Microsoft Announces Improvements to Office Across Multiple Platforms

Microsoft Announces Improvements to Office Across Multiple Platforms

Well. This post kind of highlights the difficulty we have in keeping up with what Microsoft is doing these days: Today, the Office team revealed various enhancements coming to Office across multiple platforms, including Mac, iOS, Android and the web.

Buckle up. Here’s what’s happening.

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Office Online: Skype voice and video integration

Microsoft will soon bring Skype to Office Online on the web. And that means Skype voice and video integration in Office Online—Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote Online—and in Outlook.com.

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“The integration creates a natural, collaborative experience in which you can co-author and have a conversation using instant messaging or video calling right from within a document,” Microsoft’s Kirk Koenigsbauer explains. “Best of all, your instant messaging history stays connected to the document, so that the next time you open it, you can pick right up where you left off. Office Online exists to help you collaborate with anyone, anywhere, with just a browser. Now with Skype communication built right in, you can get more done, faster.”

Skype voice and video integration with Office Online will arrive in November. “Over time,” Microsoft plans to add this integration to its Office desktop applications on Windows as well.

Office Online: Chrome extension

Microsoft has released a new Office Online extension for Chrome that lets you access Office Online—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Sway Online—right from within the browser. You can also use the extension to open and view existing Office documents stored on OneDrive, on OneDrive for Business and on your computer right from Chrome, Microsoft notes.

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Office Online: More improvements

In addition to the previously-noted changes to Office Online, Microsoft this month also added an enhanced Navigation pane to Word Online so can more easily work with large documents, a number of formatting improvements to Excel Online, and performance improvements to PowerPoint Online.

Office Mobile for Android

Microsoft’s Office Mobile apps for Android are now 40 percent smaller, and Microsoft pledges to make them even smaller going forward.

Additionally, the sign up/sign in experience has been improved so you can get started more quickly. And the Office Mobile apps now support Android M’s enterprise functionality and sport Android for Work compliance.

Finally, those with Office 365 subscriptions can now use Presenter View in PowerPoint Mobile on Android. This lets you view your presentation with speaker notes on your Android phone or tablet while projecting to a large screen.

Office 2016 for Mac

On the Mac, Office 2016 gets an improved Visual Basic Editor (VBE) that lets developers add modules from within the Project Viewer, add library references using a dialog and use shortcut keys for debugging. There are other improvements to VBE, too, but you can find out more from the Office Blogs.

 

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