end their work in Office, but there is often a messy middle that involves a lot of discussion - in person, phone or via various tools -as well as multiple (sometimes conflicting) inputs," Microsoft's head of Office Kirk Koenigsbauer said.
"Today we are delivering a set of experiences that is built for making teamwork seamless."
Users can now collaborate within documents Photo: Microsoft
'Tell Me' and 'Smart Lookup'
In its 27 years, Office’s suite of programs – Word, Excel, PowerPoint and so on – have become increasingly complicated to navigate, but personal assistants like Clippy were not particularly well received.
A new “Tell Me” feature allows users to search for a function such as “watermark”. The feature then provides one or several appropriate options which can be selected – much more useful than a help menu.
Meanwhile, the “lookup” function, which allows users to select a word or phrase and either look it up in a dictionary or search the web for it, has been upgraded to “Smart Lookup”.
This brings extra information and images into the sidebar when you lookup a term, allowing context without leaving Word.
Both of these features were available for the web version of Office 2013 but have been incorporated into the Windows versions for Office 2016.
Using Tell Me to add a watermark Photo: Microsoft
Outlook
Microsoft’s email client, Outlook, promises the “smartest inbox yet”.
The company says it has improved the search function to make it faster to wade through emails, while a new “clutter” folder will prioritise what emails are important.
Unlike a spam filter, the clutter folder will “learn” from your email habits to determine what emails should be in your inbox and what shouldn’t.
Outlook is also better at sending cloud documents rather than full files, which it says will stop people from having to use up data downloading them.
Outlook lets you attach cloud or non-cloud files
No comments:
Post a Comment